Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people’s normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessing agency, but not experience. God’s unique mind is due, the authors suggest, to the uniquely moral role He occupies. In this article, the authors propose that God is seen as the ultimate moral agent, the entity people blame and praise when they receive anomalous harm and help. Support for this proposition comes from research on mind perception, morality, and moral typecasting. Interestingly, although people perceive God as the author of salvation, suffering seems to evoke even more attributions to the divine.
Atran, S. ( 2002). In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion . New York: Oxford University Press .
2.
Baron-Cohen, S. ( 1995). Mindblindness. London: Bradford.
3.
Barrett, J.L. ( 2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29-34.
4.
Barrett, J.L. ( 2004). Why would anyone believe in God?Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
5.
Barrett, J.L., & Johnson, A.H. ( 2003). The role of control in attributing intentional agency to inanimate objects. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(3), 208-217.
6.
Barrett, J.L., & Keil, F.C. ( 1996). Conceptualizing a nonnatural entity: Anthropomorphism in God concepts. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 219-247.
7.
Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K.D. ( 2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323-370.
8.
Bering, J.M. ( 2002a). The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology, 6(1), 3-24.
9.
Bering, J.M. ( 2002b). Intuitive conceptions of dead agents’ minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs as phenomenological boundary. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2, 263-308.
10.
Bering, J.M. ( 2003). Towards a cognitive theory of existential meaning. New Ideas in Psychology, 21(2), 101-120.
11.
Bering, J.M., & Parker, B.D. ( 2006). Children’s attributions of intentions to an invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42(2), 253-262.
12.
Blakemore, S.J. ( 1999). The meme machine. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
13.
Bless, H., Clore, G.L., Schwarz, N., Golisano, V., Rabe, C., & Wölk, M. ( 1996). Mood and the use of scripts: Does a happy mood really lead to mindlessness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 71(4), 665-679.
14.
Boyer, P. ( 2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.
15.
Boyer, P. ( 2003). Religious thought and behaviour as byproducts of brain function. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 119-124.
16.
Bryant, A. ( 1977). The Anita Bryant story: The survival of our nation’s families and the threat of militant homosexuality. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell.
17.
Bulman, R.J., & Wortman, C.B. ( 1977). Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": Severe accident victims react to their lot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(5), 351-363.
18.
Cavendish, R. ( 1967). The black arts. New York: Capricorn.
19.
Clark, H.H. ( 1996). Using language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
20.
Dawes, R.M. ( 1994). House of cards: Psychology and psychotherapy built on myth. New York: Free Press.
21.
deBorchgrave, A. ( 2005, January 9). Allah off the Richter scale. Washington Times, Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/jan/09/20050109-102911-9121r/.
22.
Dunbar, R. ( 1998). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
23.
Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2008). Creating social connection through inferential reproduction: Loneliness and perceived agency in gadgets, gods, and greyhounds. Psychological Science, 19(2), 114-120.
24.
Epley, N., & Watyz, A. (in press). Mind perception. In D. T. Gilbert & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed.), McGraw-Hill: New York.
25.
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2007). On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review, 114(4), 864-886.
26.
Fillmore, C.J. ( 1968). The case for case. In E. Bach & R. T. Harms (Eds.), Universals in linguistic theory (pp. 1-88). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
27.
Frankl, V.E. ( 1963). Man’s search for meaning. New York: Washington Square Press.
Gall, T.L. ( 2004). Relationship with God and the quality of life of prostate cancer survivors. Quality of Life Research, 13(8), 1357-1368.
30.
Goodman, F.D. ( 1988). How about demons? Possession and exorcism in the modern world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
31.
Gray, H.M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D.M. ( 2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science , 315, 619.
32.
Gray, K., Gray H.M., & Wegner, D.M. ( 2008). A replication of the mind survey. Unpublished raw data.
33.
Gray, K., & Wegner, D.M. ( 2008). The sting of intentional pain. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1260-1262.
34.
Gray, K., & Wegner, D.M. ( 2009). Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 96(3), 505-520.
35.
Guthrie, S.E. ( 1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
36.
Haidt, J., & Algoe, S. ( 2004). Moral amplification and the emotions that attach us to saints and demons. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. A. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 322-335). New York: Guilford .
37.
Haslam, N., Kashima, Y., Loughnan, S., Shi, J., & Suitner, C. ( 2008). Subhuman, inhuman, and superhuman: Contrasting humans with nonhumans in three cultures. Social Cognition, 26(2), 248-258.
38.
Hofstadter, D.R. ( 2007). I am a strange loop. New York: Basic Books.
39.
Humphrey, N. ( 2003). The mind made flesh: Essays from the frontiers of psychology and evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
40.
Kay, A.C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J.L., Callan, M.J., & Laurin, K. ( 2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18-35.
41.
Kelemen, D. ( 1999). Function, goals and intention: Children’s teleological reasoning about objects. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(12), 461-468.
