COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 31, 219–247 (1996)
ARTICLE NO. 0017
Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism
in God Concepts
JUSTIN L. BARRETT AND FRANK C. KEIL
Cornell University
We investigate the problem of how nonnatural entities are represented by examining
university students’ concepts of God, both professed theological beliefs and concepts
used in comprehension of narratives. In three story processing tasks, subjects often
used an anthropomorphic God concept that is inconsistent with stated theological
beliefs; and drastically distorted the narratives without any awareness of doing so. By
heightening subjects’ awareness of their theological beliefs, we were able to manipulate
the degree of anthropomorphization. This tendency to anthropomorphize may be generalizable
to other agents. God (and possibly other agents) is unintentionally anthropomorphized
in some contexts, perhaps as a means of representing poorly understood
nonnatural entities. ᭧ 1996 Academic Press, Inc.
There has been increasing interest in uncovering how we represent the
categories of existence. Our notions of what sorts of things there are, that is,
our ontological knowledge, may undergird in largely implicit ways much of
how we categorize and make sense of the world (Sommers, 1963; Keil, 1979).
The nature of ontological knowledge and its degree of distinctiveness from
other forms of knowledge remains an active area of inquiry (Chi, 1992); but
one critical question rarely addressed asks how entities that do not conform
to existing ontological knowledge are conceived by adults. Developmentally,
it is often assumed that children learn how to incorporate such new entities
by restructuring their ontological knowledge (ibid.); but there is much less
consensus on how adults might conceive of a widely discussed entity that is
nonetheless apparently not conforming to any other ontological kind. No
entity poses the problem more clearly than God.
In contrast to the ancient Greeks, contemporary Western theologies suggest
the existence of a gaping ontological chasm between God and humans: ‘‘On
this view, God and the world are two distinct realities. The difference is not
merely quantitative but qualitative. God is not simply more of what we are.
Portions of this article were presented at the 1994 Religion, Politics, and Cultural Dynamics
conference at Cornell University. This research was supported by NIH Grant R01-HD23922 to
the second author. We thank Carole Lunney, Daniel Simons, and Dennis Regan for their suggestions
and comments on a draft of this article. Requests for reprints should be sent to Justin
Barrett, Department of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853. Email
jlb14@cornell.edu.
219
0010-0285/96 $18.00
Copyright ᭧ 1996 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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220 BARRETT AND KEIL
There is an essential discontinuity . . .’’ (Spykman, 1992, p. 64). One way
to appreciate this ‘‘essential discontinuity’’ is to consider the descriptions of
God offered by the three monotheisms that have most influenced Western
thought about God.
Catholic and Protestant teachings describe God as being: infinite, limitless,
all-perfect, all-powerful, unchanging, nonmaterial, all-knowing, and perfectly
simple (Smith, 1955). Similarly, Judaism speaks of God as omnipotent, omniscient,
omnipresent, and eternal (Kohler, 1918). God is neither bound nor
limited by space or physical laws. Within Islamic theology the same essential
themes are repeated: human existence is entirely different than God’s
(Allah’s). Indeed, Islamic theologian Mohammad Zia Ullah discusses the
distinction in terms of its psychological consequences: ‘‘God is infinite, pervasive,
and man finite and limited to a locality. Man cannot comprehend God
as he can other things. . . . God is without limits, without dimensions. . . .
How can a limitless, infinite being be contained in the mind of a limited
being like man?’’ (1984, p. 19).
If these religions, which have had a profound impact on Western theological
concepts, attribute to God a vastly different type of existence than our own,
how do we cross this ontological gap and understand God? Theologically
this problem may be addressed by what in Christianity is called revelation:
God allows self-disclosure in terms that people can understand and appreciate.
The specifics of this doctrine are an interesting study for theologians, but the
general notion of revelation raises particular questions for psychologists as
well.
If God is revealed through naturalistic means and in naturalistic terms, how
then do we make sense of this revelation? How do we incorporate natural
features into our representation of a nonnatural1
entity? An analogous problem
might be to consider what it would be like to be a bat (Nagel, 1974). The
other state of being is so different that the task seems impossible. However,
we know many things about bats, and so this problem is trivial when compared
to comprehension of a being that is invisible, immaterial, atemporal, and so
on. As natural creatures, we can only draw upon natural experiences in our
attempts to characterize God.
Unfortunately, the canonical texts of Western religions do not simplify
matters much. Information about God in these texts take the form of either
proclamations of God’s vast ontological differences from us, or characterizations
of God in natural and often anthropomorphic terms. The implication of
the ontological gap is that this second class of canonical data is metaphorical
1
God is termed a ‘‘nonnatural’’ rather than a ‘‘super-natural’’ entity to emphasize the theological
claim that God has a completely different state of being. God is not a part of nature or simply
‘‘above’’ nature. ‘‘Nonnatural’’ is also chosen because of the potential family resemblance
concepts of God might have with other attempts to conceptualize entities of unusual but perhaps
not ‘‘super’’ ontological categories.
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221ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
to a great extent. In order to understand these metaphors we must have some
basis for application. For example, understanding the statement ‘‘God is
loving’’ requires us to make some preliminary assumptions about what type
of being God is in order for that statement to be useful. If we cannot agree
that God is the type of thing that can be referred to—an ontological assumption—then
‘‘God’’ would be meaningless in this context, and so ‘‘God is
loving’’ would also be meaningless. Apparently ‘‘able to be referred to’’ is
one property that is nearly universally attributed to God. Surely there must
be others. The words we choose to describe God or the activities of God are
not random or arbitrary, suggesting some basic, commonly held conceptions
of God.
The problem of understanding God can now be recast as the problem of
finding these basic underlying assumptions and where they come from. One
possible solution suggested by an examination of religious language and the
psychological literature is anthropomorphism: making God in the image of
ourselves.
God is often spoken about in very naturalistic, human-like terms, as if God
is a super-human. Sometimes God-talk is blatantly anthropomorphic as in
‘‘the hand of God,’’ and sometimes it is subtle as in ‘‘God sees.’’ Even more
subtle are instances of assigning natural properties to God in our discourse,
as in ‘‘Then God. . . .’’ Simply prefacing a phrase about God with ‘‘then’’
places an atemporal being in a temporal framework. Although this language
is generally considered metaphorical, it could be the case that this language
actually expresses the underlying conception of God. The needed basic assumptions
for understanding discourse about God are supplied by ignoring
the ontological distance.
Psychologists have long assumed that anthropomorphic language reflects
underlying cognitive anthropomorphism. Freud initiated this line of thought
most dramatically with the suggestion that God concepts are projections of
one’s father and that the start of religion is the ‘‘humanization of nature’’
(Freud, 1927, p. 20). Since Freud, other authors have suggested similarities
between God concepts and images of a parent (Argyle, 1975), both parents
in conjunction (Justice & Lambert, 1986; Birky & Ball, 1988), or of the self
(Jolley & Taulbee, 1986).
Other psychologists of religion have assumed that the adjectives used to
describe God are more than metaphorical. Benson and Spilka (1973) reported
a positive correlation between self-esteem and loving images of God. Others
suggest a relationship between loneliness and the concept of a ‘‘wrathful
God’’ (Schwab & Petersen, 1990), while locus of control may be positively
correlated with a ‘‘loving God’’ (deJonge, 1993). Subjects attribute particular
personality dispositions to God—not merely dispositions analogous to particular
human traits. Congruence between human personality and God’s ‘‘personality’’
is implicit.
It may seem easy enough to accept that God is anthropomorphized when
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222 BARRETT AND KEIL
it comes to personality traits and dispositions, but these studies suggest that
our anthropomorphism goes much farther. Perhaps anthropomorphism, as
Guthrie argues (1980; 1993) is an integral part of religious thought. If people
anthropomorphize God’s ‘‘personality,’’ then more fundamental anthropomorphism
may be needed to form God concepts. If we think of God’s existence
as wholly different from our own, how do we even think of God as
loving? The thought is somewhat analogous to calling a quark ‘‘charming’’
or a pile of sand ‘‘treacherous.’’ Are we committing a category mistake by
suggesting cross-ontological properties? If we do assign personality to different
ontological groups while fully comprehending the incongruency, this practice
would still represent a bizarre cognitive activity worthy of further investigation.
