A prominent class of metaphors depicts that which is sacred (God, a spiritual path) in terms of lightness rather than darkness. Metaphors of this type should have systematic implications for religious cognition according to conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and a new extension of this theory termed balanced CMT. Five studies (total N = 761) derived predictions from these models and then tested them. Consistent with balanced CMT, Studies 1-3 found that people who preferred light to dark believed in God to a greater extent and were more religious. Furthermore, priming thoughts related to God shifted perceptual responses in a light-ward direction (Study 4) and models wearing lighter, relative to darker, shirts were inferred to be more religious (Study 5). The findings provide novel evidence for the importance of light-dark metaphors in religious representations while highlighting a new class of processes that covary with, and therefore predict, religious belief.

中文翻译：

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被光所吸引：使用“上帝就是光”的比喻来预测宗教信仰。

一类突出的隐喻用光明而不是黑暗来描绘神圣的事物（上帝，一条精神之路）。根据概念隐喻理论 (CMT) 和该理论的新扩展，这种类型的隐喻应该对宗教认知具有系统性的影响，称为平衡 CMT。五项研究（总共 N = 761）从这些模型中得出预测，然后对其进行测试。与平衡的 CMT 一致，研究 1-3 发现更喜欢光明而不是黑暗的人在更大程度上相信上帝并且更虔诚。此外，与上帝有关的启动思想将知觉反应转移到偏光的方向（研究 4），并且模型穿着较浅的衬衫，相对于较深的衬衫被推断为更虔诚（研究 5）。