42.
Knobe, J. ( 2005). Theory of mind and moral cognition: Exploring the connections . Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(8), 357-359.
43.
Knobe, J. ( 2008, October-November). Can a robot, an insect or God be aware . Scientific American: Mind, pp. 33-35.
44.
Laurin, K., Kay, A.C., & Moscovitch, D.A. (2008). On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(6), 1559-1562.
45.
Lerner, M.J. ( 1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Springer.
46.
Leslie, A.M. ( 1987). Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind." Psychological Review, 94(4), 412-426.
47.
Lewis, G. ( 1995). The articulation of circumstance and causal understanding . In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal cognition: A multidisciplinary debate (pp. 557-574). New York: Oxford University Press.
48.
Lupfer, M.B., Tolliver, D., & Jackson, M. ( 1996). Explaining life-altering occurrences: A test of the "God-of-the-gaps" hypothesis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 35(4), 379-391.
49.
Martel, B. ( 2006, January 17). Storms payback from God, Nagin says. Washington Post, p. A04.
50.
Matthews, D.A., McCullough, M.E., Larson, D.B., Koenig, H.G., Swyers, J.P., & Milano, M.G. ( 1999). Religious commitment and health status: A review of the research and implications for family medicine. Archives of Family Medicine, 7(2), 118-124.
51.
McCullough, M.E., Hoyt, W.T., Larson, D.B., Koenig, H.G., & Thoresen, C. ( 2000). Religious involvement and mortality: A meta-analytic review. Health Psychology, 19(3), 211-222.
52.
McWilliams, P. ( 1993). Ain’t nobody’s business if you do: The absurdity of consensual crimes in a free society. Los Angeles: Prelude Press.
53.
Morewedge, C.K. (in press). Negativity bias in attribution of external agency. Journal of Experimental Psychology.
54.
Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A.F. ( 2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322(5898), 58-62.
55.
Oldridge, D.J. ( 2004). Strange histories: The trial of the pig, the walking dead, and other matters of fact from the medieval and renaissance worlds. New York: Routledge.
56.
Pargament, K.I., Ensing, D.S., Falgout, K., Olsen, H., Reilly, B., Haitsma, K., et al. (1990). God help me: (I): Religious coping efforts as predictors of the outcomes to significant negative life events. American Journal of Community Psychology, 18(6), 793-824.
57.
Pargament, K.I., & Hahn, J. ( 1986). God and the just world: Causal and coping attributions to God in health situations. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 25(2), 193-207.
58.
Peery, D., & Bodenhausen, G.V. (2008). Black + White = Black: Hypodescent in reflexive categorization of racially ambiguous faces. Psychological Science, 19(10), 973-977.
59.
Pennebaker, J.W., & Beall, S.K. ( 1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 95(3), 274-281.
60.
Pennebaker, J.W., & Seagal, J.D. ( 1999). Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1243-1254.
61.
Pepitone, A., & Saffiotti, L. ( 1997). The selectivity of nonmaterial beliefs in interpreting life events. European Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 23-35.
62.
Pew Foundation. (2008). Religious beliefs and practices: Belief in God or universal spirit. Washington, DC: Author.
63.
Rosengren, K. S., Johnson, C. N., & Harris, P. L. (Eds.). (2000). Imagining the impossible. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
64.
Rosset, E. ( 2008). It’s no accident: Our bias for intentional explanations . Cognition, 108(3), 771-780.
65.
Sedikides, C., & Green, J.D. (in press). Memory as a self-protective mechanism. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
66.
Seligman, M.E. ( 1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. Oxford, UK: Freeman.
67.
Spilka, B., & Schmidt, G. ( 1983). General attribution theory for the psychology of religion: The influence of event-character on attributions to God. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22(4), 326-339.
68.
Spilka, B., Zwartjes, W.J., & Zwartjes, G.M. (1991). The role of religion in coping with childhood cancer. Pastoral Psychology, 39(5), 295-304.
69.
Taylor, S.E. ( 1991). Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: The mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin , 110(1), 67-85.
70.
Taylor, S.E., & Brown, J.D. ( 1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103(2), 193-210.
71.
Tremlin, T. ( 2006). Minds and gods: The cognitive foundations of religion . New York: Oxford University Press .
72.
United Health Foundation. (2008). America’s health rankings. Minneapolis, MN: Author.
73.
Updegraff, J.A., Silver, R.C., & Holman, E.A. ( 2008). Searching for and finding meaning in collective trauma: Results from a national longitudinal study of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(3), 709-722.
74.
Watanabe, T., & Stammer, L.B. ( 2005, January 8). Deadly tsunami resurrects the old question of why. Los Angeles Times, Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/08/local/me-beliefs8.
75.
Wenegrat, B. ( 1990). The divine archetype: The sociobiology and psychology of religion. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
76.
Ziegler, P. ( 1971). The black death. New York: Harper.
