Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 1559–1562

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional

substrates of compensatory control
Kristin Laurin, Aaron C. Kay *, David A. Moscovitch
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3G1

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We suggest that beliefs in a controlling God originate, at least in part, from the desire to avoid the
Received 6 June 2008 emotionally uncomfortable experience of perceiving the world as random and chaotic. Forty-seven par-
Revised 11 July 2008 ticipants engaged in an anxiety-provoking visualization procedure. For half, the procedure included a
Available online 5 August 2008
manipulation designed to temporarily lower beliefs in personal control. As predicted, it was only among
those participants whose sense of personal control was threatened—i.e., participants in need of an alter-
Keywords: nate means for protecting their belief in a non-random world—that subjective anxiety led to increased
Belief in God
subsequent beliefs in the existence of a controlling God. Wide-ranging implications are discussed.
Compensatory control
Anxiety
Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Arousal
Religion
System justification

Introduction be other resources upon which individuals can draw in response to

There is no doubt that religious beliefs are of great consequence
to human civilization. Yet, the psychological roots of such beliefs
are still far from understood. Here, we empirically investigate the
possibility that these kinds of beliefs—in particular, the belief in a
controlling God—originate, at least in part, from a desire to defend
against the aversive emotional experience of perceiving the social
world as random and chaotic.
God as a resource of compensatory control
It has long been believed that human beings are motivated to
avoid the perception of randomness (Antonovsky, 1979; Kruglan-
ski, 1989), particularly because this experience can be psychologi-
cally stressful, even traumatic (e.g., Janoff-Bulman, 1992;
Pennebaker & Stone, 2004). Traditionally, the primary means
through which people have been assumed to avoid this perception
is by affirming their belief in personal control (Kelly, 1955; Perkins,
1968; Presson & Benassi, 1996; Seligman, 1975, 1976; Skinner,
1995; White, 1959). However, given recent observations that not
all individuals, and indeed not all cultures, place such a strong
emphasis on personal control (e.g., Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Pepi-
tone & Saffiotti, 1997; Rodin, Rennert, & Solomon, 1980), there must
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ackay@uwaterloo.ca (C. Kay), dmosco@uwaterloo.ca
(A. Moscovitch).
the threat of chaos and randomness in their environment.
One especially powerful resource, we submit, is the belief in a
controlling God. The groundwork for this hypothesis has been laid
across several theoretical perspectives. At a broad level, we join a
number of other researchers in suggesting that religious beliefs
emerge from ordinary cognitive processes (Boyer, 2003; Guthrie,
1993) and could be motivated by the desire to down-regulate
threat (McGregor, 2006; McGregor, Gailliot, Vasquez, & Nash,
2007; McGregor & Haji, 2007) and avoid various negative psycho-
logical states, such as stress (e.g., McIntosh, 1995; Pargament,
1997; Park, 2005), social alienation (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Caciop-
po, 2008), or existential dilemmas (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004;
Jonas & Fischer, 2006; Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006; Osarchuk &
Tatz, 1973). Moreover, recent research on system justification the-
ory (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Kay et al., 2007) has explicitly
noted the palliative function of endorsing broad ideological belief
systems under times of threat. Thus, there is precedence for think-
ing that religious beliefs might naturally be affected by defensive,
motivated processes.
Inspired by this work, Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, and Laurin
(2008) recently tested the specific hypothesis that beliefs in per-
sonal control and beliefs in the existence of external agents of con-
trol, such as a controlling God, can serve as substitutable
psychological resources in service of the motivation to avoid per-
ceptions of randomness and chaos (also, see Rothbaum, Weisz, &
Snyder, 1982). According to Kay et al., 2008, individuals can rely
upon both external systems of control as well as internal beliefs
of personal control, in varying ratios, to help them cope with the