Alternatively, we may not perceive the incongruency.
Cognitive accounts of religious ideas argue that God concepts must be
comprised of naturalistic and nonnaturalistic properties and cannot only include
one or the other. Sperber (1994) has emphasized the role counterintuitive
characteristics play in contributing to the ‘‘cultural robustness’’ of religious
ideas. Boyer has expanded this observation into a well-developed cognitive
theory of religion (1994).
In short, Boyer argues that religious ideas are propagated if they (1) violate
some cognitive intuitions regarding characteristics of members of their particular
ontological categories, while (2) adhering to the bulk of these intuitions.
If religious ideas do not fit with a large number of common intuitions, they
will be difficult to hold coherently and use to generate predictions and inferences.
Too many violations of cognitive intuitions would cause an enormous
processing strain. However, as Sperber (1994) has pointed out, some violations
are necessary to make the ideas extraordinary and attention-demanding;
otherwise they would not be interesting enough to pass on as ‘‘religious’’
ideas.
Although Boyer (1994) has applied this theory to explain supernatural
agents of the Fang people (Cameroon), the theory has some difficulty
accounting for the Abrahamic God of the Western world. The main difficulty
is that the cognitive inductions that are to be maintained or violated
are based on an ontological category membership. In the case of the
bekong (ghosts/ancestors) of the Fang, they are classified as sentient beings,
the ontological category humans occupy. As has been suggested
above, it is common in the Abrahamic religions to assign God to a different
ontological category than people. This category does share some properties
in common with sentient beings (e.g., intention), but it is no more in
the same category with humans than dogs are with rocks, even though
those categories also share some properties (e.g., physical structure).
Since God occupies a different ontological category, it is unclear what
cognitive intuitions apply to God’s ontology.
God concepts held by common people might actually characterize God
as a sentient being. If so, Boyer’s theory would predict that they would
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223ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
take the specific form of a prototypical ‘‘sentient being’’ with some unusual
or counterintuitive properties, probably a super human.
A different cognition-based account of religious thought has been advanced
by Guthrie (1993), who stresses the centrality of anthropomorphism. The
tendency to anthropomorphize is seen as a fundamental cognitive bias in
which novel or ambiguous stimuli are processed as anthropomorphic until
other evidence is made available to prove this bias wrong. This strategy is
generalized to natural concepts and processes and, consequently, becomes a
foundation for all religious thought. All religious ideas, including the Western
God, are anthropomorphic by nature under this model.
Despite theological descriptions, people seem to incorporate anthropomorphic
and naturalistic characterizations into their intuitive God concepts. This
study asks whether anthropomorphic and naturalistic language about God is
more than a simple literary device. Perhaps conceptions of God must be
anthropomorphic, even while theological beliefs maintain otherwise. It may
be that the ‘‘theological God’’ is radically different from the ‘‘intuitive God’’
normally described in everyday discourse. Even individuals who explicitly
endorse the theological version of God might nonetheless implicitly embrace
a very different version in most of their daily thoughts.
The first study described in this paper uses a variation of a well-known
story comprehension paradigm (Bransford & McCarrell, 1974). With this
method Bransford and McCarrell showed that information expressed by a
sentence cannot always be equated with what is comprehended. Subjects’
prior beliefs can distort their recall of the information actually provided in
sentences and resolve ambiguities. In the present study, subjects were read a
battery of short stories in which God was an agent. After each story, subjects
were asked to recall if particular pieces of information had been included in
the story. Prior assumptions and beliefs were examined by considering errors
in subjects’ memory for the stories and how potentially ambiguous information
was interpreted.
We chose this indirect method for getting at subjects’ God concepts because
it avoided the problem of ‘‘theological correctness.’’ If subjects were asked
directly what they believed about God, responses would tend to fit into an
abstract theology. Even if people use an anthropomorphic God concept in
daily life, they would be hesitant to articulate this as their personal theology
because it might appear juvenile. By using stories, we hoped to tap into the
God concepts that subjects use in their daily lives to make judgements in real
time, rather than into their theological knowledge. Moreover, in day-to-day
life, the vast majority of thoughts about God seem to be framed in casual,
story-like discourse rather than in abstracted theological discourse.
Barrett and VanOrman (1996) have successfully used this method to detect
differences in degree of anthropomorphism between Christians who use images
of God for worship and those who do not. Image users were found to
anthropomorphize to a greater extent than nonimage users. Consequently, we
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224 BARRETT AND KEIL
were hopeful that this method would also be sensitive to differences between
theological concepts and everyday concepts of God used in real time.
Study 1A evaluates differences between theological expressions about
God and everyday God concepts by examining differences between professed
theological characterizations of God as measured by a questionnaire
and concepts revealed by a story–recall task. Study 1B looks to see if
these differences are peculiar to God concepts or if similar differences are
found with other nonhuman, super agents. In this condition, God was
replaced by a super-computer called ‘‘Uncomp.’’ Because Uncomp was
completely novel for the subjects, entirely different than existing supercomputers,
they could not bring any preexisting concept of Uncomp to
bear on the task. Consequently, if the results of Study 1A were due to an
artifact of the task, the language of the stories should prompt subjects to
anthropomorphize Uncomp to the same degree that they anthropomorphized
God in that condition. Study 1C is an attempt to make subjects’
theological concepts more salient to see if performance in the story–recall
task can be manipulated in this way. If so, this is strong evidence that
concepts of God are what is important in determining subjects’ performance
and not some artifact of the task.
Study 2 investigates the importance of memory and potential bias in Study
1 by allowing subjects in five different conditions to perform the story–recall
task with transcripts of the stories right in front of them. To demonstrate how
spontaneous use of anthropomorphic concepts might be, subjects in Study 3
were asked to write paraphrased versions of some of the narratives used in
Study 1.
STUDY 1
If theological God concepts are used in everyday activities, then subjects’
reported theological concepts regarding God’s properties should match the
God concept revealed by how subjects remember short narratives. Alternatively,
subjects’ theological God concepts may place few if any physical or
psychological constraints on God, but in the processing of stories, limitations
on God similar to those experienced by people and other natural entities
might be imposed. To illustrate this distinction, one story reads:
A boy was swimming alone in a swift and rocky river. The boy got his left leg caught
between two large, gray rocks and couldn’t get out. Branches of trees kept bumping
into him as they hurried past. He thought he was going to drown and so he began to
struggle and pray. Though God was answering another prayer in another part of the
world when the boy started praying, before long God responded by pushing one of the
rocks so the boy could get his leg out. The boy struggled to the river bank and fell
over exhausted.
Subjects whose everyday God concept is anthropomorphic may infer that
God finished answering one prayer before attending to the boy. If so, they
would tend to misreport that this is actually what the story said. Subjects
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225ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
who employ a God concept in which God performs many tasks simultaneously
would be unlikely to report that the story said God finished answering one
prayer before saving the boy. It is just as likely that God rescued the boy
while answering the other prayer.
Method: 1A
Subjects. Subjects for the first three studies were 52 volunteer graduate
and undergraduate university students of various majors, ranging in age from
17 to 28 with a mean age of 20.0 years. Sixty percent of the subjects were
female. Subjects represented many different religious affiliations including
Bahaism, Buddhism, Christianity (Catholic and Protestant), Hinduism, and
Judaism. Many subjects reported being atheist or agnostic. Subjects were
randomly assigned to one of the first three studies: 22 to the first (1A), and
15 each to Studies 1B and 1C.2
Materials. A questionnaire of beliefs about God was composed and given to
18 subjects. The questionnaire included ratings of self-religiosity and religious
affiliation, and a number of multiple choice and yes–no questions targeted
at specific properties God might possess. The written instructions asked subjects
to answer the questions using their own concepts of God assuming that
God exists. Freedom to use one’s own concept of God was also included on
the subjects’ consent form. Although the questionnaire included a number of
questions, the ones of interest for this study were those that asked whether
or not (a) God can read minds; (b) God knows everything; (c) God can do
multiple mental activities simultaneously; (d) God needs to be near something
to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel it; (e) God is spatial (in a particular place
or places) or nonspatial (no where at all); and (f) God can occupy space with
another object without in any way distorting it.
