Abstract

 

M. Lindeman, I. Pyysiäinen & P. Saariluoma (2002).
Representing God.
Papers on Social Representations, 11, pages 1.1-1.13.
[http://www.psr.jku.at/]

 

The study explores representations of God. Specifically, we focus on how
attributes assigned to God are interrelated, what attributes people accept as
being or not being descriptive of God, and how the representation is related
to religiousness and religious participation. Three hundred fifty-seven
participants rated 78 attributes. A factor analysis yielded five attribute
sets, i.e., omnipotence, nature, incorporeality, curious metaphors and
other gods. The results show, for example, that in the whole sample, God is
most often associated with incorporeality. Among highly religious people,
representing God by nature, other gods or curious metaphors is inversely
related to active religious participation, whereas associating God with
omnipotency is linearly related to religious participation. The results
indicate, among other things, that it may be possible to predict from a set of
attributes the nature of an individual’s religiousness and religious
participation and what other attributes he/she ascribes to God.