Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts

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 in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive psychology 1996-12, Vol.31 (3), p.219-247
Main Authors: Barrett, Justin L., Keil, Frank C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Anthropomorphism
Beliefs
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition. Intelligence
Cognitive Processes
College Students
Communication disorders
Concept Formation
Culture
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
God
Higher Education
Humans
Intuition
Mental imagery. Mental representation
Mental Recall
Metaphor
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Religion
Religion and Psychology
Theology
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0010-0285
1095-5623
DOI:10.1006/cogp.1996.0017