Disentangling the belief in God and cognitive rigidity/flexibility components of religiosity to predict racial and value-violating prejudice: A Post-Critical Belief Scale analysis

Past research indicates that being religious is associated with prejudice toward racial and value-violating out-groups. However, this past research treated religiosity as a unidimensional construct without taking into account how different components of religiosity—belief in a higher power and the rigidity/flexibility of religious beliefs—are associated with measures of prejudice. Two studies examined the relationship between these two components of religiosity, as measured by the Post-Critical Beliefs Scale, and racial (African Americans, Arabs) and value-violating prejudices (atheists, gay men). As the flexibility of religious beliefs increased (literal vs. symbolic dimension), attitudes toward racial and value-violating out-groups became more positive (Study 1). As belief in God strengthened (exclusion vs. inclusion of transcendence dimension), attitudes toward value-violating out-groups became more negative. Study 2 demonstrated that these two components of religiosity fully mediated the relationship between general religiosity and prejudice toward African Americans, Arabs, and gay men and partially mediated the relationship between religiosity and prejudice toward atheists. Results are discussed in light of reexamining the conclusion that simply being religious is associated with prejudice.     

Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life

A simple reminder of the fact that we do not always control life's outcomes reduced people's belief in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This control-threat resulted in a relative preference for theories of life that thwart randomness, either by stressing the role of a controlling God (Intelligent Design) or by presenting the Theory of Evolution in terms of predictable and orderly processes. Moreover, increased preference for Intelligent Design over evolutionary theory disappeared when the latter was framed in terms of an orderly process with inevitable outcomes. Thus, psychological threat enhances belief in God, but only in the absence of other options that help to create order in the world.     

Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense: Distinguishing compensatory control from uncertainty management and terror management processes

Research inspired by the compensatory control model (CCM) shows that people compensate for personal control threats by bolstering aspects of the cultural worldview that afford external control. According to the CCM these effects stem from the motivation to maintain perceived order, but it is alternatively possible that they represent indirect efforts to bolster distally related psychological structures described by uncertainty management theory (self-relevant certainty) and terror management theory (death-transcendence). To assess whether compensatory control processes play a unique role in worldview defense, we hypothesized that personal control threats would increase affirmation of cultural constructs that specifically bolster order more so than constructs that bolster distally related structures. The results of 5 studies provide converging support for this hypothesis in the context of attitudes toward diverse cultural constructs (Study 1: national culture; Studies 2 and 3: consumer products;  and : political candidates). Also supporting hypotheses, uncertainty salience and mortality salience elicited greater affirmation of identity- and immortality-conferring targets, respectively, compared to order-conferring constructs. Discussion focuses on the value of different perspectives on existential motivation for predicting specific forms of worldview defense.     

Racism in the Hands of an Angry God: How Image of God Impacts Cultural Racism in Relation to Police Treatment of African Americans

Previous research suggests an angry God image is a narrative schema predicting support for more punitive forms of criminal justice. However, this research has not explored the possibility that racialization may impact one's God image. We perform logistic regression on Wave V of the Baylor Religion Survey to examine the correlation between an angry God image and the belief that police shoot Blacks more often because Blacks are more violent than Whites (a context-specific form of cultural racism). Engaging critical insights from intersectionality theory, we also interact angry God image with both racialized identity and racialized religious tradition. Results suggest that the angry God schema is associated with this form of cultural racism for White people generally as well as White Evangelicals, yet for Black Protestants, belief in an angry God is associated with resistance against this type of cultural racism.     

Karl Barth and God in Creation: Towards an Interfaith Dialogue with Science and Religion

Is our neo-orthodox interpretation of Karl Barth correct? Does Barth's theology provide an opportunity to promote creative, equable dialog with natural science and religious pluralism? In this article, I contend that Barth's theological language of analogy, eschatology, nature, and Sabbath integrate with and complement scientific explanations.     

