Journal
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY REVIEW
Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages 7-16Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/1088868309350299
Keywords
morality; attribution; justice; person perception
Categories
Funding
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [0841746] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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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.
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