Supernatural Agency and Forgiveness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.v3i1.18402Keywords:
religion, forgiveness, agency, responsibility, supernatural attributions, cognitive science of religionAbstract
The present research examined the hypothesis that supernatural agency attributions underlie the relation between religion and forgiveness. In two experiments a priming procedure was used to make religious concepts temporarily more salient. In Experiment 1, a religion prime marginaly enhanced forgiveness but did not enhance supernatural attributions, compared to a control group. However, correlational support was found for the hypothesis that supernatural attributions were associated with more forgiveness, less punishment and less responsibility of the offender. In Experiment 2, it was attempted to enhance supernatural attributions by first manipulating participants’ sense of control (high vs. low) before presenting a religion prime. As expected, in the low control condition, religious priming enhanced the perceived likelihood that a higher power had an influence on violent situations, and enhanced participants’ forgiveness toward the offenders. Importantly, mediation analysis further supported the existence of a relation between supernatural agency attributions and participants’ ability to forgive.
References
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Carlson, P. 2007. “Bearing witness to the Gospel according to Falwell.” The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com
Corlett, J. A. 2006. “Forgiveness, apology, and retributive punishment.” American Philosophical Quarterly 43(1): 25–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4148-9_6
Cotton, A. 2012. “Aurora victim released from hospital; says he forgives shooter.” Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com
Dijksterhuis, A., J. Preston, D. M. Wegner and H. Aarts. 2008. “Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44(1): 2–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.01.003
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Fincham, F. D., F. Paleari and C. Regalia. 2002. “Forgiveness in marriage: The role of relationship quality, attributions, and empathy.” Personal Relationships 9(1): 27–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.00002
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Girard, M. and E. Mullet. 1997. “Forgiveness in adolescents, young, middle-aged, and older adults. Journal of Adult Development 4(4): 209–220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02511412
Gonzales, M. H., J. A. Haugen and D. J. Manning. 1994. “Victims as ‘narrative critics’: Factors influencing rejoinders and evaluative responses to offenders’ accounts.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20(6), 691–704. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167294206007
Gray, H. M., K. Gray and D. M. Wegner. 2007. “Dimensions of mind perception.” Science 315(5812): 619–619. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1134475
Gray, K. and D. M. Wegner. 2009. ‘‘Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(3): 505. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013748
Gray, K. and D. M. Wegner. 2010. ‘‘Blaming God for our pain: Human suffering and the divine mind.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Review 14: 7–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309350299
Haggard, P. 2005. ‘‘Conscious intention and motor cognition.’’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(6): 290–295. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.012
Hamilton, L. 2013. Jerry Newcombe, don’t blame God for Colorado shootings! http://www.thepetitionsite.com/nl-nl/686/215/106/jerry-newcombe-dont-blame-god-for-colorado-shootings/
Hayes, A. F. 2013. Model Templates for PROCESS for SPSS and SAS [White paper]. http://www.afhayes.com/public/templates.pdf.
Inzlicht, M. and A. M. Tullet. 2010. ‘‘Reflecting on God. Religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors.’’ Psychological Science 21: 1184–1190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610375451
Kay, A. C., D. Gaucher, I. McGregor and K. Nash. 2010. ‘‘Religious belief as compensatory control.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(1): 37–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353750
Kay, A. C., D. Gaucher, J. L. Napier, M. J. Callan and K. Laurin. 2008. ‘‘God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95: 18–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18
Kearns, J. N. and F. D. Fincham. 2004. ‘‘A prototype analysis of forgiveness.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30(7): 838–855. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167204264237
Kearns, J. N., and F. D. Fincham. 2005. “Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal transgressions: Self-serving or relationship-serving biases?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 321–333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271594
Knobe, J. 2003. “Intentional action in folk psychology: An experimental investigation.” Philosophical Psychology, 16(2): 309–324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515080307771
Lagnado, D. A. and S. Channon. 2008. ‘‘Judgments of cause and blame: The effects of intentionality and foreseeability.’’ Cognition 108(3): 754–770. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.06.009
Lang, P. J., M. M. Bradley and B. N. Cuthbert. 2008. ‘‘International affective picture system (IAPS): Affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual.’’ Technical Report A-8. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida.
