Searching: Academic Search Complete, Show all Choose Databases

Basic Search Advanced Search Search History

Your session has timed out due to inactivity. If you had items in the Folder or searches in Search History, they have
been cleared.
Search DE "SIVA (Hindu deity)"
Title:
Database:
Contents
COGNITIVE
PERSPECTIVES
Guthrie's Perceptual
Schema Theory
Boyer's Cognitive
Optimum Theory
PREVIOUS
RESEARCH
METHOD
RESULTS AND
DISCUSION
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
Choose Language Translate
Cognitive Constraints on Hindu Concepts of the Divine. By: Barrett, Justin L.,
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 00218294, Dec98, Vol. 37, Issue
4
Academic Search Complete
Cognitive Constraints on Hindu Concepts of the Divine
Compass of gods, like any other concepts, are informed
and constrained by cross-cultural regularities of the human
mind-brain. Specifically, divine beings that are represented
as intentional agents are subject to the cognitive intuitions
that govern all intentional agents. These intuitions may
include psychological and physical attributes not endorsed
by a given theological tradition. Experimental evidence is
presented supporting the presence of these cognitive
constraints and a resulting divergence between stated
theological beliefs and implicit concepts. Hindu residents
of northern India completed questionnaires regarding
attributes of Brahman, Shiva, Vishnu, or Krishna and also
participated in a narrative comprehension task. Results
revealed striking differences in how the gods were conceived
in the two contexts.
Theoretical developments in the scientific study of religion during the
1990s have been distinguished by the growing influence of cognitive
science. As Stewart Guthrie remarked in 1996, "New efforts at producing a general theory [of
religion] have appeared. Although these range from irrationalist, wishful-thinking theories to
rationalist and linguistic ones, they increasingly emphasize cognition" (412).
This swell of theoretical work only serves to magnify the paucity of empirical scholarship using
cognitive methods and insights to address issues in the study of theistic and other cultural systems.
The present project addresses this evidential shortcoming by examining the general question of
how cognitive architecture informs and constrains conceptualizations of the Divine. In brief, as with
any other concept, concepts of gods must largely conform to the undergirding cognitive intuitive
assumptions universally held for the ontological category of gods. Since gods are typically
understood as intentional agents, they must satisfy the (often) tacit assumptions of agenthood.[1]
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVES
What many cognitive perspectives have in common is that they see cultural representations, such
as religious concepts, merely as widespread instances of individually held cognitive
representations -- therefore subject to cognitive constraints of the human mindbrain (Sperber
1995). Representations of the properties and actions of religious agents is the same as for natural
agents with a few minor adjustments (Lawson and McCauley 1990). Simply, when it comes to
thinking about a divine agent, not just anything goes. Like other concepts, concepts of gods and
other nonhuman agents must be amenable to human processing limitations. The question is, which
limitations are relevant?
While simple memory and attentional limitations undoubtedly play a role in selecting which cultural
concepts exist (e.g., a 43-digit number is hard to remember and pass on), the type of cognitive
constraint most frequently cited in discussions of religious ideas is that of conceptual expectations.
The mind organizes the world into various hierarchically related concepts and builds up a base of
intuitive expectations for things represented by those concepts. These intuitive expectations guide
how information in the world is processed, remembered, interpreted, and produced (Keil 1979,
1989). This cognitive perspective is illustrated by the two leading theories of concepts of divine
beings: Guthrie's perceptual schema theory (1993) and Boyer's cognitive optimum theory (1994).
These theories account for slightly different phenomena in importantly divergent ways but are
presented below because of their similar predictions regarding concepts of gods.
Guthrie's Perceptual Schema Theory
In contemporary scholarship, the importance of anthropomorphism in understanding theistic beliefs
has been championed by Guthrie (1980, 1993). Like Freud's "humanization of nature" (1927: 20),
Guthrie sees gods as springing from anthropomorphism of the natural world. Unlike Freud, Guthrie
sees theistic belief systems as the consequence of an adaptive perceptual strategy, not an attempt
to ease feelings of helplessness.
Result List Refine Search 38 of 148
Listen American Accent
Find Similar Results
using SmartText Searching.
Detailed Record
HTML Full Text
PDF Full Text (895KB)
MGI
Sign In Folder Preferences Languages New Features! Help Exit New Search Subjects Publications Images More
Rather than anthropomorphism occupying a peripheral place in religion, religion is
anthropomorphism, according to Guthrie. Religion and, by implication, gods are the result of
people trying to best make sense of the world by assuming the world is structured by humanlike
intentional agency.
