Journal of Educational, Health and Community Psychology Vol 8, No 2, 2019 E-ISSN 2460-8467 Christianti, Himawan, Aditya 1 On Being Religious: Will Religiosity Change Our Perceptions of Pleasure in Reckless Behavior? Pauline Christianti Faculty of Psychology Universitas Pelita Harapan paulinechristianti@gmail.com Karel Karsten Himawan Faculty of Psychology Universitas Pelita Harapan karel.karsten@uph.edu Yonathan Aditya Faculty of Psychology Universitas Pelita Harapan yonathan.aditya@uph.edu Abstract Pleasure takes part as an underlying motivation in decision-making activities, including when committing conventional and reckless behaviors. Whereas previous studies have confirmed that individuals with a higher level of religiosity commit less reckless behaviors, little attention is given to further identify their pleasure perceptions toward performing such actions. This study was intended to fill the gap by demonstrating if a higher level of religiosity among emerging adults would change perceptions of pleasure, which in turns reduce the likelihood of performing reckless behavior. An online survey, participated by 441 emerging adults (M age =20.69; SD=1.71) living in Jakarta and Tangerang were conducted. The survey found that there exists a negative influence of religiosity towards the perception of pleasure in emerging adults' reckless behavior. This study suggests that in an attempt to reduce reckless behavior, practitioners could use indirect religious approaches, including adopting religious morality, providing a supportive community, and practicing relaxing rituals. Keywords: Religiosity, perception of pleasure, reckless behavior, emerging adults, Indonesia. Received 12 March 2019/Accepted 15 May 2019 ©JEHCP All rights reserved Introduction Action is inevitable in life. Each individual has a choice to do or not do, but typically there is a reason behind every action, or what we usually call it as a motivation. Pleasure takes an important part as an underlying motivation for decisions and behavior (Biswas-Diener, Linley, Dovey, Malthy, Hurling, Wilkinson, & Lyubchi, 2015). As a positive affect, pleasure functions in regulating the flow of behavior (Carver, 2003). Pleasure itself can be derived from certain conventional or reckless behaviors. Some individuals engage in prosocial behaviors as it benefits themselves in terms of egoistic desire to regulate personal distress as they help others (Rucci, Allen, & Zelenski, 2018), which thus resulting in them feeling better. In a study on motives behind volunteering, it was