Fathers and Perceptions of God Play an Important Role in Psychological Adjustment Among Emerging Adults in Guatemala and the United States

Interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory posits that people require parental acceptance in childhood to develop healthy psychological adjustment. People’s beliefs about and their relationship with deity also influences their psychological adjustment. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how both perceived parental acceptance and a relationship with deity are related to psychological adjustment for emerging adults in Guatemala and the United States. Participants (N?=?189) from Guatemala and the United States completed measures of perceived parental acceptance-rejection, images of God, attachment to God, and psychological adjustment. Results indicate that perceived paternal acceptance-rejection was only a significant predictor of psychological adjustment in U.S. participants, and not in Guatemalan participants. In both samples, images of God did not predict psychological adjustment. However, an anxious attachment with God predicted psychological maladjustment for both groups. The findings suggest that two important factors to be considered by researchers, educators, and mental health professionals are adults’ perceptions of their father’s level of acceptance-rejection and the amount of anxiety they experience in their relationship with God.     

The functional nature of conspiracy beliefs: Examining the underpinnings of belief in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy

Focusing on a contemporary conspiracy theory popularized in the novel The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2002), we examined the underlying psychological factors and individual differences that may predict belief in conspiracy theories, and assessed such beliefs’ resistance to counterevidence. Our results suggest that belief in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy may be associated with coping with existential threat and death-related anxiety. In addition, the extent to which participants believed in the conspiracy was associated with the endorsement of congruent (New Age spiritual) and competing (Christian religious) beliefs, in opposite directions. Finally, exposure to counterevidence resulted in belief reduction, specifically among more religious participants (i.e. among those endorsing a competing belief system). We suggest that belief in modern conspiracy theories may help individuals attain or maintain a sense of meaning, control, and security.     

Older Mexican Americans and God-mediated control: exploring the influence of Pentecostal/Evangelical affiliation

A growing number of Mexican Americans are leaving the Catholic Church to join Pentecostal and Evangelical congregations. The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits that are associated with joining Pentecostal and Evangelical congregations. A latent variable model is specified that contains the following core relationships: (1) older Mexican Americans who affiliate with Pentecostal/Evangelical congregations will attend worship services more often; (2) older Mexican Americans who attend church more often will receive more spiritual support from their fellow church members; (3) older Mexican Americans who receive more spiritual support will develop a closer relationship with God; and (4) older Mexican Americans who have a close relationship with God will develop a stronger sense of God-mediated control. Findings from a nationwide survey of older Mexican Americans provide support for each of these linkages.     

Proactive inhibitory control of emotional distractors: Evidence for the benefit of precuing emotional distractors

The present study investigated the role of proactive inhibitory control in processing emotional distractors by examining the benefit of precuing the following emotional distractor. In Experiments 1A and 1B, an emotional flanker task was used while schematic emotional faces were presented as targets and distractors. We found the benefit of precuing the emotional distractor. In Experiment 2, the precue could not predict the following emotional distractor. The benefit of precuing the emotional distractor diminished, suggesting that the benefit was not due to reactive inhibition of the precued distractor. In Experiments 3A and 3B, an emotional Stroop task was used while schematic emotional faces were presented as distractors. The benefit of precuing the emotional distractors was observed when these distractors were emotional faces but not observed when the distractors were scrambled faces. These findings suggested that the benefit of precuing the emotional distractors operates at the emotional level.     

The legitimation of wife abuse among women: The impact of belief in a just world and gender identification

Past research has found that when victims are ingroup members, observers’ social identification interacts with general belief in a just world (GBJW) to predict judgments about those victims. In this correlational study (N = 284 women, ages from 18 to 80) we aimed to test whether and how women’s explicit endorsement of BJW, both personal belief in a just world (PBJW) and GBJW, interacts with their identification as women to predict wife abuse legitimization.We predicted and found that the interaction between PBJW and social identification predicted legitimization of wife abuse. Specifically, for highly identified women, PBJW was positively associated with wife abuse legitimization, for less identified women, PBJW was not associated with wife abuse legitimization. This interaction was significant above and beyond other variables associated with this phenomenon: hostile and benevolent sexism, empathy (cognitive and emotional), and social desirability. On the contrary, the interaction between GBJW and social identification was a nonsignificant predictor of legitimization of wife abuse. These results contribute to reconceptualize the role of PBJW and GBJW on judgments about victims and to highlight the importance of considering the victimization situations in the social context and the social groups in which they actually occur.     