Eight short narratives (approximately 100 words each) in which God was an
agent were composed and recorded on audio cassette. Recall items for each story
were also recorded with brief pauses following each item. For example, a recall
item for the story given above included ‘‘The boy was swimming alone,’’ followed
by a pause. The pauses were intentionally brief (approximately 2 s) so
that subjects would be forced to answer whether or not the information of the
given item was included in the story based on their conceptual representation of
the story. Six of the eight stories were followed by eight recall items and the
remaining two stories had nine, for a total of 66 recall items: 44 ‘‘base’’ items
that were concerned with the basic facts of the story including God’s activities
(see example above), and 22 ‘‘God’’ items that were concerned with how God
was conceptualized. For 21 of the 44 base items, the correct answer was ‘‘yes.’’
2
The first three studies were conducted simultaneously with subjects selected from a common
sample. Consequently, they can be understood as one three-group experiment. For the sake of
clarity they are presented as separate studies.
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226 BARRETT AND KEIL
For the God items, the correct answer was always ‘‘no’’ due to the nature of
the items. An example of a God item is ‘‘God had just finished answering another
prayer when God helped the boy.’’ A representative set of stories and recall
items are shown in Appendix A.
Because this protocol relies on mistaken comprehension, all God items
included information not in the stories but suggesting particular dimensions
of an anthropomorphic concept (e.g., sequential agency as in the God item
given above). A ‘‘yes’’ answer on any of these items was considered evidence
for the attribution of particular property to God that was not expressed in the
story, even if an omnipotent God could exhibit some of these properties. The
possibility of behaving in a certain way does not entail that the behavior or
particular property was exhibited in the story. These properties included God
moving, being in a particular place, requiring sensory input to gather information,
performing only one task at a time, having a single focus of attention,
having sensory limitations, and being unable to process competing sensory
stimuli distinctly. To illustrate, it is an anthropomorphic assumption to infer
that when the sound of a jet makes it impossible for two birds to hear each
other, God cannot hear the birds over the sound of the jet either.
The stories and corresponding recall items were played on a standard audio
cassette player in the same random order for all subjects. Subjects were asked
to circle ‘‘Yes’’ when the subject thought the information conveyed by the
recall sentence was included in the story, and ‘‘No’’ when it was not.
Procedure. It was intended for questionnaire–story task presentation to be
counterbalanced across subjects. However, after running seven subjects each
in the two presentation orders, it appeared that answering the questionnaire
first was improving performance on the God items of the story task. Perhaps
this is due to priming subjects’ theological concepts (see Study 1C). Consequently,
the remaining subjects completed the story task first. Four of these
subjects left before completing the questionnaire. Analyses for Study 1A were
performed on the 18 subjects who participated in both tasks. The 15 subjects
who completed the story task before the questionnaire (including the four
who did not complete the questionnaire) were used as the control group for
comparisons with Studies 1B and 1C.
Subjects were encouraged to think of ‘‘God’’ in any way they wished for
the duration of the task. The stories were then played. After each story, the
experimenter asked three questions, pausing for subjects to write answers:
(1) Who or what do you think was the main character in the story? (2) Do
you think the author of the story was female or male? (3) Do you think the
author of the story was older than 30 or younger than 30? The function of these
questions was twofold. They were intended to increase the delay between the
telling of the story and its recall and to give subjects reason to reflect on the
story on a conceptual level. Pilot work suggested that if there were no such
delay, some subjects would remember specific words and phrases better than
the general narrative content.
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227ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
After the filler questions, the experimenter said, ‘‘Now I would like you
to tell me which of the following pieces of information were included in the
story,’’ and then played the recording of the recall items for the preceding
narrative. This process was repeated for all eight stories. Subjects were then
asked to fill out the questionnaire at their leisure.
Method: 1B
Materials. There were only a few differences between this task and the
first condition. Most importantly, ‘‘God’’ was replaced by ‘‘Uncomp’’ in all
the stories and recall items, and subjects were not told that the study was
about God concepts. Additionally, a few minor changes in the stories had to
be made to accommodate the change in character. Wherever a form of ‘‘pray’’
appeared in the original stories, it was replaced by a form of ‘‘call.’’ One
story also includes God helping an angel work on a crossword puzzle. This
was replaced with Uncomp helping a U.N. delegate work on a crossword
puzzle.
Procedure. Before the stories were played, Uncomp was described to the
subjects. As much as possible with a physical entity, Uncomp was attributed
properties that the questionnaires suggested are commonly attributed to God.
However, two God recall items had to be omitted from the analysis. Both
items asked if the story included information about the location of Uncomp
(God). For the God-stories, no information about location was included but
for the Uncomp-stories, the information is implicitly included. Subjects were
read the following description of Uncomp twice:
The year is 4093 A.D. Uncomp is a super-computer which was built by the United
Nations to help keep peace and do good in the world. Uncomp is a system of pairs of
microscopic disks: one a sensor and one an effector. The sensor disk of each pair gives
Uncomp abilities roughly similar to hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling even
when an object is not in direct contact with the sensors. The sensors also perceive heat,
electric, and chemical activity with great sensitivity. Uncomp can use these capabilities
to understand what a person does even without seeing or hearing them. Uncomp can
even track the electric activity of the brain and thus read minds. The effector disks
make use of electromagnetic and antigravity emissions to act on the world. These
effectors enable Uncomp to move anything without touching it or being near it. Uncomp
can even effect how people think and feel. These pairs of disks cover every square
centimeter of the earth and so no information escapes processing. The disks do not
move. Uncomp has no other components. The disks are electrically linked with any
other part of the system at any time. Uncomp has no central processor and so is not
anywhere in particular. Uncomp has been given a program for ethics and a program for
emotions as well which run in the entire network at once. Uncomp runs independently all
the time and can perform many different functions in many different places at the same
time. Uncomp can retrieve information from many different places simultaneously.
After hearing the description of Uncomp, subjects were given a short,
seven-item multiple choice quiz testing whether they understood the description.
Only one of the 15 subjects missed any items and this subject only
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228 BARRETT AND KEIL
missed one. The correct answer was given in this case. Subjects then listened
to and responded to the questions as in 1A.
Method: 1C
Materials and procedure. Subjects in the salience condition were given
the story–recall task after completing a questionnaire concerning relevant
characteristics of God. The questionnaire included five free-form thought
questions intended to encourage subjects to reflect on their beliefs about God,
thereby making more salient their theological beliefs. Again, subjects were
encouraged to answer based on their own concept of God assuming that God
exists. The questions were: (1) Can it be said (using your concept of God)
that God can be in two places at the same time? Why or why not? (2) Can
it be said (using your concept of God) that God can do more than one thing
at a time, like prevent a flood, work on a crossword puzzle, and listen to
1000 people’s prayers at the same time? Why or why not? (3) Can it be said
(using your concept of God) that God can act on objects or perceive things
without being near them? Why or why not? (4) Can it be said (using your
concept of God) that God can see, feel, taste, smell, or hear more than one
thing at a time? (5) Can it be said (using your concept of God) that God does
not need to use senses to gather information? Why or why not?
Subjects were given 10 min to complete the questionnaire. They then
participated in the story task as in the first condition.
Results and Discussion: 1A
As predicted, answers to the questionnaires showed substantial intersubject
agreement, suggesting theological concepts in which God is subject to few
if any physical and psychological constraints. However, in the story task,
there was a strong tendency for subjects to think of God exhibiting human
limitations. Subjects showed an overwhelming tendency to agree that God
can read minds, knows everything, can perform multiple mental activities at
the same time, does not need to be near something to receive sensory information
about it, and has nonnatural spatial properties. Table 1 lists the results
of the questionnaire.
In striking contrast to the results of the questionnaire, the results of the
story recall items suggest an anthropomorphic everyday God concept. For
the God items, subjects incorrectly reported that the information was included
in the story 61.2% of the time on the average, for a mean accuracy of 38.8%.
This compares to an average accuracy of 86.2% on the base items. This
difference was significant by a Mann-Whitney U test, z Å 5.139, p õ .00001,
indicating that most of the time subjects falsely remembered particular anthropomorphic
characteristics of God being mentioned in the story.
