How Christians reconcile their personal political views and the teachings of their faith: Projection as a means of dissonance reduction

Abstract

The present study explores the dramatic projection of one's own views onto those of Jesus among conservative and liberal American Christians. In a large-scale survey, the relevant views that each group attributed to a contemporary Jesus differed almost as much as their own views. Despite such dissonance-reducing projection, however, conservatives acknowledged the relevant discrepancy with regard to “fellowship” issues (e.g., taxation to reduce economic inequality and treatment of immigrants) and liberals acknowledged the relevant discrepancy with regard to “morality” issues (e.g., abortion and gay marriage). However, conservatives also claimed that a contemporary Jesus would be even more conservative than themselves on the former issues whereas liberals claimed that Jesus would be even more liberal than themselves on the latter issues. Further reducing potential dissonance, liberal and conservative Christians differed markedly in the types of issues they claimed to be more central to their faith. A concluding discussion considers the relationship between individual motivational processes and more social processes that may underlie the present findings, as well as implications for contemporary social and political conflict.

How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind

“…Another group of researchers (Ross, Lelkes, & Russell, 2012) obtained a similar result: Christian adults perceived Jesus (who is portrayed as God or God's son in Christian traditions) to hold the same ideological beliefs they did, but more strongly. That is, liberal Christians reported that a contemporary Jesus would hold an even more liberal ideology, while conservative Christians reported that a contemporary Jesus would hold an even more conservative ideology.…”

“…The literature on anchoring and adjustment in reasoning shows that people often make estimates of unknown quantities by “anchoring” on salient information and then adjust insufficiently, leading to final estimates that remain close to the original anchor (e.g., Ariely, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2006; Epley & Gilovich, 2004, 2005; Tamir & Mitchell, 2013; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). If people anchor on human minds in general or on their own minds in particular (e.g., Epley et al, 2009; Ross et al, 2012) and then adjust to represent God's mind, their final representation of God's mind may still largely resemble that of human minds.…”

My mind, your mind, and God's mind: How children and adults conceive of different agents’ moral beliefs

“…Yet, a full‐fledged understanding of the distinction between God's extraordinary mind and human minds entails a protracted developmental process, and even adults often revert to thinking about God's mind as being human‐like (Heiphetz, Lane, Waytz, & Young, ). Moreover, U.S. adults hold egocentric views of God's ideological beliefs (e.g., about abortion), perceiving such beliefs as especially similar to their own (Epley, Converse, Delbosc, Monteleone, & Cacioppo, ; Ross, Lelkes, & Russell, ). The current work builds on these studies to extend theoretical understanding of belief attribution in two ways: (1) investigating attributions of moral beliefs to different agents and (2) testing children as well as adults with the same paradigm to gain greater insight into age‐related differences and similarities in belief attribution.…”

“…Specifically, we tested three possibilities regarding children's and adults' judgments about God's mind. Participants may report that they and God are similar to each other and different from other people (Epley et al, 2009;Ross et al, 2012). However, participants may report that their beliefs differ from those held by God and other people.…”

Profile of Lee D. Ross

“…The notion of rationalization as a collective process came out in a recent study (7), wherein the work by Ross et al (7) explored the interplay between Christianity and politics in the United States. In particular, Ross was intrigued by how people reconciled their liberal or conservative political views with their religious values.…”