Religious Attributions and Proximity of Influence: An Investigation of Direct Interventions and Distal Explanations

Abstract

Investigations into religious attributions have focused on attributer's immediate, proximal causes of events, paying little attention to underlying, distal explanations. In an effort to explain the relatively low incidence of religious attributions and further a new model of proximal-distal attributions, we present two experiments investigating the proximal and distal use of religious and nonreligious supernatural attributions. Participants in both studies were presented a series of sixteen vignettes that varied on several attribution-relevant dimensions. After reading each vignette, subjects gave an initial explanation for the event, and were then probed for any underlying explanations. Experiment 1 used an interview format that allowed participants maximum latitude when explaining the event's outcome. Consistent with our predictions, participants perceived God as having a greater distal than proximal influence, though this difference was not evident for attributions to Satan or nonreligious supernatural agents. Experiment 2 was performed via a microcomputer, with a participant's initial attributional response branching to a set of appropriate distal explanations. Overall, the results suggest that attributer's perceive God working through indirect influences rather than direct intervention, with this effect being moderated by the attributer's level of religiosity. This pattern was evident in the use of God as a distal explanation as well as in the distal explanations to proximal attributions to God.As informal observation reveals, everyday explanations for events often include such phrases as "God's will," "the work of Satan," or even "the hand of God" (see Nelson 1997 for excellent examples). To account for these religious attributions, Spilka, Shaver, and Kirkpatrick (1985) suggested that those individuals who adhere to the tenets of conservative Christianity 1 have at their disposal two separate explanatory systems: 1) a set of naturalistic or secular schemas (e.g., protagonist's disposition, the situation) and 2) a set of religious schemas (e.g., God, Satan). Drawing upon the social cognition literature, Spilka and his colleagues suggested an "availability hypothesis" to determine which schemas would be used in explaining an event (Fiske and Taylor 1991). That is, the relative availability of the schemas would determine which set was initially used to explain an event, with the contention being that the naturalistic schema is usually the more salient, and thus, more available. To the extent the initial schema is inadequate in its explanation, however, the other is applied. Furthermore, this hypothesis posits that as one of the explanatory schemas becomes more available, this decreases the likelihood that the other will be activated. However, research has begun to show that secular and religious attributions are not always used in this disjunctive, mutually exclusive manner (e.g., Lupfer, Brock, and DePaola 1992; Lupfer, DePaula, Brock, and Clement 1994;Lupfer and Layman 1996;Shortz and Worthington 1994). Th...

The Franciscan Prayer Elicits Empathic and Cooperative Intentions in Atheists: A Neurocognitive and Phenomenological Enquiry

“…Particularly, the semantic and intentional properties of The Franciscan Prayer related to empathy and cooperation may be held by nonbelievers, revealing that atheists make intentional and social attributions just as religious people do. However, believers may turn to God when justifying social support while nonbelievers turn to personal and social elements linked to more general human qualities (Weeks and Lupfer, 2000). Therefore, even though the Franciscan Prayer is a clearly religious text, the evoked thoughts, emotions, and actions may allow for self-reflection and social actions needed for support groups, as indicated in the Franciscan tradition and the AA's proposals.…”

The supernatural guilt trip does not take us far enough

“…By focusing on the role of concept acquisition, this work may be overshadowing more fundamental questions about the natural foundations of religion -questions raised in section 3 (Souls and intelligent design). For example, Atran and Norenzayan's (2004) model fails to account for people's tendency to assume that supernatural agents are responsible for traumatic life events (Deridder et al 1999;McAdams 2001;Pepitone & Saffioti 1997;Weeks & Lupfer 2000). How can reasoning about the supernatural causes of, say, suffering a miscarriage, being felled by disease, or losing a loved one in an accident be triggered by facial-recognition and body-movement recognition schemata?…”

“…But this "god-of-thegaps" hypothesis has now been disconfirmed in social psychology experiments (see Weeks & Lupfer [2000] for an account of distal-proximal attributions to God). Moreover, the argument that scientific or secular explanations "replace" more naïve or irrational supernatural explanations is intuitively unpersuasive; obviously they can occur alongside one another (e.g., Subbotsky 2001).…”

Anger toward God(s) Among Undergraduates in India

“…Prior studies have not shown consistent associations with gender, ethnicity, or religiousness (Exline et al 2011;Wood et al 2010). Granted, people who are more religious are more likely to see God as the cause of events in general (e.g., Gorsuch and Smith 1983;Weeks and Lupfer 2000), including negative events (Gray and Wegner 2010;Hale-Smith et al 2012); however, they typically see God's intent as positive, which attenuates or at least dilutes angry feelings to some degree (Exline et al 2011;Wilt et al 2017).…”