Jesse L. Preston- PhD, Harvard University 2005
- Reader at University of Warwick
Jesse L. Preston
- PhD, Harvard University 2005
- Reader at University of Warwick
About
37
Publications
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Introduction
Jesse L. Preston is psychologist with primary research area on psychology of belief, including topics of moral belief, agency, climate change, and the relationship between religion and science. She is presently a Reader in the Psychology Department at the University of Warwick.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2016 - present
September 1999 - June 2005
September 2005 - August 2007
Education
September 1999 - June 2005
Harvard University
Field of study
- Social Psychology
Publications
Publications (37)
What is the relationship between religion and care for the natural world? Although this question has motivated research for decades, the evidence is inconsistent. Here, we highlight the psychological mechanisms by which specific features of religious systems may differentially impact environmental beliefs and commitments—positively and negatively—t...
Religious attitudes can have a strong influence on environmental beliefs and behavior, both positively and negatively. This work investigates opposing influences of religion of environmentalism through individual differences in Religious Fundamentalism and Spirituality. In two studies with U.S. samples (total N = 909), Spirituality predicted strong...
Four studies investigate a fear of imbalanced minds hypothesis that threatening agents perceived to be relatively mismatched in capacities for cognition (e.g., self-control and reasoning) and emotion (e.g., sensations and emotions) will be rated as scarier and more dangerous by observers. In ratings of fictional monsters (e.g., zombies and vampires...
Scientists often refer to spiritual experiences with science. This research addresses this unique component of science attitudes-spirituality of science: feelings of meaning, awe, and connection derived through scientific ideas. Three studies (N = 1,197) examined individual differences in Spirituality of Science (SoS) and its benefits for well-bein...
People frequently see design in nature that reflects intuitive teleological thinking-that is, the order in nature that supports life suggests it was designed for that purpose. This research proposes that inferences are stronger when nature supports human life specifically. Five studies (N = 1,788) examine evidence for an anthro-teleological bias. P...
In the present registered report, we test whether belief in science as a source of meaning helps restore existential comfort following reminders of death in nonreligious individuals. We predicted that spirituality of science—the capacity to experience high levels of transcendent spiritual meaning through science—may serve as proximal defense agains...
The aim of the present research was to examine the independent contribution of beliefs in science and religion, respectively, to perceptions of science–religion compatibility across diverse countries and religious groups. To assess this, we recruited participants from three countries (the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Kazakhstan; N = 684) and pr...
Three studies of US, Canada, and UK respondents examined pro-vaccine attitudes as predicted by intellectual humility, belief in science, religiosity, and political attitudes. Intellectual humility refers to the capacity to understand limits of one’s own beliefs and showed strong relationship to pro-vaccine attitudes across samples. Pro-vaccine atti...
Psychologists and economists often discuss the "pain" of paying for our purchases. Four experiments examine how people evaluate prospective debt payments, analyzing how different features of a loan (down payment, final payment, duration, monthly payments) affect willingness to accept the loan. Akin to previous findings on physical pain, participant...
This chapter reviews work on the shared psychological functions of science and religion. In doing so, we focus on three of these functions that are of particular importance to human functioning: explanation, control, and meaning. The research that is reviewed indicates that both belief systems can help to address motivational needs pertaining to th...
Three studies (N = 1,389) investigate how attitudes toward the environment and climate change may be informed by stewardship beliefs (care for the Earth as a sacred religious duty) or dominion beliefs (God-given dominance over nature). Pro-environmental measures were positively associated with stewardship belief and negatively associated with domin...
Spiritual experiences are profound moments of personal transcendence, connection, and wonder. Five studies (total N = 1064) investigate how spiritual experiences induce feelings of awe, in both religious and non-religious people, through a sense of small self. Recalling spiritual experiences increased feelings of Awe (Studies 1–5), Small Self (Stud...
Although most people understand the threat of climate change, they do little to modify their own
energy conservation behavior. One reason for this gap between belief and behavior may be that
individual actions seem un-impactful and therefore are not morally relevant. This research
investigates how climate change helplessness—belief that one’s actio...
When and why do local communities display negative or exclusionary responses to mixing and blending of local and foreign cultural symbols in the same space or percept? Results from three experiments showed that the local community reacted most negatively to culture mixing when both objects were perceived to be icons or symbols of their culture of o...