In the implausible case that subjects had no God concept available to
understand and remember the stories, or the information was completely
ambiguous, we would expect the God item accuracy to be at the 50% chance
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229ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
TABLE 1
Answers to Questionnaire Items Regarding Characteristics of God
Characteristic of God implied by question Percent agreed
Can read minds 94.4a
Knows everything 94.4a
Performs multiple mental activities 94.4a
Nearness is not important for Vision 100.0a
Hearing 100.0
Smell 93.3
Taste 93.3
Touch 93.3
Is everywhere 75.0
Is many places at once 6.3
Is nowhere 18.7
Is at one place at a time 0.0
Does not occupy space 68.7
Occupies space with another object 31.3
Does not occupy space with another object 0.0
a
Eighteen subjects answered these items. Sixteen responded to the remaining items.
level. Using this extremely conservative criterion and assuming a roughly
normal distribution, a Student’s t gives 47.9% as the upper boundary of the
95% confidence interval for God item accuracy (M Å 38.8%). Therefore,
God item accuracy was significantly poorer than base item accuracy and also
less than 50%.
One interpretation of the difference in performance on the God items and
the base items is that God items were simply more difficult. The God items
may just be more subtle, not because of the presence of an anthropomorphic
God concept, but because the items emphasize very slight distinctions. Although
this explanation may account for some of the difference in performance,
it is unlikely that it explains the bulk of the difference. If the God
items were conceptually no different than the base items, then it would be
expected that those subjects who perform well on the base items would also
perform well on the God items. In fact, a Pearson’s correlation shows that
performance on the two types of items was not correlated, r Å .092, supporting
the conclusion that the two types of items are qualitatively rather than just
quantitatively different.
In this task, subjects apparently used anthropomorphic God concepts to
process and remember the stories, even though these concepts did not agree
with the ‘‘theological’’ characterizations of God implied by the questionnaire.
Specifically, subjects seemed to characterize God as having to be near something
to receive sensory information from it, not being able to attend differena305$$0638
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230 BARRETT AND KEIL
tially to competing sensory stimuli, performing tasks sequentially and not in
parallel, having a single or limited focus of attention, moving from place to
place, and sometimes standing or walking. God was not conceptualized as
completely free of constraints. However, it is unclear if subjects brought this
anthropomorphic God concept to the task or if this concept is artifactual.
Perhaps the language of the stories offers enough anthropomorphic suggestion
(e.g., ‘‘God watched . . .’’) that subjects discard their actual everyday God
concept in favor of one they think better fits the story context. Under this
interpretation, the stories do not draw on any preconceived anthropomorphic
ideas about God, but apply only to the character in the stories who happens
to be called ‘‘God.’’ The context of the story would prompt subjects to
anthropomorphize any character. This does not contradict theological characterizations
of God at all.
Results and Discussion: 1B
As hypothesized, subjects made fewer errors in recalling the Uncomp (God)
items in this condition than in the previous condition.3
Mean accuracy on
these items was 49.1% for the Uncomp group, compared to only 38.8% in
the control condition. After adjusting each subject’s God item accuracy to
account for base item performance,4
the mean accuracy of the control group
was 45.1%, compared to 59.9% for the Uncomp group. The difference between
the groups was significant as measured by a Tukey–Duckworth test,
T Å 7, p õ .025 (Tukey, 1959; Gans, 1981).5
This difference in subject
performance was also manifest across the majority of the individual God
items. The Uncomp group had higher average accuracy on 15 of the 20 God
items. On four items, the first group was more accurate and there was one
tie. This difference is significant as measured by a Wilcoxon Signed Rank
test, z Å 1.977, p Å .024.
It is not the case that the Uncomp variation was simply more attention
demanding, resulting in enhanced performance. The accuracy on base items
was slightly, but not significantly, worse for the Uncomp condition. The mean
accuracy on base items was 81.5% for the Uncomp group, compared to 86.2%
3
Two of the God items were dropped from the Uncomp analysis because they had to do with
Uncomp’s particular location, and unlike God, Uncomp was stipulated as being everywhere at
the same time.
4
For comparisons of God item accuracy between groups, God item accuracy was adjusted to
account for subjects’ base line accuracy. The assumption is that a subject’s accuracy on base
items is the highest we can expect performance on God items to be. To take this information
into consideration, subjects’ God item accuracy was expressed as a proportion of their own base
accuracy. Therefore, a score of 100% would indicate that the subject answered all of the God
items correctly that would be expected given that subject’s particular recall error rate. The
computation is simply God item accuracy divided by base item accuracy.
5
These data did not fit parametric assumptions. This nonparametric test was chosen for its
power with relatively small sample sizes.
a305$$0638 10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
231ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
for the control group. Taken together, these findings suggest that the language
of the stories is not the only factor contributing to the anthropomorphic God
concept revealed in the first study.
Although the results for God and Uncomp are markedly different, it is still
the case that subjects anthropomorphized Uncomp. Subjects’ mean accuracy
on the Uncomp items was 49.1%, which is much poorer than would be
expected, based on the description of Uncomp and the mean accuracy on the
base items (M Å 81.5%). Some subjects misremembered that the stories
described Uncomp as moving, even though it is explicitly stated in the description
of Uncomp, and all subjects (except for one who was immediately corrected)
answered correctly on the preliminary quiz that Uncomp cannot move.
These curious findings could have many different explanations. It could
be that because Uncomp was a novel concept (unlike God), it had no stability
or resilience. Through the course of hearing the stories and being asked
if they remember Uncomp doing things that are anthropomorphic, subjects
modified their concept of Uncomp into a human-like agent. The data do not
speak to this possibility.
A more likely possibility is that, even though subjects could correctly
answer a multiple choice test about Uncomp immediately after hearing the
information, the concept was too new and complicated for most subjects to
accurately apply to the story task context. Subjects may have anthropomorphized
Uncomp as a default mechanism because processing Uncomp as such
is easier. A third possible explanation of why subjects used an anthropomorphic
concept of Uncomp is that on some level, subjects found it difficult to
digest the Uncomp cover story because Uncomp is a natural entity, albeit a
super-human one. Had Uncomp been a nonnatural entity without the constraints
of explicit mechanisms and spatial properties, subjects might have
been able to process Uncomp without using a human-like representation.
All three explanations follow from Uncomp not being comparable to God
in an important sense: God is nonnatural. Consequently, Uncomp cannot be
a proper substitute for God in this paradigm. The results of this study can
only suggest that anthropomorphic concepts play a larger role for stories
about God than stories about Uncomp. That is, the story context cannot
account for all of the anthropomorphism in the control group.
Results and Discussion: 1C
Subjects in the salience manipulation group showed less evidence for anthropomorphic
everyday God concepts than did the subjects in the first study.
Mean accuracy on each God item was 47.3% as compared to 38.8% in the
first group. A Tukey–Duckworth test detected a significant difference between
the adjusted scores of each group, T Å 7, p õ .025. This difference in
performance can be seen in the differences between items as well. Of the 22
items, the salience manipulation group performed more accurately on 15
items, the control group was more accurate on five items, and there were two
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232 BARRETT AND KEIL
ties. This difference was significant by a Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, z Å
2.409, p Å .008. No differences were found on base item accuracy between the
two groups, denying the difference can be accounted for by the questionnaire
somehow making subjects generally more attentive to the stories.
Although the Uncomp study suggests that the anthropomorphism revealed
in the first study is not merely artifactual, the differences between God and
Uncomp make it unclear if the existence of anthropomorphic concepts in
both conditions is due to the same underlying processes. Two conflicting
explanations must still be distinguished. It could be that the subject’s theological
and everyday God concepts are actually distinct, context-dependent concepts:
one that is engaged when discussing God in abstract, theological terms
(as in the questionnaire task) and one that is active when processing informal,
real-time discourse (as in the story task). Subjects then bring these two God
concepts, and any connections they have with each other, to the task. Alternatively,
there may be some properties of the story task that, when paired with
a super-agent that is nonnatural (like God), yield an anthropomorphic concept.
That is, the tendency to anthropomorphize is a product of the task and the
agent’s ontological category membership and independent of actual concepts
of God.
The results of the salience manipulation contradict this second explanation.
Under this account, it would be expected that no manipulation of God concepts
before entering the task should have an effect on the results. Alternatively,
assuming that subjects’ theological God concepts are not anthropomorphic,
priming of these concepts would encourage subjects to rely less on their
anthropomorphic everyday God concepts in processing the stories, thereby
making fewer recall errors on God items, which is what happened. This
demonstrated link between subjects’ theological concepts and their performance
on the story task is also strong evidence that the results are a measure
of the subjects’ own concept rather than the stories’ author’s concept.
