Browsing by Author "Bahcekapili, Hasan G."

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Cognitive Reflection and Religious Belief: a Test of Two Models
(Cambridge Univ Press, 2025) Seker, Firat; Acem, Ensar; Bayrak, Fatih; Dogruyol, Burak; Isler, Ozan; Bahcekapili, Hasan G.; Yilmaz, Onurcan
Existing research suggests a negative correlation between reflective thinking and religious belief. The dual process model (DPM) posits that reflection diminishes religious belief by limiting intuitive decisions. In contrast, the expressive rationality model (ERM) argues that reflection serves an identity-protective function by bolstering rather than modifying preexisting beliefs. Although the current literature tends to favor the DPM, many studies suffer from unbalanced samples. To avoid this limitation, we recruited comparably large number of participants for both religious believers (n = 580) and non-believers (n = 594) and observed the relationship between reflection and two measures of religious belief: belief in God and disbelief in evolution. Our findings corroborate the negative associations found between higher levels of reflection and both types of belief, independent of religious affiliation. Our results align with the broader literature, supporting the DPM but not the ERM.
Intergroup Tolerance Leads To Subjective Morality, Which in Turn Is Associated With (but Does Not Lead To) Reduced Religiosity
(Sage Publications Ltd, 2020) Yilmaz, Onurcan; Yılmaz, Onurcan; Bahcekapili, Hasan G.; Harma, Mehmet; Harma, Mehmet; Sevi, Baris
Although the effect of religious belief on morally relevant behavior is well demonstrated, the reverse influence is less known. In this research, we examined the influence of morality on religious belief. In the first study, we used two samples from Turkey and the United States, and specifically tested the hypothesis that intergroup tolerance predicts a shift in meta-ethical views toward subjective morality, which in turn predicts decreased religious belief. To examine the relationship between intergroup tolerance and religiosity via subjective morality, a structural equation model (SEM) was run. SEM results yielded good fit to the data for both samples. Intergroup tolerance positively predicted subjective morality, and in turn, morality negatively predicted religiosity. The bias-corrected bootstrap analysis confirmed the mediation, indicating that the association between intergroup tolerance and religious belief was mediated via subjective morality. In Study 2, we probed for the causal relationship, and the results showed that manipulating intergroup tolerance increases subjective morality, but does not influence religiosity. Therefore, we found only partial evidence for our proposed model that tolerance causally influences subjective morality, but not religiosity.
Is Negativity Bias Intuitive for Liberals and Conservatives?
(Springer, 2023) Salter, Metin Ege; Yılmaz, Onurcan; Duymac, Firat Yavuz; Harma, Mehmet; Yilmaz, Onurcan; Bahcekapili, Hasan G.; Harma, Mehmet
Previous research suggests that conservatives (right-wingers) tend to show more negativity bias than liberals (left-wingers) in several tasks. However, the majority of these studies are based on correlational findings and do not provide information on the cognitive underpinnings of this tendency. The current research investigated whether intuition promotes negativity bias and mitigates the ideological asymmetry in this domain in three underrepresented, non-western samples (Turkey). In line with the previous literature, we defined negativity bias as the tendency to interpret ambiguous faces as threatening. The results of the lab experiment revealed that negativity bias increases under high-cognitive load overall. In addition, this effect was moderated by the participants' political orientation (Experiment 1). In other words, when their cognitive resources were depleted, liberals became more like conservatives in terms of negativity bias. However, we failed to conceptually replicate this effect using time-limit manipulations in two online preregistered experiments during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the baseline negativity bias is thought to be already at peak. Thus, the findings provide no strong evidence for the idea that intuition promotes negativity bias and that liberals use cognitive effort to avoid this perceptual bias.