Guthrie argues that since our world and existence are ambiguous and confusing, they are in need
of interpretation. The most efficient interpretation scheme is to "gamble" on those possible
scenarios that are most important for survival, safety, procreation, food procurement, and such. The
most important possible interpretation of any given event, a priori, is that it involves another human
or another intentional agent, since other humans pose both the greatest competition and the
greatest opportunities for survival and reproduction. Humans have, therefore, evolved a perceptual
strategy or heuristic that assumes "it is a human" unless proven otherwise.
Guthrie makes the case for a universal bias to see human influence in the world by citing
ethnographic data of three basic types. First, around the world, peoples believe in humanlike
spirits, demons, and gods. Second, people tend easily to attribute human properties to nonhuman
things, that is, anthropomorphize, as when artists, architects, and advertisers use human features in
designs. Third, people are prone to mistake ambiguous sights or sounds as either human or the
result of human or intentional activity. These errors can be simple perceptual mistakes as in
thinking that the wind in the trees sounds like a voice, or can be higher level interpretive schemes
as when the spatial relationship of stars and planets communicates a message.
A growing body of experimental research also supports the idea that people are prone to interpret
the world in anthropomorphic terms. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the basic phenomena.
In Heider and Simmel's now famous experiment (1944), adult subjects described the movement of
two-dimensional geometric shapes in terms of intentional behavior, social interactions, and even
gender roles. Recent follow-up studies with children and adults suggest that the anthropomorphism
in this task is triggered merely by contingent patterns of movement (Berry et al. 1992; Berry and
Springer 1993). In another experiment, when asked if various animals could engage in specific
cognitive tasks or experience the world like humans, college students tended to expect more
humanlike cognition of animals with which they have had more "social" interaction (dogs and cats)
than other mammals, except primates which have more physical similarities with humans (Eddy,
Gallup, and Povinelli 1993). Inagaki and Hatano (1987) found that kindergartners were prone to
overextend human traits to rabbits and tulips when asked to reason about attributes not
immediately observable. Though the various experiments on anthropomorphism have not yet been
theoretically integrated, they do provide compelling evidence that humans can and do
anthropomorphize easily.
Because the anthropomorphism Guthrie describes is evident both in perceiving physical stimuli
and in interpreting configurations and events, it might be predicted that people who hold a religious
worldview will attribute to gods physical, biological, and psychological humanlike properties.
Boyer's Cognitive Optimum Theory
Boyer's theory draws heavily from the work of psychologists in the subfield of concepts and
conceptual structure (Boyer 1994). For any concept, such as "cat," "car," or "rock," people hold a
host of intuitive assumptions about its properties. These assumptions, in turn, are the consequence
of a host of"theories" that govern the concept's ontology. For example, because a cat is a living
thing, our intuitive or folk biology applies to cats and we tacitly assume that cats have nutritional
needs and will eventually die. These are two properties of "cat" that need not be explicitly
represented. Likewise, because a cat is a vertebrate, we expect cats to move purposefully to fulfill
their needs. Once we code a thing as a cat, there is no need to further note to ourselves, "Oh, yes,
and cats can move." A cat is also a physical object and as such, intuitive physical assumptions are
triggered as well. These intuitive assumptions provide the basic structure to concepts. Boyer refers
to these structures as "causal schemata" (ibid.).
Many, if not all, of the expectations and intuitions generated by these casual schemata appear to
be in place already by early childhood. A growing wealth of experiments supports the suggestion
that preschool-aged children have a "naive" or "intuitive" understanding of physics, biology, and
psychology. For example, in the domain of "naive physics," children as young as 4 months seem
already to expect (at least in some situations) that solid objects move in continuous paths (principle
of continuity) and do not pass through other solid objects (principle of solidity) (Baillargeon 1987;
Baillargeon and Hanko-Summers 1990). In biological reasoning, preschoolers have been found to
have some understanding that while artifacts may be transformed into other artifacts, membership
in a biological category depends upon unseen properties that cannot be easily changed (Keil
1986). Further, 4-year-olds can successfully override irrelevant physical similarities when
projecting biological properties, such as knowing that sharks breathe like tropical fish and not like
dolphins, simply because sharks are a type of fish (Gelman and Markman 1986). Psychologically,
3-and 4-year-olds have some appreciation that people behave based on beliefs and desires, and
that the fulfillment or frustration of desires leads to positive or negative emotional states (Perner
1995). These domains of "naive" knowledge constitute the majority of inferences which compose
causal schemata.
A concept may also possess many other features not automatically assumed by the causal
schemata. Returning to the cat, a cat might be aggressive, playful, and agile, as well as a
purposeful, moving thing. These additional features must be attached more explicitly to the
concept, for they are not natural consequences of the causal theories that govern a cat's ontology.
Boyer terms these features as "nonschematic" features. Because they are not intuitive implications
of "cat," they are also less likely to be true.
