TABLE OF CONTENTS

Religion underlies the way that many people perceive the world, but little is understood concerning how individuals mentally process religious representations. The present work applies automaticity research to the domain of religious representations. Two pilot studies suggested that being primed with religious words led to the automatic activation of religious representations and corresponding behavior. Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001) recently theorized that individuals demonstrate automatic behaviors because of the social advantages of assimilating to the environment. Therefore, regardless of one’s religiosity, being primed with religious words may motivate one to conform to the perceived intents and goals of religious people. The current thesis further examined this social assimilation motivation hypothesis. It was predicted that an underlying social assimilation process accounted for previously found automatic behavioral effects of religious priming in a task that misled people to cheat. Results showed that participants did indeed cheat more when primed with concrete as opposed to general religious words. Contrary to predictions, however, the suggested contrast found in the concrete religious word group did not differ when participants ’ cognitive capacity was manipulated. Overall, these mixed results suggest an assimilation process in religious priming. Future research is discussed that may offer bette