Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-11-2024
Abstract
Why do people make supernatural attributions (SA) for events? This article focused on five possible predictors: stressfulness, unusual events, religiousness, seeing a supernatural explanation as meaningful, and seeing supernatural entities as powerful. We also predicted that people would be more likely to adopt supernatural explanations seen as highly accessible, motivating, and plausible. We focused primarily on SA in general and secondarily on specific entities. We tested preregistered hypotheses using survey data in two samples of undergraduates: one reporting life-changing events (N = 594) and another reporting on an event with a supernatural air, or supernaturally perceived events (N = 475). Results supported all proposed predictors except for stressfulness. Path analyses revealed that, in both samples, predictors were linked with seeing supernatural explanations as accessible, plausible, and motivating; these ratings, in turn, had positive associations with SA. These results begin to integrate previous theory and research on individual predictors of SA.
Keywords
attributions, god, religiousness, stressfulness, supernatural
Language
English
Publication Title
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Grant
59916
Rights
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Wilt, J.A., Exline, J.J. and Stauner, N. (2024), Supernatural Attributions for Extraordinary Events: Examining Cognitive and Contextual Predictors. J Sci Study Relig., 63: 917-937. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12933
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version