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Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
Attributions to God and Satan About Life-Altering Events
Shanna D. Ray, Jennifer D. Lockman, Emily J. Jones, and Melanie H. Kelly
Online First Publication, September 22, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037884
CITATION
Ray, S. D., Lockman, J. D., Jones, E. J., & Kelly, M. H. (2014, September 22). Attributions to
God and Satan About Life-Altering Events. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Advance
online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037884
Attributions to God and Satan About Life-Altering Events
Shanna D. Ray, Jennifer D. Lockman, Emily J. Jones, and Melanie H. Kelly
Lipscomb University
When faced with negative life events, people often interpret the events by attributing them to the actions
of God or Satan (Lupfer, Tolliver, & Jackson, 1996; Ritzema, 1979). To explore these attributions, we
conducted a mixed-method study of Christians who were college freshmen. Participants read vignettes
depicting a negative life event that had a beginning and an end that was systematically varied.
Participants assigned a larger role to God in vignettes where an initially negative event (e.g., relationship
breakup) led to a positive long-term outcome (e.g., meeting someone better) than with a negative (e.g.,
depression and loneliness) or unspecified long-term outcome. Participants attributed a lesser role to Satan
when there was positive outcome rather than negative or unspecified outcome. Participants also provided
their own narratives, recounting personal experiences that they attributed to the actions of God or Satan.
Participant-supplied narratives often demonstrated “theories” about the actions of God, depicting God as
being involved in negative events as a rescuer, comforter, or one who brings positive out of the negative.
Satan-related narratives were often lacking in detail or a clear theory of how Satan worked. Participants
who did provide this information depicted Satan as acting primarily through influencing one’s thoughts
and/or using other people to encourage one’s negative behavior.
Keywords: attributions, Christianity, God, religion, Satan
When faced with a negative life event, people often use their
religious beliefs as a framework for understanding and coping with
the situation (see Pargament, 1997). Religious coping can involve
a number of different behaviors, including seeking spiritual sup-
port, soliciting help from clergy, forgiving others, and making
sense or meaning out of an event (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, &
Perez, 1998). Using religion to make sense out of an event can
buffer its deleterious effects (Ano & Vasconcelles, 2005; Bjorck &
Thurman, 2007; George, Ellison, & Larson, 2002). However,
adjustment can also be negatively affected if the person perceives
him/herself as being a victim of a cruel rather than a kind God
(Exline, Park, Smyth, & Carey, 2011). Attributions to Satan can
also play a coping role, by providing explanations that reduce
blame toward God (Beck & Taylor, 2008). Ultimately, whether
meaning-making is adaptive depends on the interpretation that the
person has of the event and whether it provides comfort or pro-
vokes anger, inspires hope or leads to hopelessness. Therefore, it
is important to understand how people make sense of negative life
situations. In the present study, we examined people’s use of their
faith to understand negative events, exploring the circumstances
under which Christians attribute a negative life situation to God or
Satan and also exploring the “theories” that they use to explain
how God or Satan acted in their lives.
Prior Research on Attributions to God and Satan
One approach to exploring attributions to God and Satan has
been to investigate whether these are competing explanations for
natural explanations, filling a gap when no natural explanation is
available. Ritzema and Young (1983) explored this issue by pitting
supernatural and natural explanations against each other, having
participants rate hypothetical events on a 1–9 continuum, where
endorsing more God involvement forced one to endorse less nat-
ural involvement. Using this method, subjects included more at-
tributions to God (and less to natural causes) when evaluating
situations in which evidence for supernatural causation was pres-
ent. However, when God and natural explanations are not pitted
against each other, a different picture emerges. Lupfer, Tolliver,
and Jackson (1996) found that when subjects attributed an event
primarily to God, 73% of the time they also assigned a high rating
to naturalistic causes. This led the authors to argue that religious
attributions should not be seen as competing with naturalistic ones.