Since schematic and nonschematic features of concepts are cognitive regularities, they apply to all
concepts, even "religious" ones. What distinguishes religious concepts from other concepts, asserts
Boyer, is that religious concepts possess nonschematic features that violate the causal schemata of
the concept. For example, under Boyer's definition, a cat that can never die is a religious concept
because the property "can never die" violates our intuitive theories about what it means to be a
living thing, and "cat" designates a living thing. Boyer goes on to say, as has been argued
elsewhere (Sperber 1994), that it is these counterintuitive properties that make religious concepts
salient. Increased salience, in turn, enhances the likelihood that the concept will be remembered
and passed on.
Does this suggest that the more counterintuitive features a concept has, the better? No. Too many
counterintuitive features would undermine the structure of the concept. Its relations to relevant
causal theories would be disrupted. A cat that can never die, has wings, is made of steel,
experiences time backwards, lives underwater, and speaks Russian would no longer be much of a
cat. Consequently, the causal schemata would no longer generate sensible intuitive assumptions,
and so there would be no counterintuitive properties. For now, it suffices to note that what Boyer
proposes is a cognitive optimum: a balance between satisfying ontologically driven intuitive
assumptions and violating enough of them to produce a salient concept.
These relatively simple observations do a great deal of work when applied to the problem of the
transmission and recurrence of religious concepts. To illustrate, the concept "ghost" appears in
many different cultures. Ghosts are a nonphysical aspect of a person who survives death and
continues to function much like an ordinary person: They have beliefs and desires that motivate
behavior, they can see and hear, they can communicate, and so on. They differ from humans in
their physical properties. They are intangible and able to pass through solid objects. That all ghosts
tend to have these common properties can be readily addressed with Boyer's theory. Ontologically,
ghosts are best categorized as persons or sentient beings, just like humans. Like humans, they
possess all the intuitive assumptions of sentient beings like having beliefs and desires that
motivate behavior. These intuitive assumptions need not be explicitly transmitted. Once ghosts are
recognized as humanlike, the causal schema is carried along as baggage. Only the nonstandard
(i.e., intuitive assumption violating) property of not having a physical body needs to be explicitly
represented and transmitted. Many other nonstandard properties are rarely attributed to ghosts
because too many nonstandards would begin to degrade the conceptual structure.
Turning to concepts of divinity, once a god is assigned to an ontological category, a concept of that
god must conform to the majority of expectations on that category's membership. Under Boyer's
ontological scheme, gods fall most reasonably in the category of "persons," the same ontological
node occupied by humans. As persons, gods must conform to the bulk of properties to which
humans are expected to conform as well. Consequently, gods are cognitively pressured to be
anthropomorphic with regard to psychological, biological, and physical properties, but will also
minimally deviate on some properties.
Though differing on many other counts, both Guthrie's and Boyer's theories predict intuitive and
automatic anthropomorphism of gods with regard to psychological, biological, and physical
properties.[2] That is, they predict gods will be tacitly attributed a constellation of properties that
humans possess but which gods, in their theological clothing, do not typically share. These include
psychological properties that are often considered distinctively human, such as use of language, a
belief-desire calculus for directing behavior, and emotions, as well as biological properties that
humans share with other animals and physical properties that humans share with other bounded,
solid objects. A failure to document these attributions would undermine both cognitive theories.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
In one of the most well-known studies of children's ideas of God, using drawings of God, interviews,
letters, and other measures, Heller (1986) investigated concepts held by Michigan children mostly
ranging in age from 5 to 10 from many different faith traditions. One prominent finding was that
children tended to think of God as a superhuman and not the formless, intangible, omniscient, and
omnipotent being their theologies taught. Similarly, Mudge (1923) reported that 77% of 6- to 14-
year-olds he interviewed had visual, anthropomorphic imagery of God. Many other studies asking
children to draw pictures of God also found that God was frequently represented
anthropomorphically (e.g., Goodnow 1977; Harms 1944; Harris 1963; Pitts 1976). But as Hyde
(1990) points out, the use of drawings "to probe ideas of God assumes visual thinking in
anthropomorphic terms" (75). Indeed, the pervasiveness of the assumption that children have
anthropomorphic concepts of God has led to little criticism of methods such as drawing pictures that
clearly bias children to produce concrete illustrations of God. Likewise, anthropomorphism is
considered such an obvious and predictable feature of children's concepts of God that the reason
children anthropomorphize and the role anthropomorphism plays in their understanding of God
have been largely ignored.
In adulthood, evidence of anthropomorphism from psychological literature comes almost
exclusively from the attribution of personality traits, dispositions, and emotions to God. The
independent variables in these correlational studies tend to be the subjects' own personality traits,
current emotional states, clinical conditions, and personal or family histories. For example, it has
been found that self-esteem and loving images of God (Benson and Spilka 1973), locus of control
and loving images of God (deJonge 1993), and loneliness and a "wrathful God" concept are
correlated (Schwab and Petersen 1990).
