The selectivity of nonmaterial beliefs in interpreting life events

✍ Scribed by ALBERT PEPITONE; LUISA SAFFIOTTI

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 145 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0046-2772
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199701)27:1<23::aid-ejsp805>3.0.co;2-b

✦ Synopsis

An experimental study addresses the propositions that nonmaterial beliefs, including supernatural powers and transcendental moral laws, function to enhance comprehension of life events, and perform this function selectively. Informal surveys of newspaper articles and two pilot experiments consistently indicated that the beliefs in fate, God, luck, chance, just reward, and just punishment are elicited to explain life events that are difficult to explain in material terms, and are more or less specialized in the life events they explain. In a final experiment, a sample of U.S. university students (N=103) was presented with 12 life event cases designed to match the belief specializations and asked to interpret freely. Analysis of the reliably coded spontaneous comments confirmed both predictions. In addition, subjects who personally held a given nonmaterial belief used it more selectively than those who did not. Finally, employing the same design and measures, a sample from North India replicated the major U.S. findings.

Introduction

Research on common, everyday, beliefs, which are central in the lives of most adult human beings, has never been in the mainstream of social psychology. Despite their significance throughout human history in influencing the behaviour of individuals and groups, few studies of religious, magical, and mystical beliefs appear in the CCC 0046±2772/97/010023±13