Instead, subjects use supernatural attributions as supplements to
naturalistic ones. This result has been corroborated by a number of
other studies (Gorsuch & Smith, 1983; Loewenthal & Cornwall,
1993; Lupfer, Brock, & DePaola, 1992; Lupfer, DePaola, Brock,
& Clement, 1994; Lupfer & Layman, 1996). Weeks and Lupfer
Shanna D. Ray, Jennifer D. Lockman, Emily J. Jones, and Melanie H.
Kelly, Department of Psychology, Counseling and Family Science, Lip-
scomb University.
Jennifer D. Lockman is now at the Department of Educational Studies,
Purdue University. Emily J. Jones is now at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH. Melanie H. Kelly is now at Mental Health
Cooperative, Nashville, TN.
We thank the following for their role in this project: Nikki Arnold, Kelly
Beckman, Maureen Byrd, Ashley Call, Roy Hamley, Mark Hayes, Sierra
Jenkins, Michael Kelly, Mabinty Koroma, LuWillow McDaniels, Mary
Tobin, Mariana Rangal, and Rachel Yosick. Portions of these data were
presented at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting in
May, 2012.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shanna
D. Ray, Department of Psychology, Counseling and Family Science,
Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN 37204-3951. E-mail: shanna.ray@
lipscomb.edu
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality © 2014 American Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 6, No. 4, 000 1941-1022/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037884
1
(2000) found that attributions to God increased as people moved
from proximal explanations to distal explanations.
Another issue addressed by prior research is the question of
who, specifically, is more likely to make attributions to God and
Satan. A consistent finding, perhaps not surprisingly, is that reli-
gious subjects perceived God as a causal agent more often than
nonreligious subjects (Loewenthal & Cornwall, 1993; Weeks &
Lupfer, 2000), especially those with conservative religious beliefs
(Lupfer et al., 1992; Lupfer & Layman, 1996; Kunst, Bjorck, &
Tan, 2000). Baker (2008), using data from the 2005 Baylor Reli-
gion Survey, found that belief in Satan, hell, and demons was
correlated with SES, with higher income and education levels
predicting less belief in them. Baker found that women and Afri-
can Americans were more likely to believe in Satan, hell, and
demons than other demographic groups. Looking at correlates of
attributions to God, Ritzema (1979) found that the individual
characteristics and beliefs of the attributer matter. Attributions to
God were positively correlated with measures of Creedal Assent
(endorsement of Christian beliefs/doctrines), Devotionalism (per-
sonal prayer, feelings of closeness to God), and Salience-
Cognition (importance of feelings in the person’s thoughts and
feelings). Gorsuch and Smith (1983) found that those who scored
high on a “nearness to God” scale attributed more responsibility to
God for all occurrences, especially extreme outcomes.
Jensen (2009) explored the liberal/conservative dimension
among religious children, adolescents, and adults by doing semi-
structured interviews about God and Satan among evangelical and
mainline Presbyterians. More participants believed in God than
Satan and people generally regarded God as positive or neutral,
whereas Satan was negative. To the conservatives, Satan was real,
which was not the case for the majority of the liberal participants.
Belief in Satan provided ways of explaining negative things like
deception and strife, though control over one’s life was not a theme
that emerged in their descriptions of Satan. Conservatives and
liberals differed in terms of how much control they saw God as
having on their lives, with conservatives seeing God as being
highly in control, with liberals less so. In the current study, we
chose to focus on a population that these studies suggest will have
the greatest number of God and Satan attributions, religious people
who are from a conservative background.
Research suggests that some events are more likely to involve
attributions to God or Satan than others. The typical methodology
for this type of study involves presenting people with vignettes
describing situations and then asking them to form attributions
about the causes of the events. It has been found that causal
attributions to God (but not Satan) are more common when ex-
plaining occurrences rather than explaining actions and with life-
altering rather than everyday occurrences (Lupfer & Layman,
1996). Attributions to God are more common in health-related
events rather than occupational, finance, social, or family events
(Loewenthal & Cornwall, 1993) and more common with situations
that invoke religious values than those that do not (Lupfer et al.,
1994).
Of interest to us in the present study is the finding that across a
variety of experiments, positive events are more likely to be
attributed to God and negative events are more often attributed to
Satan (Lupfer & Layman, 1996; Ritzema, 1979) Similarly, Hov-
emyr (1998) found that attributions to God were more often used
with success experiences rather than failure experiences and Lup-
fer et al. (1992) found attributions to God to be more common
when the person’s behavior elicits a positive rather than negative
reaction.
This pattern of attributions may serve a useful role in Christian’s
spiritual well-being. Beck and Taylor (2008) found that belief in an
active Satan as measured by their Strength of the Satan Concept
(SSC) scale is associated with higher religious well-being, an
attachment to God that is characterized by idealization of God, and
lower likelihood of blaming God for suffering in life. Beck and
Taylor argue that that negative attributions to Satan serve the
purpose of solving the theological challenges inherent in explain-
ing how bad things can happen in a world with a good and
omnipotent God. Blaming Satan for negative event allows God to
be free from blame and still perceived as a benevolent force.
Wilson and Huff (2001), who developed a Belief in an Active
Satan scale, found that belief in an active Satan has negative
consequences, such as intolerance toward lesbians and gay men.
Perhaps a strong view Satan serves both as a strengthener of
relationships with God (by absolving God of blame for suffering
and bonding the person to God) but might also serve to magnify
hostile feelings toward anyone perceived as not consistent with
God’s will (implying that they are agents of an active Satan).
Though it seems clear from prior research (Beck & Taylor,
2008; Lupfer & Layman, 1996; Ritzema, 1979) that Christians are
reluctant to invoke God as a source of pain or distress, in the
present study we wanted to explore the possibility that God might
be perceived as playing other roles in negative events, such as
allowing them or providing comfort in the midst of them. There is
limited research on this issue, and most of it does not frame the
question in the specific way that we developed it. However, Miner
and McKnight’s (1999) study of Presbyterians in Australia did
investigate whether Christians saw God as directly causing events
or working more indirectly. The authors concluded that Presbyte-
rians in this sample had a more indirect view of God’s sovereignty,
with God allowing events rather than directly controlling them.
Other researchers (Pargament et al., 1988) have explored this
issue by studying the different ways that people relate to God as
they cope with problems. They found 3 styles of coping that reflect
different understandings of the way God works. A self-directing
style assumes that it is the individual’s job to solve problems,
without a great deal of input from God. With the deferring style,
individuals defer the responsibility for problem solving to God
rather than actively solving problems themselves. In the collabor-
ative style, God is seen as a partner that the person collaborates
with to solve problems. This conceptualization was expanded on
by Wong-McDonald and Gorsuch (2000) when they proposed a
fourth style, surrender to God. This style involved an active choice
to surrender to God’s will rather than a passive waiting for God to
solve problems. In the present study, we wanted to understand
other ways that people see God and Satan as working in real
situations in their lives, both as causal agents of events but in other
roles such as allowing events, using events to bring about a
purpose, and so forth.
In addition to exploring these various understandings of God
and Satan’s activity, we were also interested in the contextualized
nature of real-life events. Previous research (Lupfer & Layman,
1996; Ritzema, 1979; Loewenthal & Cornwall, 1993; Miner &
McKnight, 1999) has generally involved presenting participants
with vignettes describing an event and then asking whether it was
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2RAY, LOCKMAN, JONES, AND KELLY
caused by various supernatural agents. A limitation of this method
is that real experiences may not occur as discrete events, lacking a
history, long-term ramifications, or indications that supernatural
forces are implicated. Attribution theorists (cf. Kelley, 1967) have
found that subjects do not merely interpret human actions in
isolation, but consider factors such as how common the behavior
is among people in general, how consistent a person’s behavior is,
and how distinctive a behavior is. In the same way, perhaps
conservative Christians—who view God as an individual with
agency and purpose (Jensen, 2009)–may interpret God’s actions in
relation to their overall history and context. This means that a
specific occurrence (e.g., losing a job) may not have an inherent
interpretation, but a meaning derived from the person reasoning
about the event in the context of earlier or later circumstances.
The Present Study
In the present study, we used a mixed-methods design to explore
conservative Christians’ attributions to God and Satan. In the
quantitative portion, we presented participants with vignettes de-
picting hypothetical situations that had a core event that was
consistent across conditions, but context which varied depending
on condition. The first contextual factor was the circumstance
leading up to the event. For this factor, we varied whether the
person described in the vignette (a) prayed before the event, (b)
had hopes/wishes before the event, or (c) neither of the above
(nothing was specified to the reader). We wanted to know whether
participants were more likely to attribute events to God when there
had been a prior history of prayer about the matter, creating the
perception that the event was an answer to prayer rather than a
random occurrence. The second factor we varied was long-term
outcome. For this factor, the long-term outcome of an initially
negative event was depicted as being either (a) negative, (b)
positive, or (c) not specified. We hypothesized that participants
would be more likely to attribute a negative event to God when it
was preceded by a prayer for God’s action (Hypothesis 1), be less
likely to attribute an event to Satan if it were preceded by prayer
(Hypothesis 2), allow a role for God in a negative event if the event
was interpreted as being used for a long-term positive purpose
(Hypothesis 3), and would attribute the negative event to Satan
when the long term outcome was negative (Hypothesis 4).
For the qualitative portion, we were interested in moving be-
yond a methodology that explores reactions to hypothetical events
by asking participants about experiences in their own lives that
they believed were related to God and Satan. Using participants’
descriptions of events in their lives, we explored the methods that
they saw God and Satan using to interact with and influence them.
Method
Participants
Participants were 109 students (66% female, 34% male) re-
cruited from introductory psychology courses at a Christian uni-
versity affiliated with the Churches of Christ in the southeastern
United States. They ranged in age from 18 to 20 years, with an
average age of 18.9. The majority of the participants were Cauca-
sian (91.7%). Participants all reported preference for Christianity,
with 20.2% expressing no specific denominational affiliation; the
remaining participants identified with Church of Christ (64.3%),
Baptist (10.1%), Methodist (2.8%), Roman Catholic (1.8%), and
Presbyterian (0.9%) groups. The largest group, Church of Christ, is
known for an emphasis on the Bible as an accurate and complete
revelation from God and adheres to doctrines that are usually
classified as conservative (Mead, Hill, & Atwood, 2010). The
second largest group, Baptist, is a category of denominations; we
did not collect data on the specific Baptist denominations that
constituted our sample, however the sample was located in a city
where the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Baptist
denomination (Association of Religion Data Archives, 2014).
Measures and Procedure
Participants were given a packet of questions during their intro-
duction to psychology class. They completed the packet outside of
class and returned it during the next class period to receive extra
credit in their course. Students were informed that that participa-
tion was voluntary and that other ways to obtain the extra credit
were also available.
Demographic questions. Participants answered a series of
questions about their age, sex, race, and level of education.
Preliminary belief questions. Participants answered ques-
tions about their denominational preference, how often they pray,
how religious they considered themselves to be, how often they
attended religious services, and about how often they lived their
life according to their religious beliefs. They also responded to a
series of statements relating to beliefs about how God and Satan
influence the world and people’s lives. For example, they were
asked to rate their degree of agreement or disagreement (ona1to
5 Likert scale) with statements such as God causes positive events
to happen in life to bring about a purpose. The complete list of
statements can be found in Table 1.
Vignettes. Participants read 9 vignettes describing a protag-
onist who experiences a negative event. The stories involved
the following topics: a relationship break-up, a natural disaster,
infertility problems, alcoholism, business failure, job loss, in-
timate partner violence, and a medical crisis. A sample vignette
can be found in the Appendix. To obtain a copy of all vignettes,
contact the first author.
Each vignette contained a core story that was present in all
versions of the vignette, with a beginning and end that varied.
Two contextual factors were varied for each vignette. The first
was the prior action leading up to the event. For the Prior
Action (PA) factor, we varied whether the person described in
the vignette was depicted as (a) praying before the event, (b)
having hopes/wishes before the event, or (c) nothing was spec-
ified to the reader. The second factor we varied was long-term
outcome. For the Long-Term Outcome (LTO) condition, the
long term outcome of the initially negative event was either (a)
negative, (b) positive, or (c) not specified.
The three levels of the PA factor (prayer, wishing, unspeci-
fied) were combined with all three levels of the LTO factor
(positive, negative, unspecified) to produce 9 possible versions
of each vignette (i.e., prayer PA-positive LTO, prayer PA-
negative LTO, prayer PA-unspecified LTO, wishing PA-
positive LTO, etc.). Each participant read all the 9 stories and
received one example of each of the 9 conditions; however,
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3
ATTRIBUTIONS TO GOD AND SATAN
across the sample, the 9 stories appeared equally often in each
of the conditions. This resulted in 9 different versions of the
survey, organized so that each condition appeared equally often
in each position (i.e., 1/9th of the time the prayer PA-positive
LTO story would be in the first position, 1/9th in the second
position, etc.). The actual core stories appeared in the same
sequence across participants, something that we thought would
not affect our results because the stories were evenly distributed
in each condition. After reading each vignette, participants
indicated the extent to which God and Satan “played a role in”
the core event ona1to5scale, ranging from not at all to a lot.
They could also choose I don’t know as an option.
Qualitative portion/participant narratives. The final sec-
tion consisted of the following open-ended question: Please
think of a situation that has happened in your personal life in
which you believe strongly that God specifically influenced the
progression and/or outcome of the event. In the space provided
below, please describe this event in detail, elaborating upon the
background of the event, who was involved, how the event
ended, and specifically WHY you felt that God influenced the
event in some way. Participants were asked the same question
about Satan. They were given [1/2] page for writing their
responses but were encouraged to use the back page for addi-
tional room if needed.
Qualitative Coding Procedures
The narratives were analyzed in several steps. First, a coding
tool and coding guide was developed by the research team (con-
sisting of graduate and undergraduate students collaborating with
the primary investigators) who examined examples of 20 narra-
tives provided by undergraduate psychology students from Ray,
Lockman, and Hawkins (2008), where the same questions were
asked to students at the same university. These narratives were not
used for the final analysis but were only used to develop a coding
tool and guide. As narratives were examined, the following ques-
tions were discussed by the group: What types of details are
mentioned regularly? What information should we capture with
our coding? In addition to this inductive approach, we also added
questions related to our specific research questions. The final set of
coding questions for the “God” and “Satan” narratives are as
follows:
1. Did the participant provide a codable event? If the par-
ticipant did not provide a codable event, why was it not
codable?
2. What is the context in which God/Satan is seen as work-
ing? (e.g., death, relationship, etc.)
3. How old was the subject when the event happened?
(childhood, adolescence, etc.)
4. Who was mentioned in this narrative as being affected by
or directly involved in the event? (e.g., the individual, a
parent, a friend, etc.)
5. Did the participant mention praying about the event?
6. How does the subject see God/Satan as working in the
world/people’s lives? (e.g., causing a negative event, a
positive event, etc.)
After questions were developed, categories of answers were
specified for each question using both an inductive and deductive
approach. To use question 6 as an example, we noted that God
allowing or using negative events to bring about positive purpose
was a common theme, as was God working through the actions of
other people; therefore, these were provided to coders as potential
categories in which to place narratives. We also added a few
additional categories based on our expectation that they might
appear (e.g., God causing a positive event) or based on our desire
to know whether they would appear (e.g., God causing a negative
event). An “other” category was also included to capture any items
that we failed to note. After creating the coding guide and tool, two
primary investigators independently coded 20 narratives from the
real dataset. Answers were compared, any disagreement was set-
tled by discussion, and the coding guide updated to reflect the
results of this coding experience and conversation. Finally, coders
were selected who were undergraduate psychology students from
the same university as the research participants. They were part of
the process of developing the coding guide and were chosen
because they were coding reliably with each other and with the
primary investigators. These two coders independently reviewed
the 109 participants’ data and coded each narrative. Reliability
varied by question, with Kappas ranging from .72 to .95. These are
reported separately with the results for each question.
Table 1
Preliminary Belief Questions: Percent Agreeing/Disagreeing With Each Statement
Question Strongly disagree Disagree No opinion Agree Strongly agree
I believe that God or an equivalent higher power exists. 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.8 95.4
God causes positive events to happen in life to bring about a purpose. 0.0 0.0 7.3 17.4 75.2
God causes negative events to happen in life to bring about a purpose. 11.0 6.4 15.6 20.2 46.8
God will give people guidance if they ask for his wisdom. 0.9 0.0 2.8 26.6 69.7
God is active in people’s individual lives. 0.0 0.0 4.6 11.9 83.5
Even the details of life are controlled by God to bring about his purposes. 2.8 5.6 16.7 20.4 54.6
Praying about an event can influence the outcome of a situation. 0.0 1.8 4.6 31.2 62.4
I believe that Satan or an equivalent power exists. 0.0 0.9 5.5 11.9 81.7
Satan has the power to cause negative events to happen in life. 1.8 3.7 11.9 29.4 53.3
Note.n⫽109 for all questions.
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4RAY, LOCKMAN, JONES, AND KELLY
Results
Preliminary Belief Questions
Preliminary beliefs questions indicated that this sample was
highly religiously involved and committed—77.1% reported at-
tending religious services every week and 18.4% attended a few
times per month; 92.7% agreed or strongly agreed that they con-
sidered themselves religious; 69.7% pray daily and 24.8% at least
weekly; and 82.4% agree or strongly agree that they lived their life
according to their religious beliefs.
Responses to questions about God’s and Satan’s involvement in
life events are reported in Table 1. These results indicate that a
large percent of our participants endorsed an “involved” view of
God, with 92.6% agreeing or strongly agreeing that God causes
positive events and 95.4% agreeing/strongly agreeing that God is
active in individual lives. A significant portion was willing to
attribute negative events to God (67.0% agreeing/strongly agree-
ing) and endorsed the idea that details of life are controlled by God
(75.0% agreeing/strongly agreeing). Participants had an active
view of Satan, with 82.7% strongly endorsing the idea that Satan
has the power to cause negative events.
Vignettes
For each vignette, subjects rated the extent to which God and
Satan played a role in the event. Participants could select I don’t
know as an answer or respond ona1to5scale (1 ⫽not at all to
5⫽a lot). Averaging across all conditions, participants selected I
don’t know for 17.6% of questions about God and 24.4% of
questions about Satan. The tendency to answer I don’t know was
examined with a Chi Square Goodness of Fit test to determine
whether this answer was more frequent in any of the 9 conditions.
No difference was found, p⬍.01.
For items that participants chose to mark I don’t know rather
than estimate the extent to which God/Satan were involved, we
calculated the mean using other vignettes that were rated from this
condition. If other vignettes in this condition were also lacking
data, then the participant would not have a score for this condition
and would not be included in the means or significance tests
reported (if data were available for other conditions, it was used).
Means and standard deviations for each condition are shown in
Table 2. To examine the role of actions leading up to the core
event, a one-way repeated measures MANOVA was done, with
responses to the questions about Satan’s and God’s role as the
dependent variables and the Prior Action factor (prayer, wishing,
unspecified) as the independent variable. The God’s role and
Satan’s role variables were significantly different from one an-
other, F(1, 87) ⫽39.71, p⬍.0001, with participants more likely
to make attributions to God (M⫽3.47, SD ⫽1.06) than to Satan
(M⫽2.64, SD ⫽.99), t(100) ⫽6.78, p⬍.0001. The main effect
of PA was not significant, F(2, 174) ⫽1.83, p⬍.164, nor was the
PA by God/Satan interaction, F(2, 174) ⫽.36, p⬍.47. Therefore,
Hypotheses 1 and 2—that participants would be more likely to
attribute a negative event preceded by prayer to God (and less
likely to attribute it to Satan)—were not supported.
To examine the role of the Long Term Outcome factor in
participants’ interpretations, another one-way repeated measures
MANOVA was performed on the data, with responses to the
questions about Satan’s and God’s role as the dependent variables
and Long Term Outcome (positive, negative, unspecified) as the
independent variable. The God’s Involvement and Satan’s involve-
ment variables were significantly different from one another,
F(1, 86) ⫽35.54, p⬍.0001 and the main effect of LTO was not
significant, F(2, 172) ⫽0.65, p⬍.521, but consistent with our
hypotheses the God/Satan by LTO interaction was significant, F(2,
174) ⫽18.27, p⬍.0001. This indicated that participants re-
sponded to the conditions differently depending on whether they
were asked about God or Satan.
Follow-up paired-sample ttests were done to explore the inter-
action effect. To examine Hypothesis 3, that participants may
allow a role for God in a negative event if the event had a
long-term positive outcome, we examined differences between
God’s perceived involvement in each of the LTO factors. There
was a significant difference between all of the LTO factors, with
people attributing a greater role to God in the Positive than in the
Negative, t(95) ⫽5.46, p⬍.0001, and Unspecified, t(96) ⫽3.49,
p⫽.001, conditions. The Negative and Unspecified conditions
also differed from each other, t(95) ⫽2.06, p⫽.043.
Hypothesis 4 predicted that Satan would play a greater role in
events with a long term negative outcome. Results of follow-up t
tests supported this hypothesis, indicating a significant difference
between all of the LTO conditions, with people attributing a
greater role to Satan in the Negative than in the Positive, t(91) ⫽
4.32, p⬍.0001, and Unspecified, t(91) ⫽2.66, p⫽.009,
conditions. Positive and Unspecified conditions also differed,
t(93) ⫽2.30, p⫽.024, with people attributing more involvement
to Satan in unspecified than positive conditions.
Participant Narratives
Narratives about God. The two coders independently re-
viewed the 109 participants’ data and found that 80 of 109 partic-
ipants provided codable narratives about God. Eighteen of the 109
(16.5%) were classified as uncodable because the answer was left
blank. Another 11 (10.1%) were deemed uncodable because they
described generalized statements rather than a specific event. For
example, “every Time I have ever prayed to God I have been able
to see his hand in the situation somehow” is a general statement
about prayer, not a story about a specific situation that involved an
answered prayer.
Table 2
Average Rating of God and Satan Involvement By Condition,
Mean and Standard Deviations
God Satan
Condition nMean SD n Mean SD
Prior action
Prayer 101 3.60 1.13 97 2.64 1.15
Wish 103 3.47 1.23 95 2.70 1.15
Unspecified 103 3.44 1.14 98 2.64 1.09
Long-term outcome
Positive 102 3.77 1.14 95 2.45 1.16
Negative 98 3.28 1.22 97 2.86 1.11
Unspecified 100 3.49 1.20 96 2.67 1.13
Note. Because of missing data from participants who selected I don’t
know,nvaries by condition.
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5
ATTRIBUTIONS TO GOD AND SATAN
The second question concerned the kinds of situations in which
God was involved. To reduce small or redundant categories, some
categories created in advance were either moved to “other” cate-
gory or combined into new ones (e.g., “illness” and “death” were
combined into a “medical” category). Categories used by coders
were not mutually exclusive and some narratives were classified
into multiple categories. For example, a spiritual crisis prompted
by the death of a parent could be categorized as both “medical”
and “spiritual.” Because of the presence of non-mutually exclusive
categories, a standard Kappa procedure for checking interrater
reliability would be inappropriate. Instead, we used a Mezzich’s
Kappa procedure which measures reliability in terms of the pro-
portion of theme classifications that overlap between raters (Ec-
cleston, Werneke, Armon, Stephenson, & MacFaul, 2001; Mez-
zich, Kraemer, Worthington, & Coffman, 1981). Reliability was
excellent for this question, ⫽.96. Rather than resolve disagree-
ments on each coding classification, the percentage of vignettes
that fell into each category was obtained for each coder and then
the two percentages averaged. This method was used in all sub-
sequent analyses. The most common context was school (28.9%);
this category included stories about what major to choose, what
school to attend, and problems relating to teachers and grades.