These studies provide evidence that God is attributed personality traits; however, they fall short of
evidence for full-fledged anthropomorphism. Being loving and being wrathful are certainly human
qualities, but it is unclear that these are exclusively human qualities. To jump to this conclusion is
anthropocentric. God might have possessed the property of being loving earlier (and better) than
humans, and so humans being loving would be evidence of theomorphism.[3]
Psychological evidence for fundamental anthropomorphism, that is, automatic and implicit
attribution of humanlike physical, biological, and psychological properties, which Boyer and
Guthrie demand, is scarce in studies of adults in the Abrahamic West, because traditional
measures used to address God concepts do not properly tap implicit cognitive structures. An
adequate cognitive measure of God concepts must avoid two problems common in traditional
measures. First, individual concepts of God are subject to social conformity and orthodoxy
pressures. If adults are asked whether God possesses a physical body like a humans, the answer
will be no, even if God is imagined as a bearded old man sitting on a throne in the clouds, simply
because this image of God is not orthodox and is associated with juvenile thinking. Consequently,
direct-report measures of God concepts are suspect with regard to unorthodox properties. A
second but related problem that an adequate cognitive measure must avoid is emphasizing explicit
concepts instead of implicit assumptions but remaining consistently interpretable.
Evidence of implicit, often tacit, anthropomorphic assumptions in reasoning about God is required
to support cognitive theories because it is these types of concepts that organize on-line information
processing, structure memory organization, generate inferences, allow categorization of novel
things, and facilitate structured imagination (Sperber, Premack, and Premack 1995; Ward 1995).
Explicitly held ideas about various things, such as God, may only represent a list of rehearsed,
nonintegrated attributes, and have no causal efficacy.
One recently published set of experiments by Barrett and Keil (1996) provides both an appropriate
cognitive measure and evidence supporting fundamental anthropomorphism of God concepts
among American university students: a narrative comprehension measure.[4]
among American university students: a narrative comprehension measure.[4]
In contrast to participants' narrative comprehension data, when explicitly asked whether or not God
has similar properties using a questionnaire, they rejected the anthropomorphic attributes. Barrett
and Keil interpreted these differences in results as evidence of cognitive pressure for God to
conform to intuitive assumptions of an intentional agent concept: When there is little processing
demand, as in a direct-response questionnaire, people may use their more cognitively
cumbersome, theologically correct concept of God. But when processing demands are increased,
God is treated like any other agent, having natural limitations.
Barrett and Keil's reasoning was that if nonanthropomorphic theological God concepts are used in
basic conceptual activities, then subjects' reported theological concepts regarding God's properties
should have matched the God concept revealed by how subjects remember short narratives -- a
conceptual activity. Alternatively, subjects' theological God concepts placed 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 were imposed. To illustrate this distinction,
one story read:
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 basic, intuitive God concept is anthropomorphic might 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 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.
To further illustrate the logic, in one story from Barrett and Keil (1996), a woman gets lost in a cave
and begins to pray. It is evidence of the concept "women are prone to cry when frightened" to
misremember that the woman indeed cried when she was lost, though the story never states this,
even though it is possible for a woman to cry in this situation. Likewise, even though an omnipotent
God may take on human limitations (e.g, incarnations), it is evidence of anthropomorphism for
subjects to misremember these human attributes as being included in a story when they were not,
in fact, present.
While the detected distinction between basic concepts of God used in narrative comprehension
and theological concepts used in answering questionnaire items is suggestive, the findings might
have been prompted by cultural, not psychological, factors. Perhaps differences between results of
the questionnaire and performance on the narrative comprehension task were due to the
participants simply not being adept at thinking about God in real-time discourse. After all, in much
of American society, thoughts of God might be confined to Sunday's theological reflections and not
integrated into everyday life. On the other hand, pressures to hold an orthodox view of God may
unnecessarily push questionnaire responses away from anthropomorphism. In any case, a
replication of these data in a markedly different cultural setting is necessary before drawing any
strong conclusions.
To this end, a version of the written narrative comprehension task used by Barrett and Keil, along
with a survey of what properties are attributed to God, was administered to Hindus in northern
India. This population was selected because in devotional Hinduism, much as in the Abrahamic
theisms, ultimately God (i.e., the Ultimate Being) is considered completely formless and
nonanthropomorphic, but various forms of God are widely described in varying degrees of
anthropomorphism. In fact, anthropomorphism is embraced rather than viewed with suspicion
(Mukherji 1947; Eck 1985). It might be expected that various degrees of anthropomorphism
attributed to specific forms of God in Hindu theology would lead to different degrees of
anthropomorphism as measured by a survey and as measured by the narrative comprehension
task. Specifically, Brahman, the formless God, should show little anthropomorphism, while Krishna,
an incarnation or actual human should show much anthropomorphism. Vishnu and Shiva, two
forms of Brahman frequently depicted in human forms would be expected to fall somewhere in
between.