Immoral actions, including physical/sexual (e.g., incest) and social (e.g., unfairness) taboos, are often described as disgusting. But what about immoral thoughts, more specifically, thoughts that violate religious beliefs? Do heretical thoughts taint the purity of mind? The present research examined heretical disgust using self-report measures and...
We analyze data from nearly 2 million text messages (tweets) across over 16,000 users on Twitter to examine differences between Christians and atheists in natural language. Analyses reveal that Christians use more positive emotion words and less negative emotion words than atheists. Moreover, two independent paths predict differences in expressions...
Research on the timescale bias has found that observers perceive more capacity for mind in targets moving at an average speed, relative to slow or fast moving targets. The present research revisited the timescale bias as a type of halo effect, where normal-speed people elicit positive evaluations and abnormal-speed (slow and fast) people elicit neg...
Researchers often expose participants to a series of words (e.g., religion, God, faith) to activate religious concepts and observe their subsequent effects on people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This research has revealed many important effects of experimentally manipulated religious cognition in domains ranging from prosocial behavior to p...
Recent studies have found that activating religious cognition by priming techniques can enhance prosocial behavior, arguably because religious concepts carry prosocial associations. But many of these studies have primed multiple concepts simultaneously related to the sacred. We argue here that religion and God are distinct concepts that activate di...
One difficulty in persuasion is overcoming the confirmation bias, where people selectively seek evidence that is consistent with their prior beliefs and expectations. This biased search for information allows people to analyze new information in an efficient, but shallow way. The present research discusses how experienced difficultly in processing...
Purity rituals (such as baptism, mikvah, and ablution) are an important component of many religious practices. These practices not only help protect the faithful from physical contaminants, but also bestow symbolic purity and maintain the sanctity of sacred objects. The present work examines the association between religion and cleanliness, as two...
On the basis of construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010), we hypothesized that political polarization on controversial issues may be reduced by increasing abstract mental construal. Using the issue of the "Ground Zero Mosque" and political polarization on it as an example, we first established that liberals and conservatives hold opposing at...
Disgust is an emotion that plays an important role in the maintenance and protection of physical and moral purity (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999b). Using a repeated taste-test paradigm, the present research extends recent work on moral cognition by investigating disgust reactions to rejected religious beliefs. In Experiment 1, Christian parti...
Naïve theories of behavior hold that actions are caused by an agent's intentions, and the subsequent success of an action is measured by the satisfaction of those intentions. However, when an action is not as successful as intended, the expected causal link between intention and action may distort perception of the action itself. Four studies found...
Historically, religion and religious belief have often been credited as the source of human morality. But what have been the real effects of religion on prosocial behavior? A review of the psychological literature reveals a complex relation between religious belief and moral action: leading to greater prosocial behavior in some contexts but not in...
Science and religion have come into conflict repeatedly throughout history, and one simple reason for this is the two offer competing explanations for many of the same phenomena. We present evidence that the conflict between these two concepts can occur automatically, such that increasing the perceived value of one decreases the automatic evaluatio...
In the last decade, there has been a tremendous surge of research on the mechanisms of human action. This volume brings together this new knowledge in a single, concise source, covering most if not all of the basic questions regarding human action: what are the mechanisms by which action plans are acquired, mentally represented, activated, selected...
Three studies investigated how subliminally primed thoughts of an agent prior to action can affect ascriptions of authorship for that action. Participants competed against a computer program to remove words from a computer screen. Participants reported greater feelings of authorship when primed with first person singular pronouns, and lower feeling...
In this research, the authors found that people use speed of movement to infer the presence of mind and mental attributes such as intention, consciousness, thought, and intelligence in other persons, animals, and objects. Participants in 4 studies exhibited timescale bias--perceiving human and nonhuman targets (animals, robots, and animations) as m...
The authors found that the feeling of authorship for mental actions such as solving problems is enhanced by effort cues experienced during mental activity; misattribution of effort cues resulted in inadvertent plagiarism. Pairs of participants took turns solving anagrams as they exerted effort on an unrelated task. People inadvertently plagiarized...
An important component of souls is the capacity for free will, as the origin of agency within an individual. Belief in souls arises in part from the experience of conscious will, a compelling feeling of personal causation that accompanies almost every action we take, and suggests that an immaterial self is in charge of the physical body.
People hold beliefs that vary not only in their perceived truth, but also in their value to the believer--their meaning, relevance, and importance. We argue that a belief's value is determined, at least in part, by its explanatory power. Highly valuable beliefs are those that can uniquely explain and organize a diverse set of observations. Less val...
