Religious individuals: evaluating their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations at the implicit level of awareness

Explicit cognitions are those that occur with intention and conscious awareness; implicit cognitions occur without such intention and awareness. Whereas some investigations have demonstrated consistencies between beliefs maintained at these two levels of awareness, others have demonstrated inconsistencies. In the present research, participants performed a speeded-response task, a variation of the Implicit Association Test (A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998), to evaluate their implicit identification with intrinsic and extrinsic religious motivations. Also, participants completed a self-report measure to evaluate their corresponding tendencies toward explicit motivations. The results provided evidence for consistency between participants' implicit identification and their explicit identification with intrinsic and extrinsic religious motivations. The finding of this consistency has implications for the relationship between intrinsic religiousness and social-desirability effects.