Making Life Complicated: Prompting the Use of Integratively Complex Thinking Bruce Hunsberger, James Lea, S. Mark Pancer, Michael Pratt, and Barbara McKenzle Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada ABSTRACT Two studies are reported which assess the proclivity of itidi- viduals to increase the integrative cotnplexity of social, tnoral, or religious thinking when protnpted to do so. We also examined the influence on com- plexity of topic area and respotidetits' religiosity. Iti both studies significant increases iti complexity were obtained when participants were prompted to differentiate and integrate material, suggesting that an important distinction needs to be made between competence and performance with respect to com- plexity. However, there was some evidence that prompting complexity was more effective in eliciting differentiation than integration. Both studies indi- cated that overall, religious orientation was not a significant predictor of inte- grative complexity, nor did it interact with other factors (including religious vs. nonreligious content of stimulus materials). Finally, there was some evidence that complexity may vary across diiferent content areas, and this variation may be differentially affected by prompting for complexity. Fundamental to social cognitive analyses of human behavior is the as- sumption that the social perceiver engages in an active process of sim- This research was partially supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant #410-87-1021. The authors are indebted to Kathleen Kitch- ing. Donna Martin, Scott Pawson, Lisa Keith, and Karen Williams for data collection, scoring, and data preparation. An earlier version of Study 1 was presented at the Cana- dian Psychological Association annual meeting in Montreal, June 1988. Study 2 was presented at the Canadian Psychological Association annual meeting in Ottawa, June 1990. Inquiries and requests for reprints should be addressed to Bruce Hunsberger, De- partment of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5, or to James Lea, now at the Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6. Journal of Personality 60:1, March 1992. Copyright © 1992 by Duke University Press. CCC 0022-3506/92/$! .50