Laurin, K., A. C. Kay and D. M. Moscovitch. 2008. ‘‘On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control.’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44: 1559–1562. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.007
Laurin, K., A. F. Shariff, J. Henrich and A. C. Kay. 2012. ‘‘Outsourcing punishment to God: beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment.’’ Proceedings of the Royal Society B/Biological Sciences 1741: 3272–3281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0615
McCullough, M. E. and E. L. Worthington Jr. 1999. ‘‘Religion and the forgiving personality.’’ Journal of Personality 67(6): 1141–1164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6494.00085
McCullough, M. E., E. L. Worthington Jr. and K. C. Rachal. 1997. ‘‘Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 321–336. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.2.321
Pargament, K. I. and M. S. Rye. 1998. ‘‘Forgiveness as a method of religious coping.’’ In Dimensions of Forgiveness, edited by E. L. Worthington Jr., 59–78. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press.
Pearson, M. 2012. ‘‘Gunman turns ‘Batman’ screening into real-life ‘horror film’.’’ CNN. http://edition.cnn.com
Pinnock, C. H. 1996. ‘‘God’s sovereignty in today’s world.’’ Theology Today 53(1): 15–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004057369605300103
Preacher, K. J. and A. F. Hayes. 2008. ‘‘Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models.’’ Behavior Research Methods 40: 879–891. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BRM.40.3.879
Ruiter, S. and F. Van Tubergen. 2009. ‘‘Religious attendance in cross-national perspective: A multilevel analysis of 60 countries.’’ American Journal of Sociology 115: 863–895. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/603536
Rutjens, B. T., J. van der Pligt and F. van Harreveld. 2010. ‘‘Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life.’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46: 1078–1080. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.009
Rye, M. S., Pargament, K. I., Ali, M. A., Beck, G. L., Dorff, E. N., Hallisey, C., et al. (2000). Religious perspectives on forgiveness. In M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament, and C. E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice, 17–40. New York: Guilford Press.
Sartorio, C. 2007. “Causation and responsibility.” Philosophy Compass, 2(5), 749–765. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00097.x
Shariff, A. F., and A. Norenzayan. 2011. “Mean gods make good people: Different views of God predict cheating behavior.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21: 85–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2011.556990
Shariff, A. F., J. D. Greene, J. C. Karremans, J. B. Luguri, C. J. Clark, J. W. Schooler and K. D. Vohs. 2014. ‘‘Free will and punishment. A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution.’’ Psychological Science 1: 1–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614534693
Shoemaker, A., and M. Bolt. 1977. ‘‘The Rokeach Value Survey and perceived Christian values.’’ Journal of Psychology and Theology 5: 139–142.
Sibley, C. G., and J. Bulbulia. 2012. ‘‘Faith after an earthquake: A longitudinal study of religion and perceived health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand earthquake.’’ PloS ONE 7(12): e49648. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049648
Tangney, J. P., A. L. Boone and R. Dearing. 2005. ‘‘Forgiving the self: Conceptual issues and empirical findings.’’ In Handbook of forgiveness, edited by E. L. Worthington Jr., 143–158. New York: Routledge.
