On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control |
| |
Authors: | Kristin Laurin David A Moscovitch |
| |
Institution: | Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3G1 |
| |
Abstract: | We suggest that beliefs in a controlling God originate, at least in part, from the desire to avoid the emotionally uncomfortable experience of perceiving the world as random and chaotic. Forty-seven participants engaged in an anxiety-provoking visualization procedure. For half, the procedure included a manipulation designed to temporarily lower beliefs in personal control. As predicted, it was only among those participants whose sense of personal control was threatened—i.e., participants in need of an alternate means for protecting their belief in a non-random world—that subjective anxiety led to increased subsequent beliefs in the existence of a controlling God. Wide-ranging implications are discussed. |
| |
Keywords: | Belief in God Compensatory control Anxiety Arousal Religion System justification |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|