METHOD
Subjects. Participants were 50 Indians, 47 Hindu and 3 Muslim. Ages ranged from 9 to 55 years
with a mean age of 25.4 years. Fourteen were younger than 20; eight were 30 to 39; and 14 were
older than 39 years. Twenty-four were female; 19 were male; and seven did not list their sex.
Participants were recruited from schools and neighborhoods in Delhi and Jaipur, India, yielding a
large range of educational attainment. While being able to read English was a prerequisite for the
study -- and English skills have a strong correlation with education -- some subjects had as few as
two years of schooling and others as many as 21. The vast majority of subjects spoke Hindi as their
first language.[5]
Materials. A written version of five of the eight stories used in Barrett and Keil's Experiment 2 were
prepared in one random order. These five stories were followed by either eight or nine recall items,
totaling 42 items: 26 control items concerned with the basic facts of the story, and 16 "God" items
concerned with how the particular form of God was conceptualized. The two God items for the story
given above are "Krishna had just finished answering another prayer when Krishna helped the
boy" and "Krishna went to the boy in response to the boy's prayer for help." Two control items from
this story were "The boy got his left arm caught between two rocks" and "Krishna responded to the
boy's prayer by pushing a rock." (While this second control item includes Krishna, it does not test
any potentially anthropomorphic assumptions and so is a control item.)
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 or mobility as in the God items given above). "Yes" answers on these items at a rate
exceeding chance error (as estimated by each subjects' control item accuracy) 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's 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 a herd of cattle pass over a rock on a road, God
cannot see the rock. Accuracy on God items was contrasted with accuracy on control items so that
subjects who simply have a bad memory or poor comprehension were not mistakenly identified as
anthropomorphizers.
Four different versions were prepared, each with a different form of the Hindu Supreme Being:
Brahman -- the formless God; Shiva and Vishnu -- two forms of Brahman frequently depicted in
anthropomorphic images; and Krishna -- an avatar or incarnation of Vishnu who was actually
human and is depicted in human form.
Likewise, four versions of a 15-item survey asking subjects to rate on a four-point scale their
degree of agreement with different attributes of God were prepared. The points of the scale were
"strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," and "strongly disagree." The survey also asked for age, sex,
faith tradition, and years of schooling. The narrative comprehension form and the survey form were
paired so that each subject was asked only about one form of the Divine. Subjects were asked to fill
out the narrative comprehension form completely and then complete the survey.[6]
Procedure. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the four groups resulting in imbalanced
group sizes. There were 7 in the Shiva group, 12 in the Vishnu group, 14 in the Brahman group,
and 17 in the Krishna group. Subjects were asked to read the five narratives using their own
conception of the god in question and answer the recall items. Subjects were allowed to work at
their own pace.[7]
RESULTS AND DISCUSION
No differences between groups were found on the survey measure. Likewise, no group differences
were detected on the narrative comprehension task or for any interactions either; so all subjects
were treated as one group for the following analyses.[8]
Though there was a fair amount of variation in responses to the questionnaire items (especially on
items regarding biological properties), there was still an overwhelming tendency to reject
anthropomorphic properties of the gods. Subjects agreed that all forms of Brahman can do
anything, know everything, can perform multiple mental activities at the same time, see everything,
hear everything and have non-natural spatial properties. Table 1 summarizes the results of the
questionnaire.
Items were scored on a scale of 1 to 4 for how much they rejected an anthropomorphic attribute. A
score of 1 indicated anthropomorphism. Averaging across all 15 items for each subject, a score
less than 2.5 would indicate a general tendency to anthropomorphize. Of the 50 subjects, only 10
showed this tendency. Thirty-nine averaged greater than 2.5, and one averaged exactly 2.5. This
difference is significant, p < .001 (sign test). Similarly, sign tests based on the number of subjects
per item who answered either on the anthropomorphic or the nonanthropomorphic side of the scale
revealed that all but three items (1, 2, and 5) had significantly more nonanthropomorphic
responses. No items had more anthropomorphic responses.
This tendency to disagree with anthropomorphic properties of the gods sharply contrasted with
performance on the narrative comprehension task. Much as in Barrett and Keil's experiments,
responses indicated a high degree of anthropomorphism in concepts of the gods. Subjects were
accurate on God items only 38.1% on average (SD = .209), compared to 81.1% on control items
(SD = .139), t(49) = 12.874, p < .0001 (paired t-test). This indicated that subjects mistakenly
remembered particular anthropomorphic proporties being attributed to the gods in the stories at a
far greater rate than errors on control items. For example, subjects were much more inclined to
misremember a story as reporting Vishnu moving from place to place (even though on the
questionnaire it was reported that Vishnu could be in more than one place at a time), than to
misremember a woman crying when she discovered she was lost in a cave.