0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.007
1560 K. Laurin et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 1559–1562

psychological stress associated with the perception of randomness;
that is, to affirm the general belief that things are under control
(Antonovsky, 1979).1 Although there is evidence supporting ele-
ments of this theory (Kay et al., 2008), to date there has been no
experimental test of the main thrust of this idea: that the emotional
discomfort produced by the experience of lowered levels of per-
sonal control is predictive of increased beliefs in the existence of
a controlling God.
Overview of the present study
In the present research, we seek direct evidence that endorsing
the existence of a controlling God can be a response to the psycho-
logical discomfort associated with decreased perceptions of per-
sonal control. In particular, we examine whether the experience
of anxiety—specifically in the context of low personal control—
leads to increased belief in the existence of a controlling God.
It is important to note the nuance of our prediction. We are not
suggesting that the mere experience of anxiety should necessarily
lead to an increased belief in a controlling God. Rather, we hypoth-
esize that when anxiety is coupled specifically with a decreased
sense of personal control, people will be driven to increase their
faith in external providers of order and structure, one of which
could be a controlling God.
All participants were asked to visualize a hypothetical scenario
designed to induce anxiety; however, for a random half of the
participants, the visualization included a manipulation designed
to lower beliefs in personal control, while for the other half, the
same visualization included a manipulation designed to affirm
beliefs in personal control. We then measured participants’ self-
reported levels of subjective anxiety. Skin conductance levels
(SCL) were measured continuously throughout the study, with
the onset and termination of periods of interest defined using
an event marker that was engaged manually by the experimenter
at the appropriate times. Finally, following the assessments of
anxiety and arousal, we asked participants to report the extent
to which they believed in the existence of a controlling God. In
line with Kay et al. (2008), we assume these beliefs can fluctuate
situationally, and not just act as stable, trait-like individual
differences.
Both of our visualizations were designed to be highly anxiety-
provoking and so both were expected to be effective in boosting
participants’ levels of anxiety. However, as mentioned above, we
expected the consequences of this anxiety to differ between the
two experimental conditions. Specifically, we expected that anxi-
ety—as measured by either SCL, self-report, or both—would lead
to increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God, but only
when participants experienced this anxiety in the context of low-
ered beliefs in personal control.
Method
Participants
Forty-seven students (29 females, 10 males, 8 unspecified; 17–
28 years of age) participated.
Procedure
Participants arrived in the study room and SCL electrodes were
attached (see Hofmann, Moscovitch, & Kim, 2006 for methodolog-
1
It should be noted, however, that not all external sources of control are presumed
to be equivalently effective in helping to alleviate the stress of perceived randomness.
In particular, Kay et al. (2008) noted that external systems perceived as being
benevolent and/or efficacious are most effective in this regard.
ical details). Participants were asked to sit quietly for three min-
utes, while SCLbasline was assessed. Following this, they were
randomly assigned to one of two conditions and asked to vividly
imagine the following scenario, played from an audio recording
(SCLmanipulation was recorded during this visualization procedure):
You have just gotten off work and begin to head home. It is a 15
minute walk and you pass by a man, begging for money on the
street. He asks you for some spare change, so you reach into
your pockets to look for some. Your pockets are empty so you
tell the man that you don’t have any. He doesn’t believe you
and begins to come towards you in a threatening manner.
Again, you tell him that you have no change. He calls you a liar
and pulls out a knife from beneath his jacket. You frantically
look around for help, but there is no one. The street is deserted.
Following your instincts, you turn and run. He begins to chase
you, screaming at you for money. All you can hear is the pound-
ing of your heart and feet on the cement. You do not know
where you are going, but if you stop he will catch you. You keep
running; your life depends on it.
At this point, the two conditions diverged. In the Low Personal
Control (LPC) condition, the scenario continued as follows:
You are being chased. You scan your surroundings as you run.
You turn around to see how close he is. He is right behind
you; you can almost feel his breath on your neck. . . Suddenly,
the police come out of nowhere and intercept him. They have
saved you!
In the High Personal Control (HPC) condition, the scenario in-
stead continued as follows:
You remember that you have your cell phone with you, so you
dial 9–1–1. You tell the operator that you are being chased.
You tell her where you are and she tells you that the police
are on the way. You turn around to see how close he is. He
is right behind you; you can almost feel his breath on your
neck. . . Suddenly, the police come out of nowhere and inter-
cept him. They have responded to your phone call! You have
saved yourself!
This manipulation was shown during pilot testing prior to the
study to successfully produce differing perceptions of personal
control: participants exposed to the LPC manipulation rated items
tapped to measure feelings of personal control (‘‘My life is deter-
mined exclusively by my own actions”, and ‘‘The events in my life
are mainly determined by my own actions”) significantly lower
(M = 4.35, SD = 1.47) than those exposed to the HPC manipulation
(M = 5.12, SD = 1.12), t(44) = 2.34, p < .03. In addition, and as ex-
pected, the manipulation did not lead to differences in subjective
anxiety (MLPC = 44.1, SDLPC = 25.2; MHPC = 44.3, SDHPC = 23.1),
t(44) < 1, ns, presumably because both manipulations led to similar
increases in anxiety, compared to baseline.
Immediately after the manipulation, participants were asked to
complete a standard explicit anxiety measure, an ‘‘anxiety ther-
mometer” (Houtman & Bakker, 1989), on a scale from 0 (‘‘not at
all anxious or nervous) to 100 (‘‘extremely anxious or nervous”).
Next, they answered the two questions about their belief in a con-
trolling God employed by Kay et al., 2008, using a seven-point scale
from 1 (‘‘tremendously doubtful”) to 7 (‘‘very likely”): ‘‘To what ex-
tent do you think it is feasible that God, or some type of non-hu-
man entity, is in control, at least in part, of the events within our
universe?” and ‘‘To what extent do you think that the events that
occur in this world unfold according to God’s, or some other non-
human entity’s, plan?” Responses to the two items used here were
very highly correlated, r = .91, p < .001, and therefore were aver-
aged into a single index of belief in a controlling God.
 K. Laurin et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 1559–1562
Results
Consistent with the pretesting data, the visualization sce-
narios led to increased mean levels of arousal compared to
baseline (M SCL Baseline = 4.69, SDSCL Baseline = 1.94; MSCL Scenario =
5.53, SDSCL Scenario = 2.24; F(46) = 36.15, p < .001), and this effect
was not moderated by condition, F < 1, ns, indicating that the two
conditions were equally successful in generating anxious arousal.
Data representing the relationship between anxiety and belief
in a controlling God across the two conditions were analyzed using
hierarchical regression. In the first step, we entered condition
[0 = Low Personal Control (LPC), 1 = High Personal Control (HPC)],
SCLscenario (continuous; centered), and self-reported anxiety (con-
tinuous; centered). In the second step, we entered the interactions
between the predictor variables: condition by self-reported anxi-
ety and condition by SCLscenario.
The first step of the regression explained 15.3% of the variance
in participants0 belief in a controlling God, with participants’ level
of self-reported anxiety significantly associated with their belief in
the existence of a controlling God, t(47) = 2.68, p = .010, b = .38. In
the second step, which increased the explained variance to 25.3%,
the interaction between condition and SCLscenario failed to reach
statistical significance, t(47) < 1, ns, b = .22. However, a significant
interaction emerged between condition and self-reported anxiety,
t(47) = 2.37, p = .022, b = .50, completely qualifying the main
effect of anxiety reported above. The condition  SCL interaction
was non-significant, (t(47) < 1, ns, b = .07).
The condition  self-reported anxiety interaction is illustrated
in Fig. 1. As predicted, among participants whose personal control
was threatened, the more anxiety they reported, the more strongly
they subsequently endorsed the existence of a controlling God,
t(23) = 3.73, p = .001, b = .630. In contrast, for participants exposed
to the same anxiety-provoking scenario but without a threat to
their personal control, levels of self-reported anxiety were not sig-
nificantly predictive of beliefs in a controlling God, t(23) < 1, ns,
b = .12.
Discussion
In the present study, we attempted to provide novel empirical
evidence for one of the presumed psychological functions of
believing in God. We hypothesized that people who experience
anxiety in the context of perceived threats to personal control
would be driven to increase their faith in a controlling God as a
compensatory strategy to restore order and defend against the per-
ception of randomness and chaos. Indeed, we found that when per-
sonal control was threatened during an anxiety-provoking
Fig. 1. Mean belief in a controlling God as a function of self-reported anxiety and
condition (LPC: low personal control; HPC: high personal control).
1561
visualization procedure, increased levels of self-reported anxiety
were associated with increased subsequent beliefs in the likelihood
of the existence of a controlling God. In contrast, when personal
