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The Implicit Image of God: God as Reality and Psychological Well‐Being
Author(s) -
Testoni Ines,
Visintin Emilio Paolo,
Capozza Dora,
Carlucci Maria Concetta,
Shams Malihe
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12252
Subject(s) - religiosity , psychology , feeling , social psychology , abstraction , similarity (geometry) , anxiety , affect (linguistics) , population , association (psychology) , image of god , image (mathematics) , sociology , psychotherapist , epistemology , theology , philosophy , demography , communication , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , computer science
Research has widely demonstrated that religiosity is related to psychological well‐being even in situations of severe illness. To assess religious beliefs, explicit measures have generally been used. In this study, we measured the belief that God is reality as opposed to myth or abstraction by using an implicit technique (the Single Category Implicit Association Test). The study was carried out in Italy, where a large majority of the population is Catholic, and the prevailing image of God is that of a compassionate and supportive father. Participants were cancer patients identifying themselves as believers. As expected, the automatic belief that God is reality (vs. abstraction) was related to beneficial outcomes: lower reported psychophysical anxiety symptoms and a weaker use of avoidance strategies to cope with stress. Thus, also, automatic religious beliefs may affect feelings and behaviors.