In this task, subjects often misrememberod the narratives as including attributes that were
humanlike properties. Subjects apparently used anthropomorphic concepts to process and
remember the stories, even though these concepts did not agree with the explicit characterizations
of the gods implied by answers on the questionnaire. Specifically, subjects seemed to characterize
the gods as having to be near something to receive sensory information from it, not being able to
attend differentially 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. The gods were not conceptualized as completely free of constraints nor similar to the
characterizations given on the questionnaires.
Further, the anthropomorphic performance on the narrative comprehension task appears
independent of answers on the survey. The difference between God item accuracy and control item
accuracy is uncorrelated with a composite anthropomorphism score on the survey (average of all
15 items). A simple regression detected no significant relationship (t(48) =1.653, p =. 105) but a
trend in the opposite direction of what might be expected (r = .232). Subjects who were less
anthropomorphic on the survey, tended to show a greater disparity between God item and control
item accuracy suggesting more anthropomorphism in the basic concept of the god. However, this
trend disappears when age is added to the regression model.
Age was found to be related to anthropomorphism in two ways. First, a simple linear regression
found that age had a positive relationship with the difference between God item and control item
accuracy, t(48) = 2.608, p = .012. Older subjects tended to show more evidence of
anthropomorphism on the narrative comprehension task. This relationship was apparent even
when factoring out education. Second, older subjects tended to give less anthropomorphic
responses on the survey, t(48) = 3.487, p = .001. Again, this relationship still exists after controlling
for the effect of education.
Taken together these two results suggest a growing disparity between stated beliefs about
attributes of the gods and the properties that seem to be assumed when performing the narrative
comprehension task. Intuitively, this is sensible: As one ages, one becomes more attuned to social
expectations and orthodoxy in theological concepts, but one only becomes more fluent in
reasoning about the gods anthropomorphically with greater total exposure to images and
mythology, and with overlearning of properties of human agency. However, given that this study
has a restricted age range, and may mask important cohort effects, interpretations must be made
tentatively.
CONCLUSIONS
At least occasionally, people apparently 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, suggesting that God, and perhaps other religious objects
and entities, are conceptualized on at least two different levels: the basic, everyday concept used in
real-time processing of information, and the theological level used in discussion of God's properties
or activities outside of on-line, real-time processing demands. As was shown above, these two
levels of conceptualization may represent God in substantially different ways. The basic concept
appears to be anthropomorphic, having many physical and psychological properties of humans.
The theological concept attributes to God a wholly different mode of existence than humans and is
decidedly not anthropomorphic.[9]
For many people, the theological concept might not be a full-blown concept in the sense of
providing a set of causal relations between various features of God, that generate predictions,
explanations, and inferences. Theologically, God might be represented as either a list of
decontextualized properties like omniscient, omnipotent, loving, etc., or be represented as a set of
conditional attributes: If the context is A, Cod is W and X; if the context is B, God has properties Y
and Z. In either case, a robust, developed concept of God is not available.
Another pessibility is that for many people the theological concept simply represents a cognitively
assisted version of the basic concept. "Cognitively assisted' means that through analysis,
discussion, and writing over thousands of years, many features have been abstracted out of
concrete situations and been made salient. These mostly non-natural properties are not the
cognitive burden on transmission that Boyer's theory predicts because of enormous rehearsal and
the assistance of written texts. Further, representation of these cognitively more difficult properties
is facilitated by using them outside of any real-time demands. The theological concept, while being
a true concept, might be more fragile than the basic concept and only successful at producing
inferences, explanations, and predictions in slowed down situations with simplified contextual
variables, as when reflecting on how a certain understanding of God bears on one's goals and
aspirations.
The relationship between these two 'levels' of representing attributes of the Divine parallels
scientific thought. While a scientifically educated person knows that the earth revolves around the
sun, this understanding does not easily produce real-time inferences. Rather, even knowing full
well that the sun does not revolve around the earth, we use this mistaken relationship to generate
predictions about the position of the sun throughout the day. The scientifically inaccurate
representation produces more useful inferences in everyday life. The same is true of folk notions of
physics and time versus scientific counterparts.
More imperrantly, the data presented, together with Barrett and Keil's (1996), provide the evidence
of anthropomorphism in basic concepts of divine beings that Guthrie's and Boyer's theories
anticipate. To organize and understand information about gods in realtime, on-line tasks such as
comprehending a narrative, people rely on an agent concept that is anthropomorphic, at least with
regard to many physical and psychological properties. The intuitive expectations of the mind
constrain how divine beings are represented, even if these constraints contradict professed
theological beliefs.
