Social identity and the true believer: Responses to threatened self-stereotypes among the intrinsically religious

That religion is an impactful social category has often been assumed but se ldom tested. Based on social identity and self-categorization theories, it is argued that devout religious commitment reflects, at least in part, an i ndividual's motivation to engage in religious self-stereotyping (i.e. to pe rceive oneself as an exemplary religious group member). In order to test th is analysis, individuals scoring high or low on a measure of intrinsic reli gious orientation received false feedback that either threatened or bolster ed their self-perceptions on a dimension of behaviour that was either impor tant or not important to religious group membership. As expected, intrinsic orientation predicted increased religious self-stereotyping only when feed back was threatening and important to religious group membership; affective and behavioural indices revealed a similar pattern. Implications for the s ocial identity/self-categorization literature, and for theory development i n the psychology of religion, are subsequently discussed.