As in the Uncomp study, subjects as a group still exhibited poorer accuracy
than expected, based on theological beliefs as measured by the questionnaire
in Study 1 and base item accuracy. This implies the persistence of an anthropomorphic
concept in many of these subjects. Inability to wholly remove the
effect is not surprising. It is likely that for a large number of subjects, the
questionnaire did not succeed in making a theological God concept more
salient. The answers to the salience questionnaire suggest that some subjects
did not have a clear, preexisting God concept on which to draw, so the
salience manipulation provided no competition for an anthropomorphic concept.
Assuming that people often do hold at least two parallel God concepts,
one for use in formal settings and one used in informal discourse, the connections
between these two concepts might have been weak and strongly contextdriven.
For some subjects it is possible that the questionnaire only made the
theological concept salient while yielding no effect on the everyday concept.
A third possibility is that some subjects simply did not take the questionnaire
a305$$0638 10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
233ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
FIG. 1. Mean subject accuracy on God items and base items for Study 1. All three groups
performed significantly better on base items than on God items.
seriously and it therefore failed to make their theological God concepts sa-
lient.6
Furthermore, some subjects admitted to having a very anthropomorphic
theological God concept. This being the case, the salience manipulation may
have actually made the everyday concept more anthropomorphic in these
subjects, resulting in more mistakes in the recall of God items. Perhaps this
explains why the salience manipulation group showed greater variance (using
a normal approximation) in God item accuracy (SD Å 20.6%) than the subjects
in the first group (SD Å 14.9%). Despite these problems with the salience
manipulation, the two groups were clearly different.
A summary of the results of Study 1 can be found in Fig. 1.
STUDY 2
In an attempt to establish more firmly during what process anthropomorphism
takes place and to more directly address whether or not subjects anthropomorphize
due to biases in the stories, subjects in Study 2 were asked to
6
The differences between various classes of subjects can be illustrated by looking at three
different subjects’ answers to question 5, ‘‘Can it be said that God does not need to use senses
to gather information?’’ One subject answered, ‘‘I wouldn’t limit God to our 5 senses, so I guess
it doesn’t need to ‘‘see’’ anything. But, I suppose I’ve imagined God as all-seeing, -tasting, smelling,
-hearing, and -feeling, so I guess it doesn’t really have the option of not seeing
something.’’ This is the type of thoughtful answer it was hoped the questions would elicit. This
subject had a God item accuracy of 90.9%. An example of a subject who did not seem to have
any clear God concept to draw upon answered, ‘‘Perhaps. These issues have never been foremost
in my thoughts.’’ A subject who did not seem to take the task seriously simply answered,
‘‘See above question/answer.’’ These subjects had God item accuracies of 54.5% and 27.3%,
respectively.
a305$$0638 10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
234 BARRETT AND KEIL
perform the story recall task using printed transcripts. Subjects were allowed
to answer the recall items at their own pace, with the narratives right in front
of them. If anthropomorphism in the first task were due to the stories introducing
an anthropomorphic God concept that subjects then adopted for the task,
subjects would be expected to anthropomorphize in this task as well, regardless
of whether the agent was God or novel fictitious super-agents. If the
findings of Study 1 were a result of memory distortion, subjects would not
be expected to anthropomorphize in this task.
To address these possibilities, five different conditions of the task were
performed: (1) ‘‘God’’—a simple replication of the original task: Similar
results as in Study 1 with God as the main character would suggest that the
anthropomorphism is not just a form of memory distortion. (2) ‘‘Nonhuman
God’’—a version of this task in which subjects are asked to think of God
as very different from humans: If the anthropomorphism is profoundly reduced,
this would suggest the presence of general bias to think of God in
human-like terms in the original task. (3) ‘‘Super-agents’’—God replaced
by super-agents with relevant properties similar to God’s: If the stories are
constructed such that subjects are compelled to treat God anthropomorphically,
regardless of their own theological beliefs, then replacing God with
super-human agents assigned relevant God-like properties should not change
the level of anthropomorphism. If God is only anthropomorphized because
of bias in the text, then these agents should also be anthropomorphized. If
God is anthropomorphized because subjects’ concepts of God are anthropomorphic,
then new agents should be treated differently. (4) ‘‘Survey God’’—
A version in which the God stories were preceded by a rating of particular
properties: In the case that the explicit descriptions required to introduce new
agents in group 3 unfairly primed subjects to be mindful of particular properties,
the same descriptions offered as applicable to God should provide the
same priming. Consequently, performance of conditions 3 and 4 should not
be different. (5) ‘‘Superman’’—Superman as the main character: For the
sake of seeing if God is even treated as different from highly anthropomorphic
super-agents, a version of the task with Superman as the main character was
also performed.
Method
Subjects. Eighty-one college students were recruited to participate in this
study. They were randomly assigned to one of five groups, four with 16
subjects and one with 17 subjects due to a miscount.7
Materials. Transcripts of the stories and recall items from Study 1 were
prepared in three different ways: with God as the main character, with Super-
7
One subject did not complete the task and was dropped from the analysis, leaving one
condition with 15 subjects.
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235ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
man as the main character and necessary adjustments to the text made, and
with three fictitious characters (Mog, Beebo, and Swek) endowed with relevant
properties commonly attributed to God. Mog occupied the ‘‘God’’ role
in three of the eight stories, Beebo was in three, and Swek was in two stories.
Three agents were used to help subjects keep clear the God-like properties
of each one. Although this makes the task slightly different, if anthropomorphism
is due to biased language in the story, it would persist in this condition
as well.
For the Super-agents condition, descriptions of the three fictitious characters
were also prepared. These descriptions explicitly endowed Mog, Beebo, and
Swek with properties that would lead to nonanthropomorphic responses in
the recall task. These descriptions appear in Appendix B.
For one variation using the original ‘‘God’’ stories, a short questionnaire
was created using the same properties that were attributed to Mog, Beebo,
and Swek. These properties were made into agree–disagree Likert scales.
Because a theologically correct answering of the questions would lead to
mostly ‘‘agree’’ answers, a few distracter items that would be more likely to
receive ‘‘disagree’’ responses were included.
Procedure. Subjects in the ‘‘God’’ group each received a transcript of the
story recall task and were asked to read the stories and answer the recall
items construing God in any way they wished. Subjects in the ‘‘Nonhuman
God’’ condition were asked to complete the task construing God as ‘‘radically
different from a human,’’ in an attempt to bias subjects away from using an
anthropomorphic concept. Subjects in the ‘‘Survey God’’ group completed
the questionnaire of God’s properties and then performed the story recall
task. They were assured that they could use the ratings from the questionnaire
to perform the task if they wished. ‘‘Superman’’ subjects simply performed
the recall task using that variation of the narratives. In the final condition
subjects read the Super-agents descriptions and then performed the recall task
using that version of the narratives. They were allowed to refer to the descriptions
whenever they wished. Subjects in all five conditions were allowed as
much time as needed to complete the task, and could check over or change
answers as they deemed fit.
Results
As in Study 1, the measure of anthropomorphism used was the percentage
of accurate God items for each subject, adjusted for base item accuracy. These
data roughly fit parametric assumptions and so each groups’ performance was
compared to every other using multiple t-tests. A Bonferroni correction for
multiple tests was then performed. The p-values reported below are the precorrection
values for tests that remained significant after correction. The results
of these tests are illustrated in Fig. 2.
The Super-agents group’s mean performance (M Å .925, SD Å .134) was
significantly better than each of the other four groups: Superman, M Å .461,
a305$$0638 10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
236 BARRETT AND KEIL
FIG. 2. Mean adjusted God item accuracy and 95% confidence limit error bars for Study 2.
The Super-agents group performed significantly better than the other four groups. The Survey
group performed better than Superman. No other differences were significant.