control was not threatened by an otherwise identical anxiety-pro-
voking visualization, participants’ anxiety was unrelated to their
beliefs in a controlling God.
It was interesting to note that while these effects were quite ro-
bust using self-reported anxiety, they were virtually non-existent
using physiologically-indexed anxiety—i.e., SCL. Although we had
no a priori predictions as to which anxiety measure would confirm
our predictions, we can now offer some speculation. Physiological
arousal and subjective negative affect are considered separate
components of anxiety (e.g., Brown, Chorpita, & Barlow, 1998;
Clark & Watson, 1991). While SCL was a precise measure of the
arousal component, only the anxiety thermometer captured the
subjective affective component. Perhaps, then, it is specifically
the experience of subjective emotional discomfort, in the context
of perceived threats to personal control, that leads people to rein-
force their beliefs in a controlling God.
Related to this, it is worth noting that this study involved a
blend of experimental and correlational methodologies. Because
of this, issues of directionality within our key experimental condi-
tion must be addressed. Importantly, because participants’ beliefs
in a controlling God represented our conceptual outcome variable,
we measured these beliefs after the anxiety-inducing visualization
task, and employed a measure that has shown situational variance
(Kay et al., 2008). For these reasons, we find our account—that anx-
iety induced in the context of threat to beliefs in personal control
caused increased beliefs in a controlling God—quite plausible. An
alternative account of our data would suggest that that we in fact
measured stable beliefs in a controlling God, and that these led
participants to feel more anxious during the earlier threat to per-
sonal control. However, we are aware of no theoretical perspective
that would explicitly support the prediction that stable beliefs in
God should lead to increased anxiety in the context of a threat to
personal control.
Another methodological issue to consider relates to the way in
which we threatened personal control. It might be argued that the
low personal control manipulation was actually a high external
control manipulation, in which the ever-watchful police rescue
the participant from an unpleasant fate. If this were the case, we
might have effectively primed participants in the low personal
control condition to think about sources of external control in gen-
eral, including a controlling God. Such a possibility, however, is un-
likely for two reasons. First, both conditions in fact possessed
elements of high external control: the police ultimately played
the same role in both cases. Second, no difference was observed be-
tween conditions in terms of overall beliefs in a controlling God,
which would have been expected under such a priming interpreta-
tion. Thus, it is reasonable to argue that the two conditions differed
primarily in the extent to which they emphasized participants’
personal control over an equivalent outcome.
Concluding remarks
There is little doubt that religious beliefs drastically shape peo-
ple’s everyday lives and the broader political and social landscape.
Ultimately, the goal of the theoretical perspective presented here
(also see Kay et al., 2008) is to illuminate the contextual factors,
both permanent and fleeting, that produce increased or decreased
attachment to external agents of control, such as a controlling God.
One intriguing implication of this model is that those socio-cul-
tural contexts that strip individuals of (a) feelings of personal con-
trol (through, for example, poverty and other barriers to social
mobility), as well as (b) legitimate and concrete sources of external
1562 K. Laurin et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 1559–1562
control (such as stable governments), may be particularly likely to
breed reliance upon religious sources of comfort, insofar as such
sources are the only reasonable means through which people can
maintain their faith in an orderly and non-random world. Of
course, given the breadth and magnitude of religious beliefs, there
are undoubtedly many causes to their widespread adoption (Atran
& Norenzayan, 2004; Boyer, 2003; Epley et al., 2008; Guthrie,
1993; Jonas & Fischer, 2006; McIntosh, 1995; Norenzayan & Han-
sen, 2006; Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973; Pargament, 1997; Park, 2005).
A complete understanding of their roots and causes, therefore, will
most certainly require several different perspectives. It is our hope
that the precise model of compensatory control we have tested
here and elsewhere (Kay et al., 2008) will contribute to our theo-
retical and empirical footing in this very important domain.
Acknowledgments
This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from a
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada re-
search grant to the second author, and the Canada Research Chairs
Program to the third author. Special thanks to Renée Chan and
Maureen Merrifield for their assistance with data collection.
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