Tsang, J., M. E. McCullough and W. T. Hoyt. 2005. ‘‘Psychometric and rationalization accounts for the religion-forgiveness discrepancy.’’ Journal of Social Issues 61: 785–805. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00432.x
Webb, M., S. A. Chickering, T. A. Colburn, D. Heisler and S. Call. 2005. ‘‘Religiosity and dispositional forgiveness.’’ Review of Religious Research 46(4): 355–370. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3512166
Worthington Jr., E. L. and N. G. Wade. 1999. ‘‘The psychology of unforgiveness and forgiveness and implications for clinical practice.’’ Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 18(4): 385–418. http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1999.18.4.385
Barrett, J. L. 2000. “Exploring the natural foundations of religion.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4: 29–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01419-9
Barrett, J. L. and J. A. Lanman. 2008. “The science of religious beliefs.” Religion 38: 109–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.01.007
Baumard, N. and P. Boyer. 2013. “Explaining moral religions.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17(6): 272–280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.04.003
Bering, J. M. 2002a. “The existential theory of mind.” Review of General Psychology 6: 3–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.6.1.3
Bering, J. M. and T. K. Shackelford. 2004. “The causal role of consciousness: A conceptual addendum to human evolutionary psychology.” Journal of General Psychology 8: 227–248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.4.227
Boyer, P. 2003. “Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7: 119–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00031-7
Carlson, P. 2007. “Bearing witness to the Gospel according to Falwell.” The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com
Corlett, J. A. 2006. “Forgiveness, apology, and retributive punishment.” American Philosophical Quarterly 43(1): 25–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4148-9_6
Cotton, A. 2012. “Aurora victim released from hospital; says he forgives shooter.” Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com
Dijksterhuis, A., J. Preston, D. M. Wegner and H. Aarts. 2008. “Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44(1): 2–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.01.003
Face of Satan in World Trade Center Smoke on 9/11? Urban Legends. http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bltabloid-arch10.htm
Fincham, F. D. 2000. “The kiss of the porcupines: From attributing responsibility to forgiving.” Personal Relationships 7: 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00001.x
Fincham, F. D., F. Paleari and C. Regalia. 2002. “Forgiveness in marriage: The role of relationship quality, attributions, and empathy.” Personal Relationships 9(1): 27–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.00002
Fisher, M. L. and J. J. Exline. 2006. “Self-forgiveness versus excusing: The roles of remorse, effort, and acceptance of responsibility.” Self and Identity 5(2): 127–146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298860600586123
Gervais, W. M. 2014. “Good for God? Religious motivation reduces perceived responsibility for and morality of good deeds.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(4): 1616–1626. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036678
Girard, M. and E. Mullet. 1997. “Forgiveness in adolescents, young, middle-aged, and older adults. Journal of Adult Development 4(4): 209–220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02511412
Gonzales, M. H., J. A. Haugen and D. J. Manning. 1994. “Victims as ‘narrative critics’: Factors influencing rejoinders and evaluative responses to offenders’ accounts.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20(6), 691–704. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167294206007
Gray, H. M., K. Gray and D. M. Wegner. 2007. “Dimensions of mind perception.” Science 315(5812): 619–619. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1134475
Gray, K. and D. M. Wegner. 2009. ‘‘Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(3): 505. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013748
Gray, K. and D. M. Wegner. 2010. ‘‘Blaming God for our pain: Human suffering and the divine mind.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Review 14: 7–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309350299
Haggard, P. 2005. ‘‘Conscious intention and motor cognition.’’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(6): 290–295. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.012
Hamilton, L. 2013. Jerry Newcombe, don’t blame God for Colorado shootings! http://www.thepetitionsite.com/nl-nl/686/215/106/jerry-newcombe-dont-blame-god-for-colorado-shootings/
Hayes, A. F. 2013. Model Templates for PROCESS for SPSS and SAS [White paper]. http://www.afhayes.com/public/templates.pdf.
Inzlicht, M. and A. M. Tullet. 2010. ‘‘Reflecting on God. Religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors.’’ Psychological Science 21: 1184–1190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610375451
Kay, A. C., D. Gaucher, I. McGregor and K. Nash. 2010. ‘‘Religious belief as compensatory control.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(1): 37–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353750
Kay, A. C., D. Gaucher, J. L. Napier, M. J. Callan and K. Laurin. 2008. ‘‘God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95: 18–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18
Kearns, J. N. and F. D. Fincham. 2004. ‘‘A prototype analysis of forgiveness.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30(7): 838–855. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167204264237
Kearns, J. N., and F. D. Fincham. 2005. “Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal transgressions: Self-serving or relationship-serving biases?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 321–333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271594
Knobe, J. 2003. “Intentional action in folk psychology: An experimental investigation.” Philosophical Psychology, 16(2): 309–324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515080307771
Lagnado, D. A. and S. Channon. 2008. ‘‘Judgments of cause and blame: The effects of intentionality and foreseeability.’’ Cognition 108(3): 754–770. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.06.009
Lang, P. J., M. M. Bradley and B. N. Cuthbert. 2008. ‘‘International affective picture system (IAPS): Affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual.’’ Technical Report A-8. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida.