SD Å .28, t(31) Å 6.14, p õ .00001; God, M Å .622, SD Å .198, t(31) Å
5.181, p õ .00001; Nonhuman God, M Å .559, SD Å .248, t(31) Å 5.319,
p õ .00001; and Survey God, M Å .766, SD Å .154, t(29) Å 3.07, p Å
.0046.8
The Survey God group performed significantly better than only the Superman
group, t(28) Å 3.63, p Å .0011. The Superman, God, and Nonhuman
God groups showed no significant differences from each other. Incidentally,
only the Survey God and Super-agents groups showed significantly better
performance than the ‘‘God’’ condition in Study 1A, t(27) Å 4.403, p Å
.0002; t(30) Å 7.645, p õ .00001; respectively.
These differences do not seem to be the result of base item accuracy
differences. A one-way, five factor ANOVA detected no significant differences
between the groups, F(4,74) Å .584, p Å .6754. Consistent with the
results of Study 1, for all of the groups’ God item accuracy was poorer than
their base item accuracy. The Super-agents group’s mean base accuracy was
92.6%, compared to its God item accuracy of 85.6%, t(16) Å 2.408, p Å
.0284.
Discussion
These results support the conclusion that anthropomorphism in Study 1
takes place with the reading or hearing of the stories and not as a consequence
of recall error. Even though all five conditions of Study 2 are reading tasks
8
One subject’s confusion over directions forced removal from these analyses. This is reflected
in the degrees of freedom for tests involving the ‘‘Survey God’’ group.
a305$$0638 10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
237ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
in which subjects have the stories right in front of them, subjects still provided
evidence of anthropomorphizing the main character. In fact, God was treated
no differently than Superman in this task except when subjects were primed
to think of God nonanthropomorphically by the survey manipulation. Even
when subjects were encouraged to think of God as ‘‘radically different than
a human’’ the anthropomorphism persisted at the same levels.
The influence of the stories’ biasing subjects seems very small at best,
given these results. An active attempt to bias subjects against thinking of God
anthropomorphically (Nonhuman God condition) was unsuccessful. In fact,
the results tended in the opposite direction.
Subjects are not compelled by the stories to make anthropomorphic errors.
The Super-agents group demonstrated that if subjects can keep in mind the
relevant nonanthropomorphic properties of a nonnatural agent, anthropomorphism
can be nearly erased. If subjects really have theologically correct concepts
of God, these nonanthropomorphic properties are available. The small
difference between the God item performance of Super-agents subjects and
their base item accuracy (approximately 7%, or 1.5 God items) may be due
to a combination of subtlety in the items and anthropomorphic bias, but this
remaining difference to be explained is negligible, compared to the massive
differences in all of the God conditions. Super-agents is the only condition
in which some subjects had no God item errors but did have base item errors.
The inability of the Survey God group to have the same effect as the Superagents
group is strong evidence that the results are due to subjects’ applying
their own anthropomorphic God concepts to the task. It does not appear to be
the case that the differences between these two groups were due to subjects’
rejection of God’s nonanthropomorphic properties. Of the seven important properties
included in the Super-agents’ descriptions and the Survey God scales,
Survey God subjects expressed agreement (a score of 1 or 2) 80% of the time
on average. Reminiscent of the questionnaire in Study 1, 10 of the 15 subjects
agreed with six or all seven items, and only one subject expressed agreement
less than half the time. A simple regression relating these scores to anthropomorphism
scores was not significant, r Å .131, F Å .211, p Å .6542.
These studies should not be taken as evidence that with training people
can easily process narratives involving nonnatural entities in real-time. Study
2 was a slowed-down reading task allowing subjects time for reflection and
modification of intuitive responses. What Study 2, and the Super-agents group
in particular, does demonstrate is that (1) it is very difficult to keep from
anthropomorphizing nonnatural agents, but (2) it is possible in some contexts.
The story recall task does seem to be one context in which it is possible to
avoid anthropomorphizing. Regardless, subjects persist in anthropomorphizing
God.
STUDY 3
Because Studies 1 and 2 relied on recall items as a measure of anthropomorphism,
it is not clear how spontaneous or automatic the tendency to anthropoa305$$0638
10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
238 BARRETT AND KEIL
morphize God is. Also of interest is the quality of the anthropomorphic
inferences and how they affect the character of the narratives. Study 3 is a
preliminary attempt to address these issues and to amplify the findings of the
first two studies by asking subjects to paraphrase stories involving God.
If subjects in Study 1 anthropomorphized in response to the prompting of
recall items, because of demand characteristics, or a ‘‘Yes’’-answer bias,
subjects would not be expected to use anthropomorphic language when paraphrasing
the narratives. Additionally, spontaneous use of anthropomorphic
language in paraphrasing would suggest the anthropomorphic concept is used
at the stage of initial processing and not in recall, supporting the interpretation
that subjects bring the concept to the task.
Method
Materials. Four of the eight stories from Study 1 were selected on the basis
of general dissimilarity from each other. Transcripts of these stories were
presented on a page alternated with space enough for subjects’ paraphrases.
Procedure. Thirteen new subjects were instructed to rewrite each of the
narratives in their own words, adding or omitting details as they deemed fit
to clarify and preserve the meaning of the original. Subjects were allowed as
much time as needed. Again, subjects were encouraged to construe God in
any way they wished.
Results and Discussion
Two scorers familiar with the concepts of anthropomorphism and theologically
correct God concepts were independently asked to check each subjects’
paraphrased stories for (1) the inclusion of language not in the original story
that suggested anthropomorphic inferences, (2) the inclusion of language not
in the original story that seemed to clarify God’s theologically correct properties,
and (3) general errors in preserving the facts of the narratives. Interscorer
agreement was 94.9%. Disagreements were resolved through discussion.
Most of the time subjects gave almost exact restatements of the original
narratives with only slight modifications. However, when subjects did provide
information not in the original stories, it was almost exclusively anthropomorphic
in nature. Twelve of the 13 subjects retold at least one of the stories
using anthropomorphic language quite similar to the God items of the previous
studies. This compares to only one subject adding details to make clear God’s
nonanthropomorphic properties. For example, it was common for subjects to
write something like ‘‘The noise was so loud God couldn’t hear the birds,’’
for the first story. Table 2 lists some of these responses.
Summing across subjects, of the 52 paraphrases, 26 showed anthropomorphic
intrusions. Two paraphrases included details to clarify God’s nonanthropomorphic
properties, and four others had factual errors. Overall, subjects
showed evidence of treating God as a being that requires the use of sensory
information, has a limited focus of attention, performs tasks serially, has a
a305$$0638 10-30-96 01:38:22 cogpa AP: Cog Psych
239ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
TABLE 2
Excerpts from Subjects’ Paraphrased Narratives
It was a clear, sunny day. Two birds were singing back and forth to each other. They
were perched in a large oak tree next to an airport. God was listening to the birds. One
would sing and then the other would sing. One bird had blue, white, and silver feathers.
The other bird had dull gray feathers. While God was listening to the birds, a large jet
landed. It was extremely loud: the birds couldn’t even hear each other. The air was full of
fumes. God listened to the jet until it turned off its engines. God finished listening to the
birds.
‘‘God was listening to two birds singing in a tall tree next to an airport. When a large jet
landed, God listened to it because he could no longer hear the birds. Then he listened to the
birds again.’’
‘‘. . . A jet came and began destroying the beauty and even took God’s attention away . . .’’
‘‘. . . The noise was so loud God couldn’t hear the birds . . .’’
‘‘. . . God could only hear the jet until it turned off its engines . . .’’
A boy was swimming alone in a swift and rocky river. The boy got his left leg caught
between two large, gray rocks and couldn’t get out. Branches of trees kept bumping into
him as they hurried past. He thought he was going to drown and so he began to struggle
and pray. Though God was answering another prayer in another part of the world when
the boy started praying, before long God responded by pushing one of the rocks so the
boy could get his leg out. The boy struggled to the river bank and fell over exhausted.
‘‘This story suggests that God cannot listen to more than one prayer at a time, however, he
will get to each prayer and answer it in time. Much like Santa Claus delivers toys to all houses
in one night.’’
Somewhere in Asia, a master chef was preparing a gourmet dinner at a fancy restaurant.
There was a waterfall coming through the roof in the middle of the restaurant and small
groves of tropical plants in each corner. The kitchen was alongside one of the walls. The
chef seasoned the meal wonderfully and the aroma filled the place. God enjoyed the smell.