Constructing Images of the Divine: Latent Heterogeneity in Americans’ Impressions of God

How do individuals psychologically organize their images of the divine? Most work on this topic is factor‐analytic in nature, finding that God images vary with respect to love, judgment, and engagement. However, few studies look at how individuals spontaneously combine these divine dimensions into composite images of God. To fill this gap, we subject data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey to latent class analysis and find evidence for five depictions of God: (1) a poorly defined, uninvolved deity; (2) a loving, nonjudgmental deity who is engaged with humanity; (3) a nullity or nonentity; (4) a loving deity who is neither judgmental nor engaged with humanity; and (5) a loving deity who is also both judgmental and engaged. We then present evidence that individuals holding these images vary in their denominational background, religious attitudes and behaviors, and general traits. Our findings suggest that individuals may impose not only a dimensional structure on images of the divine, but a categorical one as well.     

Bridging attentional control and reinvestment: A test of the interactionist hypothesis in an E-sport context

Attentional control and reinvestment are two competing mechanisms explaining why anxiety-provoking situations may undermine performance. To date, both perspectives have received empirical support, but neither of them perfectly explain how anxiety affects performance. In the present study, we examined a novel, interactionist hypothesis, that worry during task performance (i.e., a product of low attentional control) undermines performance to a greater extent when reinvestment (i.e., attempts to consciously control actions) is high compared to low, in an E-sport context. In a test of 84 experienced players in the Brawlhalla E-sport game, neither worry during the games nor reinvestment propensity on their own predicted ranked match performance, but the interaction between the two did. Specifically, players who were more worried during the ranked games (i.e., lower attentional control) tended to lose more games, of which the effect was evident only when movement-specific reinvestment was high, not low. However, decision-specific reinvestment did not moderate the effect of low attentional control on performance, nor predict performance on its own. Unlike movement-specific reinvestment, decision-specific reinvestment does not appear detrimental to E-sport performance. Overall, the findings provide the first evidence for the interactionist hypothesis of attentional control and reinvestment (especially movement-specific propensity), of which the interaction effect may be underpinned by availability of additional cognitive resources that assure adaptive task processing.     

When God Smites: Talking with Students about the Violence of God in Scripture

This article emphasizes the need for religious educators to address the issue of divine violence in Scripture with students, and it offers various pedagogical strategies for doing so. The focus is on violent Old Testament texts, with special attention given to the issue of Canaanite genocide. A general framework for structuring class time around divine violence in Scripture is proposed which includes (1) encouraging students to encounter violent biblical texts firsthand, (2) helping them understand why people find these passages problematic, and (3) offering various options for dealing with the potential problems these passages raise. In the second half of the article, significant attention is devoted to a number of practical considerations that should be taken into account when talking about this sensitive issue in class. A brief word about assessment is offered at the end.     

Catching the liar as a matter of justice: Effects of belief in a just world on deception detection accuracy and the moderating role of mortality salience

Belief in a just world has been linked to high interpersonal trust and less suspicion of deception. We therefore predicted people with a strong dispositional belief in a just world to have low motivation to accurately detect deception. Accordingly, we hypothesized such a belief to be negatively related to accuracy in deception detection. Furthermore, research on Terror Management Theory has indicated that culturally shared values, such as justice, become more important after mortality salience. Thus, we assumed engaging in justice concerns after a death threat is especially relevant for people with a strong belief in a just world, and further, that accurate deception detection is a matter of justice. Based on this reasoning, we expected people with a strong belief in a just world to have an increased motivation to accurately detect deception after mortality salience. Consequently, we hypothesized dispositional differences in belief in a just world to be unrelated to accuracy in deception detection after mortality salience. In line with these predictions, our study revealed that participants with a strong (vs. weak) belief in a just world were worse in deception detection unless they had first been reminded of their mortality.     

