Development and Initial Validation of an Implicit Measure of Religiousness-Spirituality JORDAN P. LABOUFF Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Baylor University W ADE C. ROWATT Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Baylor University MEGAN K. JOHNSON Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Baylor University MICHELLE THEDFORD Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Baylor University JO-ANN TSANG Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Baylor University An implicit measure of religiousness-spirituality (RS) was constructed and used in two studies. In Study 1, undergraduates completed a Religiousness-Spirituality Implicit Association Test (RS-IAT) and several self-report measures of RS and related constructs (e.g., religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism). Informants rated the participants’ RS. The RS-IAT was internally consistent. Implicit RS correlated positively with self-reported RS, spiritual transcendence, spiritual experiences, religious fundamentalism, and intrinsic religiousness. Informant ratings correlated positively with participants’ self-reported religiousness but not implicit RS. In Study 2, implicit RS accounted for unique variability in self-reported attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women when controlling for self-reported religiousness and right-wing authoritarianism. These findings demonstrate that an implicit measure of trait RS explains some variability in attitudes that self-report measures do not. An implicit measure of RS could advance the scientific study of religion beyond what is known from self-report measures. INTRODUCTION At the individual level, religiousness accounts for variability in important psychological and behavioral processes such as prejudice (Hall, Matz, and Wood 2010), prosociality (Norenzayan and Shariff 2008), and health (McCullough and Willoughby 2009). Most of what we know about varieties of religious experience (James 1902) and associations between religiousness and social behavior, however, comes from participant self-report (Hill and Hood 1999). With few exceptions, the scientific study of religion has been the scientific study of self-reported religiousness and spirituality. 1 Acknowledgments: Study 1 was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the John Templeton Foundation. The authors also thank the editorial staff and anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback on previous versions of this article. Portions of this research were presented at the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality preconference to the 2009 meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (Tampa, FL). Correspondence should be addressed to Jordan LaBouff, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798. E-mail: Jordan_LaBouff@Baylor.edu 1 The definition and measurement of individual religiousness-spirituality poses some challenges. Gorsuch (1984) observed that the study of religiousness-spirituality was stagnant due to fundamental disagreements on definitions. For example, some recent research construes religiousness and spirituality as distinct constructs with religiousness defined in institution- alized, objective, and sometimes pejorative terms and spirituality defined as dynamic, subjective, and experience-based (Zinnbauer and Pargament 2005). However, the traits religious and spiritual are highly correlated (r = .68 in Saucier and Skrzypinska 2006). Most people identify themselves as both religious and spiritual and describe the constructs as “related Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2010) 49(3):439–455 C  2010 The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion