The faces of God in America: Revealing religious diversity across people and politics

摘要: Literature and art have long depicted God as a stern elderly white man, but do people actually see Him this way? We use reverse correlation to understand how representative sample of American Christians visualize the face God, which we argue is indicative believers think about God's mind. In contrast historical depictions, Americans generally young, Caucasian, loving, perceptions vary by believers' political ideology physical appearance. Liberals relatively more feminine, African American, loving than conservatives, who older, intelligent, powerful. All participants similar themselves on attractiveness, age, and, lesser extent, race. These differences are consistent with past research showing that people's views shaped their group-based motivations cognitive biases. Our results also speak broad scope religious differences: even same nationality faith appear differently