Am I the stone? Overattribution of agency and religious orientation

Petrican, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1363-5553 and Burris, C.T. 2012. Am I the stone? Overattribution of agency and religious orientation. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 4 (4) , pp. 312-323. 10.1037/a0027942

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Abstract

Atran and Norenzayan (2004) proposed that an overactive agency detection module may contribute to the nearly ubiquitous recurrence of supernatural agents across religions. Based on this, 2 studies investigated whether individual differences in the tendency to attribute agency to inanimate objects in the physical environment (an index of overattribution of agency) differentially shape articulations of the religious sentiment—specifically, the intrinsic and immanence orientations—given the distinct conceptions of spiritual agency hypothesized to be associated with each. Study 1 documented a unique positive relationship between intrinsic orientation (devout commitment to traditional orthodoxy) and numinous spiritual experiences (typified by the sense of a powerful, directive Other who is distinct from self and the world), and between immanence orientation (religiously articulated motivation to transcend intra- and interpersonal boundaries) and unitive spiritual experiences (typified by a sense of connection between self, the world, and a spiritual Source). In Study 2, higher scores on a composite overattribution of agency measure, encompassing self-reported predisposition to anthropomorphize nonanimal entities and performance-based responsiveness to gaze cues embedded in inverted faces, predicted higher immanence (but not higher intrinsic) orientation scores. Results thus offer qualified support for the overactive agency detector hypothesis: Immanence religious orientation appears to be a motivational outcome of a perceptual world that is essentially pantheistic, that is, imbued with pervasive sense of agency without regard for the default distinction between animate and inanimate.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	American Psychological Association
ISSN:	1941-1022
Last Modified:	04 Jan 2023 02:36
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/128627

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