Laurin, K., A. C. Kay and D. M. Moscovitch. 2008. ‘‘On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control.’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44: 1559–1562. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.007
Laurin, K., A. F. Shariff, J. Henrich and A. C. Kay. 2012. ‘‘Outsourcing punishment to God: beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment.’’ Proceedings of the Royal Society B/Biological Sciences 1741: 3272–3281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0615
McCullough, M. E. and E. L. Worthington Jr. 1999. ‘‘Religion and the forgiving personality.’’ Journal of Personality 67(6): 1141–1164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6494.00085
McCullough, M. E., E. L. Worthington Jr. and K. C. Rachal. 1997. ‘‘Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 321–336. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.2.321
Pargament, K. I. and M. S. Rye. 1998. ‘‘Forgiveness as a method of religious coping.’’ In Dimensions of Forgiveness, edited by E. L. Worthington Jr., 59–78. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press.
Pearson, M. 2012. ‘‘Gunman turns ‘Batman’ screening into real-life ‘horror film’.’’ CNN. http://edition.cnn.com
Pinnock, C. H. 1996. ‘‘God’s sovereignty in today’s world.’’ Theology Today 53(1): 15–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004057369605300103
Preacher, K. J. and A. F. Hayes. 2008. ‘‘Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models.’’ Behavior Research Methods 40: 879–891. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BRM.40.3.879
Ruiter, S. and F. Van Tubergen. 2009. ‘‘Religious attendance in cross-national perspective: A multilevel analysis of 60 countries.’’ American Journal of Sociology 115: 863–895. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/603536
Rutjens, B. T., J. van der Pligt and F. van Harreveld. 2010. ‘‘Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life.’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46: 1078–1080. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.009
Rye, M. S., Pargament, K. I., Ali, M. A., Beck, G. L., Dorff, E. N., Hallisey, C., et al. (2000). Religious perspectives on forgiveness. In M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament, and C. E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice, 17–40. New York: Guilford Press.
Sartorio, C. 2007. “Causation and responsibility.” Philosophy Compass, 2(5), 749–765. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00097.x
Shariff, A. F., and A. Norenzayan. 2011. “Mean gods make good people: Different views of God predict cheating behavior.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21: 85–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2011.556990
Shariff, A. F., J. D. Greene, J. C. Karremans, J. B. Luguri, C. J. Clark, J. W. Schooler and K. D. Vohs. 2014. ‘‘Free will and punishment. A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution.’’ Psychological Science 1: 1–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614534693
Shoemaker, A., and M. Bolt. 1977. ‘‘The Rokeach Value Survey and perceived Christian values.’’ Journal of Psychology and Theology 5: 139–142.
Sibley, C. G., and J. Bulbulia. 2012. ‘‘Faith after an earthquake: A longitudinal study of religion and perceived health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand earthquake.’’ PloS ONE 7(12): e49648. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049648
Tangney, J. P., A. L. Boone and R. Dearing. 2005. ‘‘Forgiving the self: Conceptual issues and empirical findings.’’ In Handbook of forgiveness, edited by E. L. Worthington Jr., 143–158. New York: Routledge.
Tsang, J., M. E. McCullough and W. T. Hoyt. 2005. ‘‘Psychometric and rationalization accounts for the religion-forgiveness discrepancy.’’ Journal of Social Issues 61: 785–805. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00432.x
Webb, M., S. A. Chickering, T. A. Colburn, D. Heisler and S. Call. 2005. ‘‘Religiosity and dispositional forgiveness.’’ Review of Religious Research 46(4): 355–370. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3512166
Worthington Jr., E. L. and N. G. Wade. 1999. ‘‘The psychology of unforgiveness and forgiveness and implications for clinical practice.’’ Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 18(4): 385–418. http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1999.18.4.385
Published
2016-05-03
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Articles
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Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Nieuwboer, W., van Schie, H., Karremans, J., & Wigboldus, D. (2016). Supernatural Agency and Forgiveness. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 3(1), 85-110. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.v3i1.18402