Then a sewer line broke beside the restaurant filling the air with a horrible and powerful
stench. The chef complained that he could no longer smell his masterpiece. God appreciated
the chef’s disappointment. A boy in London began praying to God so God answered the
prayer by helping the boy find his way home.
‘‘In a fancy restaurant in Asia, with tropical plants and a waterfall, a master chef was preparing
a spectacular meal. It smells fantastic, and God liked the smell. Then, to his dismay and the
dismay of the chef, a sewer line broke, giving off an awful smell, so bad that they could no
longer enjoy the meal . . .’’
On a dry, dirt road in Australia was a beautiful and interesting rock. One day, God was
looking at the rock. It was green with blue, red, and gold flakes. While God was looking
at the rock, a stampede of brown, long-horned cattle came charging down the road over
where the rock was. God watched them go. They were kicking up dust and bellowing. The
noise was thunderous. God finished looking at the rock which was then dust covered and
had hoof prints all around it.
‘‘On a dirt road in Australia lay a beautiful rock. God looked down and admired the rock.
Suddenly, a herd of cattle came along, stirring up the dirt and trampling where the rock lay.
God admired the herd as they went, and after they passed, God once again looked at the now
dust covered rock and thought it was beautiful.’’
‘‘God looked down from heaven admiring a green rock with blue, red, and gold flakes. As
he admired this rock, a stampede of long-horned cattle ran by and obscured the rock . . .’’
Note. The paragraphs in bold type are the original stories.
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240 BARRETT AND KEIL
particular location, and cannot always differentiate competing sensory infor-
mation.
One subject even transformed God into a person in his paraphrases, referring
to God as ‘‘a homeless man,’’ ‘‘the president of a major corporation,’’
and ‘‘a local aborigine’’ in different stories. However, in one story this subject
referred to God as ‘‘an unthinkable force.’’
Interestingly, subjects expressed these anthropomorphic properties without
being prompted or cued. These appear to be specific, subject-generated applications
of an anthropomorphic God concept.
This study suggests that at least some of the anthropomorphism takes place
with the reading of the stories and not just as a result of memory errors or
at the prompting of the recall items. Evidence from this study is consistent
with the hypothesis that subjects engage the story processing tasks with their
own anthropomorphic concepts of God, concepts that can be explicitly elaborated
without cuing.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
These three studies reveal that subjects do use anthropomorphic concepts
of God in understanding stories even though they may profess a theological
position that rejects anthropomorphic constraints on God and God’s activities.
It appears that people have at least two parallel God concepts that are used
in different contexts, and these concepts may be fundamentally incompatible.
Although this set of studies offer some insights into how people conceive
of God, the conclusions have several restrictions due to the design of the
studies. The stories were designed to fit with an agent-God who interacts
with the natural world and people. People or contexts that do not assume
such a basic property may not exhibit the same phenomenon. Further restrictions
include problems with the sample. Because the sample was relatively
small and heterogeneous with regard to religious affiliation, the questions
raised by Barrett and VanOrman (1995) regarding differences among religious
groups cannot be addressed, except that there is no obvious difference between
theists and nontheists. Finally, the design of the task does not allow us to
make any firm conclusions regarding specific properties that are attributed to
God. We may only report that the corpus of characteristics are more consistent
with an anthropomorphic concept than with a strictly theological concept
from the traditions best represented. Questions about specific properties must
be left for future studies.
Keeping in mind these restrictions, at least five general conclusions can be
drawn from the data. First, it appears that the concept of God used in the
context of listening to and remembering stories is not the same as the concept
of God that is claimed in a more abstract, theological setting. The ‘‘God’’
condition of the first study showed a great disparity between the theological
beliefs about God and the properties attributed to God in the course of processing
stories.
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241ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
Second, the effects demonstrated are not merely artifacts of the task. The
Uncomp study and the Mog, Beebo, and Swek task showed that novel characters
placed in the same task will not necessarily evoke the same anthropomorphic
representation. There is something specific to subjects’ representation of
God that is instrumental in this anthropomorphic characterization.
The salience study and the Survey God condition of Study 2 demonstrated
that performance on this task is manipulable through priming subjects’ theology,
implying that the way one thinks of God when approaching the task is
important in determining the God concept used to process the stories. The
concept used in the story context is not independent of one’s personal theology.
A natural extension of this finding is that people seem to possess and
use more than one concept of God in real-life activities, and these parallel
concepts have some markedly different properties.
A stronger form of this conclusion may also be argued. It may be that
some subjects actually have only an anthropomorphic concept of God, and
in response to the social demands of a formal context, the vocabulary of
theological correctness is employed to mask this concept. That is, the ‘‘theological’’
concept is actually hollow, lacking any power to facilitate meaningful
representations. Perhaps the tendency to anthropomorphize God cannot be
resisted because it inevitably follows from a human necessity to conceive of
deity in terms of natural categories (Brandon, 1970).
Fourth, as the overwhelming majority of subjects in all five studies used
anthropomorphic concepts to process stories about God, Uncomp, Superman,
or Mog, Beebo, and Swek, the demands of story processing seems to make
it difficult to avoid anthropomorphization. This is not just an uninteresting
problem with the method. The characteristics of these stories that facilitate
use of an anthropomorphic God concept are likely to be present in other realtime,
real-life discourse about God and other agents. If a person’s theological
God concept shows no resilience in this task, how would it do so in the face
of real life situations similar to this? To take an example from a specific
religious tradition, if people are inclined to use anthropomorphic processing
in a story context, then do those in the Judeo–Christian tradition read stories
about God in the Bible this same way, despite the contradictions with their
professed theology?
A final conclusion that may be drawn from these studies is that anthropomorphization
in discourse-processing contexts is not restricted to God. As
Uncomp demonstrated, other agents may be treated in a similar way, regardless
of previous exposure to the agent. These studies have shown that God
and a fictitious super-computer are anthropomorphized during story processing,
but is this effect limited to super-agents? One problem for future
research is to find what properties are necessary for an anthropomorphic
representation to be used. Perhaps it is the case that any intentional agent is
conceptualized using an agent-concept based on people, thus yielding an
anthropomorphic representation. Another possibility is that only vaguely una305$$0638
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242 BARRETT AND KEIL
derstood agents are treated in this way (Caporael, 1986), since well-understood
agents have firm enough representations to make the use of an anthropomorphic
concept as a default schema unnecessary. It is also unknown in what
contexts agents are anthropomorphized.
It has been suggested that two of the most fundamental ontological kinds
are simple mechanical physical objects and psychological agents. So fundamental
are they, that infants may have intuitive physics and psychologies for
grasping them (Carey & Spelke, 1994). If so, folk psychology may offer a
highly constrained view of the mind as a serial processor, with single focused
window of attention. Similarly, intuitive physics may suggest that entities are
normally bounded objects in one place at a time and move on spatio-temporally
continuous paths (ibid.). Concepts of God may be strongly pressured to
fit into these two ontologies, as other alternatives are too cognitively laborious
to employ in real-time discourse.
It may be that the pressure to fit into these ontologies is a form of cognitive
constraint even prior to those constraints suggested by Boyer’s theory of
religious ideas (1994). Boyer’s theory begins with the assumption that when
a particular entity fits into a natural ontological category such as ‘‘sentient
beings,’’ it is then constrained by the intuitive cognitive expectations of this
category. Theological treatments of God generally assert that God does not
fit into one of these natural ontological categories, and consequently the
concept cannot be constrained by cognitive intuitions. However, it may be
that intuitive physics and psychology encourage the processing of any entity
as part of the natural ontological category which most closely matches the
entity’s perceived properties.
Usually represented as a being with a mind, desires, and the ability to
communicate, God seems to best fit in the category of sentient beings. Once
this is established, Boyer’s balance of satisfying most intuitive expectations
while violating a small number seems to fit the results of the present studies.
God is treated as meeting many of the expectations of folk psychology and
intuitive physics while possessing a few unusual properties such as being
able to receive sensory information at an enormous distance and move from
place to place very quickly.
In these ways Boyer’s theory can be modified to offer an explanation of
the two parallel God concepts: (1) The theory applies to the real-time concept
and not the theological concept. (2) A prior source of cognitive constraint,
perhaps intuitive physics and psychology, pressure the theological concept to
conform to one natural ontological category. This gives rise to a sentient
being which looks very much like a human being, the most salient example
of this specific ontology.