That gods are given human properties does not imply that these attributions are due to cognitively
coding gods as 'humans' or 'persons' as Boyer's theory might suggest; nor does it imply that people
are biased to interpret ambiguous stimuli as "humanlike" as Guthrie's theory predicts. The same
results could be explained in terms of a more general intuition-generator that operates on all
intentional agents. Since gods and humans are intentional agents, they will be expected to conform
to similar psychological and physical assumptions. If this is the case, what has been documented is
not "anthropomorphism" at all.
Regardless of the underlying cognitive mechanism, the data presented above provide strong
evidence of important cross-cultural constraints on how divine beings are represented. As with
'natural' concepts, when it comes to thinking about the supernatural, not just anything goes.
NOTES
This research was supported by the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program and Cornell University
Graduate School. The author thanks Dr. and Mrs. Vinay Srivastava for their invaluable assistance
and advice.
[1] Naturally, this argument does not apply to concepts of supreme beings, gods, or 'God' for which
they are not understood as an agents, but rather some sort of consciousness or other abstract
entities that in no way initiates action. For this paper, 'God' designates religious traditions' ultimate
beings since this is the most common English label for the ultimate being in the Judeo-Christian
traditions and in modern Hinduism. Most psychological research on concepts of the divine have
focused on the Judeo-Christian 'God' Consequently, this area of research is referred to as the study
of God concepts. This jargon is retained here.
[2] Some kind of humanlike attributions are also anticipated by Lawson and McCauiey's theory of
religious rituals (1990). They argue that intuitions regarding religious rituals such as whether or not
they are well-formed, efficacious, reversible with another ritual, or repeatable in subsequent rituals
are merely a function of regularities in how action is cognitively represented. Actions that involve
superhuman agents, such as religious rituals, are represented much like mundane actions. This
suggests beliefs and desires are expected to motivate the behaviors of superhuman agents much
as they de in human agents.
[3] This error lurks in many atheistic discussions of anthropomorphism, like Freud's (1927) and, I
believe, Guthrie's (1993). Because God is assumed to not exist, of course when properties that
humans possess are attributed to God, it is clearly anthropomorphism. A nonexistent God only has
the property of "nonexistence" until it is filled in with human properties. A more sensible treatment of
anthropomorphism remains agnostic about God's existence and properties and only treats as
strong evidence of anthropomorphism those properties shared with humans that are attributed to
God in some contexts but not in others. I assume that, as when discussing cognitive
representations of natural concepts, it is important to distinguish between God's actual properties
and God's attributed or represented properties.
[4] This method was also used by Barrett and VanOrman (1996) to measure differences in
anthropomorphism between Catholic and Protestant college students.
[5] Subjects were recruited with the aid of native Indians living in the cities from which subjects
were drawn. No clear second-language problems were detected since the subjects were
accustomed to reading and writing in English. Control item accuracy was comparable to that of
Barrett's and Keil's (1996) subjects who were Cornell University students.
[6] Complete materials may be obtained by writing the author.
[7] Barrett and Keil demonstrated in Experiments 2 and 3 (1996) that cognitive expectations are so
strong that subjects will make mistakes about the content of a narrative, inferring anthropomorphic
properties where none are included, even when the narrative is available for examination. Subjects
also made these errors in paraphrasing the stories.
[8] The small number of subjects in each group (and poor statistical power) undoubtedly
contributed to the failure to detect any differences between groups. However, the trends
represented by the group means did not even vaguely suggest any hypothesized differences. For
example, the Krishna group showed slightly more rejection of anthropomorphism than the
Brahman group on the questionnaire, a mean score of 3.00 versus 2.87 -- exactly opposite of
predicted.
[9] The distinction between theological concepts and basic concepts of God is important for
selecting appropriate methodologies. Since the theological concept is more explicit and likely to be
developed and used in social contexts, it may be especially subject to demand characteristics,
social influence, and overlearned behavioral schemas. When asked to explicitly specify God's
attributes, most people will feel some pressure to give what they perceive to be an orthodox
response. In mainstream Christianity, God would be characterized nonanthropomorphically, even if
respondents maintain basic concepts that are anthropomorphic. This phenomena may be termed
"theological correctness."
REFERENCES
Baillargeon, Renee. 1987. Young infant's reasoning about the physical and spatial characteristics
of a hidden object. Cognitive Development 2: 179-200.
Baillargeon, Renee, and Stephanie Hanks-Summers. 1990. Is the object adequately supported by
the bottom object? Young infant's understanding of support relations. Cognitive Development 5:
29-54.
Barrett, Justin L., and Frank C. Keil. 1996. Conceptualizing a non-natural entity: Anthropomorphism
in God concepts. Cognitive Psychology 31: 219-47.
Barrett, Justin L., and Brant VanOrman. 1996. The effects of the use of images in worship on God
concepts. Journal of Psychology and Christianity 15: 38-45.