For God (or) country: the hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control

It has been recently proposed that people can flexibly rely on sources of control that are both internal and external to the self to satisfy the need to believe that their world is under control (i.e., that events do not unfold randomly or haphazardly). Consistent with this, past research demonstrates that, when personal control is threatened, people defend external systems of control, such as God and government. This theoretical perspective also suggests that belief in God and support for governmental systems, although seemingly disparate, will exhibit a hydraulic relationship with one another. Using both experimental and longitudinal designs in Eastern and Western cultures, the authors demonstrate that experimental manipulations or naturally occurring events (e.g., electoral instability) that lower faith in one of these external systems (e.g., the government) lead to subsequent increases in faith in the other (e.g., God). In addition, mediation and moderation analyses suggest that specific concerns with order and structure underlie these hydraulic effects. Implications for the psychological, sociocultural, and sociopolitical underpinnings of religious faith, as well as system justification theory, are discussed.     

Anxiety and speaking in people who stutter: An investigation using the emotional Stroop task

People with anxiety disorders show an attentional bias towards threat or negative emotion words. This exploratory study examined whether people who stutter (PWS), who can be anxious when speaking, show similar bias and whether reactions to threat words also influence speech motor planning and execution. Comparisons were made between 31 PWS and 31 fluent controls in a modified emotional Stroop task where, depending on a visual cue, participants named the colour of threat and neutral words at either a normal or fast articulation rate. In a manual version of the same task participants pressed the corresponding colour button with either a long or short duration. PWS but not controls were slower to respond to threat words than neutral words, however, this emotionality effect was only evident for verbal responding. Emotionality did not interact with speech rate, but the size of the emotionality effect among PWS did correlate with frequency of stuttering. Results suggest PWS show an attentional bias to threat words similar to that found in people with anxiety disorder. In addition, this bias appears to be contingent on engaging the speech production system as a response modality. No evidence was found to indicate that emotional reactivity during the Stroop task constrains or destabilises, perhaps via arousal mechanisms, speech motor adjustment or execution for PWS.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) explain the importance of cognitive aspects of anxiety, such as attentional biases, in the possible cause and/or maintenance of anxiety in people who stutter, (2) explain how the emotional Stroop task can be used as a measure of attentional bias to threat information, and (3) evaluate the findings with respect to the relationship between attentional bias to threat information and speech production in people who stutter.     

Disbelief in belief: On the cognitive status of supernatural beliefs

Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific settings. We argue that Van Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray their being held as factual. We conclude with some remarks about the common failure of secular people to face the fact that some religious people really do believe wildly implausible things. Such incredulity, as evinced by Van Leeuwen and others, could be termed “disbelief in belief.”     

No good deed goes unquestioned: Cynical reconstruals maintain belief in the power of self-interest

In four studies, we examined how people maintain beliefs that self-interest is a strong determinant of behavior, even in the face of disconfirming evidence. People reflecting on selfless behavior tend to reconstrue it in terms of self-interested motives, but do not similarly scrutinize selfish behaviors for selfless motives. Study 1 found that people react to new information that selfless behavior is common by interpreting it as more reflective of self-interest. Studies 2a and 2b, applying a Bayesian analysis, demonstrated that people see “too much” self-interest in seemingly selfless actions, given their prior beliefs, but see the predicted amount of self-interest in seemingly selfish actions. This demonstrates that people do not possess internally consistent belief systems, but rather undue cynicism. In Study 3, participants read about real philanthropists whose acts of generosity had been heralded by major news outlets. As participants spent more time considering why such philanthropy was performed, they formed more cynical impressions of the philanthropists' motives. Beyond offering insight into why belief in the norm of self-interest persists, these studies introduce a novel route by which beliefs resist disconfirmation.     

Avoidance behavior in panic disorder: the moderating influence of perceived control

The relations among anxiety sensitivity, perceived control, and agoraphobia were examined in 239 patients diagnosed with panic disorder (PD). Most patients exhibited agoraphobia accompanying their PD (98% situational avoidance; 90% experiential avoidance; and 80% endorsed interoceptive fear and avoidance). Anxiety sensitivity and perceived emotional control were associated with agoraphobia, and perceived threat control was found to moderate the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and agoraphobia. Lower levels of perceived control were associated with a stronger relationship between anxiety sensitivity and agoraphobia. Results were consistent for self-reported and clinician-rated agoraphobia. Implications for the role of perceived control in agoraphobia development and treatment are discussed.     

Intimate Distance: Rethinking the Unthought God in Christianity

The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the non-apparent in the realm of appearing phenomena. This is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called deconstruction of Christianity. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (différance) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed entanglement and complicity between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God.