Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs: A registered report of construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability

Kaili Clackson; Nadya Pohran; Riccardo M Galli; Laura Labno; Miguel Farias; Tristan A Bekinschtein; Valdas Noreika

doi:10.3758/s13428-021-01632-3

Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs: A registered report of construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability

Kaili Clackson, Nadya Pohran, Riccardo M Galli, Laura Labno, Miguel Farias, Tristan A Bekinschtein, Valdas Noreika

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Abstract

While religious beliefs are typically studied using questionnaires, there are no standardized tools available for cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies of religious cognition. Here we present the first such tool-the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB)-which consists of audio-recorded items of religious beliefs as well as items of three control conditions: moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and empirical everyday life knowledge. The CPICB is designed in such a way that the ultimate meaning of each sentence is revealed only by its final critical word, which enables the precise measurement of reaction times and/or latencies of neurophysiological responses. Each statement comes in a pair of Agree/Disagree versions of critical words, which allows for experimental contrasting between belief and disbelief conditions. Psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic matching between Agree/Disagree versions of sentences, as well as across different categories of the CPICB items (Religious, Moral, Scientific, Everyday), enables rigorous control of low-level psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic features while testing higher-level beliefs. In the exploratory Study 1 (N = 20), we developed and tested a preliminary version of the CPICB that had 480 items. After selecting 400 items that yielded the most consistent responses, we carried out a confirmatory test-retest Study 2 (N = 40). Preregistered data analyses confirmed excellent construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the CPICB religious belief statements. We conclude that the CPICB is suitable for studying Christian beliefs in an experimental setting involving behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms, and provide Open Access to the inventory items, fostering further development of the experimental research of religiosity.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	457-474
Number of pages	18
Journal	Behavior Research Methods
Volume	54
Early online date	9 Jul 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01632-3
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 9 Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Funder

John Templeton Foundation (grant ID 60936)

Keywords

Atheist
Belief
Christian
Moral
N400
Psycholinguistic inventory
Reaction times
Religious cognition
Scientific knowledge

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Psychology (miscellaneous)
Psychology(all)

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PublishedFinal published version, 1.19 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "While religious beliefs are typically studied using questionnaires, there are no standardized tools available for cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies of religious cognition. Here we present the first such tool-the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB)-which consists of audio-recorded items of religious beliefs as well as items of three control conditions: moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and empirical everyday life knowledge. The CPICB is designed in such a way that the ultimate meaning of each sentence is revealed only by its final critical word, which enables the precise measurement of reaction times and/or latencies of neurophysiological responses. Each statement comes in a pair of Agree/Disagree versions of critical words, which allows for experimental contrasting between belief and disbelief conditions. Psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic matching between Agree/Disagree versions of sentences, as well as across different categories of the CPICB items (Religious, Moral, Scientific, Everyday), enables rigorous control of low-level psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic features while testing higher-level beliefs. In the exploratory Study 1 (N = 20), we developed and tested a preliminary version of the CPICB that had 480 items. After selecting 400 items that yielded the most consistent responses, we carried out a confirmatory test-retest Study 2 (N = 40). Preregistered data analyses confirmed excellent construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the CPICB religious belief statements. We conclude that the CPICB is suitable for studying Christian beliefs in an experimental setting involving behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms, and provide Open Access to the inventory items, fostering further development of the experimental research of religiosity.",

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Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs: A registered report of construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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