Bartlett, Frederic C. 1995. Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. New
York: Cambridge University Press [reprint].
Benson, Peter L., and Bernard Spilka. 1973. God image as a function of self-esteem and locus of
control. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 12: 297-310.
Berry, Diane S., Stephen J. Misovich, Kern J. Kean, and Reuben M. Baron. 1992. Effects of
disruption of structure and motion on perceptions of social causality. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin 18: 237-44.
Berry, Diane S., and Ken Springer. 1993. Structure, motion, and preschoolers' perceptions of social
causality. Ecological Psychology 5: 273-83.
Boyer, Pascal. 1994. The naturalness of religious ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Bradbury, J. B. 1947. The religious development of the adolescent. M.Ed. thesis, University of
Manchester.
Bransford, John D., and Nancy S. McCarrell. 1974. A sketch of a cognitive approach to
comprehension: Some thoughts about understanding what it means to comprehend. In Cognition
and the symbolic processes, edited by W. B. Weimer and D. S. Palermo, 189-229). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbeum Associates.
deJongo, James J. 1993. Personality constructs and related God concepts. The Analyst 2: 22-29.
Eck, Diana L. 1985. Darsan: Seeing the divine image in India, 2d ed. Chambersburg, PA: Anima
Books.
Eddy, Timothy J., Gordon G. Gallup, and Daniel J. Povinelli. 1993. Attribution of cognitive states to
animals: Anthropomorphism in comparative perspective. Journal of Social Issues 49: 87-107.
Freud, Sigmund. 1927. The future of an illusion, translated by J. Strachey, 1961. New York: Norton.
(Original work published 1927).
Gelman, Susan, and Ellen Markman. 1986. Categories and induction in young children. Cognition
23: 183-209.
Goodnow, Jacqueline. 1977. Children's drawings. London: Open Books.
Guthrie, Stewart E. 1996. Religion: What is it? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35: 412-
19.
---. 1993. Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion` New York: Oxford University Press.
---. 1980. A cognitive theory of religion. Current Anthropology 21: 181-94.
Harms, E. 1944. The development of religious experience in children. American Journal of
Sociology 50: 112-22.
Heider, F, and Simmel, M. 1944. An experimental study of apparent behavior. The American
Journal of Psychology 57: 243-59.
Heller, David I. 1986. The children's God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hyde, Kenneth Edum. 1990 Religion in childhood and adolescence: A comprehensive review of
the research. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press.
Inagaki, Kayoko, and Giyoo Hatano. 1987. Young children's spontaneous personification as
analogy. Child Development 58: 1013-20.
Keil, Frank C. 1979. Semantic and conceptual development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
---. 1986. The acquisition of natural kind and artifact terms. In Conceptual change, edited by A.
Marrar and W. Demopolous. Norwood, N J: Ablex.
---. 1989. Concepts, kinds and conceptual development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
---. 1992. The origins of an autonomous biology In Modularity and constraints in language and
cognition. Minnesota symposia on child psychology, vol. 25, edited by M. K. Gunnar and M.
Maratsos, 103-37. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Mudgo, E. L. 1923. The God experience. Cincinnati: The Caxton Press.
Mukherji, S. K. 1947. Psychology of image worship of the Hindus. Calcutta: Oriental Agency.
Perner, Josef. 1995. The many faces of belief: Reflections on Fodor's and the child's theory of mind.
Cognition 57: 241-69.
Piaget, Jean. 1960. The child's conception of the world, translated by J. Tomlinson and A.
Tomlinson. Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, & Co.
---. 1969. The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.
Pitts, V. Peter. 1976. Drawing the invisible: Children's conceptualization of God. Character Potential
8: 12-24. Schwab, Reinhold, and Kay U. Petersen. 1990. Religiousness: Its relation to loneliness,
neuroticism and subjective well-being. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29: 335-45.
Sperber, Dan. 1995. Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
---. 1994 The modularity of thought and the epidemiology of representations. In Mapping the mind:
Domain specificity in cognition and culture, edited by Larry A. Hirschfeld and Susan A. Gelman, 39-
-67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sperber, Dan, David Premack, and Ann James Premack, editors. 1995. Causal Cognition: A
multidisciplinary debate. New York: Oxford Univerisity Press.
~~~~~~~~
By JUSTIN L. BARRETT
Justin L. Barrett is an assistant professor of psychology at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 49546.
E-mail: jbarrett@calvin.edu.
Copyright of Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.
Result List Refine Search 38 of 148
Tools
Add to folder
Print
E-mail
Save
Cite
Export
Create Note
Permalink
Share
Top of Page
Mobile Site iPhone and Android apps EBSCO Support Site Privacy Policy Terms of Use Copyright
2014 EBSCO Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.