Similarly, the results of these studies could be understood as a case of
structured imagination (Ward, 1994; 1995). If there exists some pressure to
fit God into the ontological category of sentient beings, under the theory of
structured imagination, specific properties of God would then be generated
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243ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
based on properties of known sentient beings. With humans as the most
outstanding exemplar of this category, it would be expected that God would
share many properties in common with humans.
Alternatively, it may not be necessary for God to be classified into a specific
ontological category before anthropomorphism takes place. It has been suggested
that anthropomorphic God concepts illustrate analogical reasoning
(Holyoak & Thagard, 1995). God’s unknown properties can be understood
through analogy with human properties. Under this interpretation, the data
presented would suggest that analogical reasoning can be so internalized and
automatic that it can generate understandings of God used in on-line processing
that are inconsistent with theology and are difficult to inhibit.
The interpretations by way of analogical reasoning, structured imagination,
and Boyer’s theory of religion all require some a priori reason for pairing
God with human properties as opposed to properties from some other ontology.
Such a reason is not necessary to explain these findings in terms of
Guthrie’s theory (1993). Under Guthrie’s model, novel or ambiguous objects
are first processed as human unless there is sufficient counterevidence. Therefore,
in a real-time task, God (or even the novel agent Uncomp) is automatically
treated anthropomorphically; and it is only through conscious effort or
priming that this is avoided, as in the salience condition, Super-agents, and
the Survey God condition of Study 2. Furthermore, because God is of a
different ontological category and surrounded by a great deal of mystery, the
necessary counterevidence to disengage the tendency to anthropomorphize
may not be very powerful. Perhaps this is why it was more difficult for
subjects to avoid anthropomorphizing in the Survey God condition than in
the Super-agents condition. Unfortunately, the very premise of Guthrie’s theory,
that anthropomorphism is a general and fundamental cognitive bias is in
need of empirical support before any confident conclusions may be drawn.
These studies also raise some questions specifically for the study of God
concepts. The data suggest that subjects possess and use at least two different
parallel God concepts depending on the context (although one may actually
be an empty concept), but there is no obvious reason why these two concepts
exist. Perhaps stories involving an atemporal and omnipotent agent create
processing difficulties, and an efficient way to deal with the problem is to
use a simpler God concept to understand stories. Whether or not this is the
case, the relationship between the two concepts needs further investigation.
The salience manipulation suggested that there are some points of contact
between the two concepts. Making the theological God concept more salient
seemed to inhibit use of the anthropomorphic everyday God concept in at
least some of the subjects. It may just as well be the case that it was not
inhibition but modification of the everyday concept that occurred.
These studies challenge previous work in the psychological study of God
concepts or ‘‘images’’ in two ways. First, it seems important when making
claims about God concepts to differentiate between the theological concept
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244 BARRETT AND KEIL
and the concept used in everyday life. Research methods are likely to probe
different concepts depending on the nature of the task. This is not a commonly
made distinction.
Second, the cognitive development literature has almost unanimously supported
the notion that God concepts undergo a concrete to abstract shift from
early childhood to adolescence (Gorsuch, 1988). One study has even noted
a shift from anthropomorphic to symbolic representations of God depending
upon the level of mental impairment (Bassett et al., 1994). The present studies
raise some doubts about these purported shifts. At least concepts of God used
in processing narratives appear to be concrete and anthropomorphic even in
young adult college students. Rather than practical concepts of God becoming
more abstract with age, perhaps children learn better skills for inhibiting this
concept in favor of a more theologically correct one.
Although many questions remain, these studies provide a first step in answering
the question of how it is we understand God, and by implication,
how we understand some nonnatural beings. At least on one level, the problem
created by the ontological chasm between humans and the supernatural is
solved by ignoring the difference. It appears we accept information about
God quite literally. No longer is God a wholly different being, inexplicable
and unpredictable. God is understood as a super-human and likely to behave
as we do. The problem is addressed by creating God in the image of ourselves,
and using the constraints of nature and humanity as our basic assumptions
for understanding God. So it appears that the God of many people today is
not quite so different from Zeus as it might at first seem.
APPENDIX A: NARRATIVES AND RECALL ITEMS
These are examples of the narratives and corresponding recall items as
presented to subjects. ‘‘God items’’ are in bold. Four additional stories appear
in Table 2.
(2) One day while God was helping an angel work on a crossword
puzzle, a woman in South America got lost in a large, dense forest. It was
hot and humid with insects buzzing about wildly. Only thin rays of light
trickled to the fungus-covered forest floor. She was terribly afraid that she
would not get out and so she prayed to God for help. God comforted her and
showed her a path which led between two hills, around a small lake, and out
of the forest. God helped the angel finish the crossword puzzle.
2. No a. The woman was in a jungle.
Yes b. The path led between two hills.
No c. God was working on a crossword puzzle.
No d. The woman was a South American.
No e. There were insects hopping around.
Yes f. The woman prayed because she was afraid.
No g. God stopped helping an angel work on a crossword puzzle
to help the woman.
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245ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN GOD CONCEPTS
No h. After answering the woman’s prayer, God finished helping
the angel on the crossword puzzle.
(3) A young girl was playing in a forest of birches and oaks when she
came across a baby bird. It was chirping loudly because it had fallen from
its nest. The girl carefully picked up the bird using some strips of birch bark
so that she would not leave her scent on the bird. She climbed the old oak
tree where the nest was. She placed the bird in the small gray nest. She
climbed down and went on her way. God was aware of girl’s deed and was
pleased by it so God gave her a happy feeling.
3. Yes a. The bird’s nest was in an oak tree.
No b. God was pleased by seeing the girl put the bird in its nest.
No c. There were only oaks in the forest.
No d. The bird chirped quietly.
No e. The bird was a robin.
No f. The girl picked up the bird with her hands.
Yes g. God gave the girl a happy feeling.
No h. The girl was playing in a jungle.
(5) A woman was exploring a cave when she got lost. The woman was
terrified. She was alone in a dark, small, damp cave. There was not even
enough room for her to stand upright. The walls had a bumpy texture with
patches of fungus. Out of fear she started praying aloud for someone to come
help her. As she prayed, her voice echoed mockingly in the cave. She then
fell asleep. God responded by pushing a large stone from behind the woman
to reveal a tunnel out of the cave. When she awoke, she saw no one, but the
rock had been moved. She left the cave.
5. No a. The woman fell asleep while praying.
Yes b. There was fungus on the walls of the cave.
No c. The woman cried when she discovered she was lost.
Yes d. God responded to the woman’s prayer by moving a rock.
Yes e. The cave was dark, damp, and small.
Yes f. The woman got lost in a cave.
No g. God heard the woman’s prayer and helped her.
No h. When the woman awoke, God had already left but the rock
was moved.
APPENDIX B: DESCRIPTIONS OF MOG, BEEBO, AND SWEK
Mog, Beebo, and Swek are beings from another dimension of existence
that can have some contact with our world. They have some fairly unusual
characteristics that you should try to keep in mind when reading the stories
about them:
Mog. Mog is not spatial which means that Mog has no location. It
doesn’t make sense to say Mog is at any particular place, or moves from
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246 BARRETT AND KEIL
place to place. Mog also has no sensory limitations. This means that there is
never a situation in which Mog cannot see, hear, taste, touch, or smell something.
Furthermore, Mog can process sensory information from more than
one source without the info blending or competing with the other info. Finally,
Mog has no limits on attention. Therefore, Mog can pay attention to any
number of things at the same time without them competing with each other.
Beebo. Beebo, like Mog, is not spatial and cannot be said to move or
be in a particular location. Also like Mog, Beebo has no attention limits and
so can pay attention to and do any number of tasks at the same time. Beebo
can affect people’s thoughts and emotions and can also affect the physical
world (e.g., move things).
Swek. Like Beebo, Swek can affect people’s emotions. Also like Beebo
and Mog, Swek has no limits on attention and so is never distracted. Swek
can process sensory information (see-watch, hear-listen) but does not have
to. Swek can read minds and electromagnetic waves and other forms of
energy, so Swek can know what is going on at any moment without using
sensory information (like seeing, hearing, tasting). Unlike Beebo and Mog,
Swek can have a location if it wishes, though Swek does not have a solid,
physical body that is subject to gravity and other physical forces.
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