Medical problems (27.7%) was the next most frequent category
and included illnesses, accidents, and deaths involving the partic-
ipant or a family member. The third most common was relation-
ships (27.5%), including conflicts or break-ups with dating part-
ners, arguments with friends, and disagreements with parents. The
remaining categories included important decisions (9.4%); behav-
iors such as substance use, sexual indiscretions, and violating
parental rules (6.9%); workplace problems (4.4%); and spiritual
struggles (1.9%).
Our next question concerned the age of the participant when the
event occurred. This question had excellent levels of agreement,
⫽.93 (calculated assuming mutually exclusive categories). In
12.5% of cases, it was not clear from the narrative when the event
happened. However, most of the time the participant explicitly
stated clues to their age (When I was a child...,Back in high
school. . .) or discussed issues that allowed us to infer a develop-
mental period (e.g., making decisions about college). Most of the
events (75.5%) took place during adolescence/emerging adult-
hood, whereas a smaller percentage (5%) occurred in childhood.
Although adolescence and emerging adulthood are developmen-
tally distinct periods (Arnett, 2000), it was difficult to reliably
distinguish between them in our sample of mostly 18-year-olds
who are in transition between the stages; therefore we coded the
two stages together. A remaining 7.5% of events were classified as
lifelong/ongoing. This category included lifelong situations (e.g.,
being the only girl out of 5 children) or situations that continued
over many years (e.g., a father diagnosed with cancer in a partic-
ipant’s childhood who had not yet been cured).
Narratives were examined to determine the people involved.
Reliability was good, Mezzich’s ⫽.85. For the vast majority
(95.6%), the participant was directly involved in the event rather
than a reporter of a witnessed event. Others who were also in-
volved are reported below, with examples of the types of situations
mentioned.
• Parents (26.9%): Narratives about parental conflict/divorce;
accident/illness; job loss; moving the family to a new city/home;
fertility issues; grief; and involvement in participant’s event.
• Romantic partners (22.5%): Breakups with romantic partners;
meeting new romantic partners; crisis or illness in a boyfriend/
girlfriend’s life.
• Friend (19.4%): Illness/crisis in a friend’s life; meeting a new
friend who is good influence; ending relationship with a bad
friend; and involvement in participant’s event.
• Sibling (13.1%): Birth/adoption of siblings; sibling accident/
illness/suicide; drug/alcohol problems; and involvement in partic-
ipant’s event.
• Extended family (5.6%): Events involving cousins, aunts/
uncles, and grandparents.
• Other (8.1%): An assortment of other acquaintances forming
no clear category.
Coders classified narratives according to whether or not they
referenced praying about the event (a mutually exclusive catego-
rization); there was an acceptable degree of agreement between
coders, ⫽.85. In 27.5% of narratives, participants reported
prayer related the event. These events often fit a “participant prays,
God responds” storyline. For example, Last year I had to make an
important decision on where to go to school....Iprayed about the
decision and I let God decide what was best for me. The participant
then described unexpected scholarship money becoming available
that made a previously unaffordable school possible, an event they
interpreted as an answer to prayer. The 72.5% of events where
participants did not report prayer often followed a “God acts, then
participant interprets” model. An example of this is seen in this
narrative: I was involved in a car accident recently. I was driving
on the interstate while it was raining very hard. I hydroplaned and
loss (sic) control of my car....Itwasascary experience but I
know God was with me the whole time. I escaped with only a few
bruises. The participant never mentions asking God to intervene,
nor does he necessarily see God as the cause of the accident itself.
However, God plays a protective role and becomes the partici-
pant’s explanation for the way the situation unfolded.
Finally, coders classified narratives into categories based on the
participant’s theory about how God acted. Categories were not
mutually exclusive so Mezzich’s Kappa procedure was used. Re-
liability was acceptable but still lower than other questions, ⫽
.80. In 6.9% of cases, there was a lack of information from which
to form a judgment about how God was involved, such as I talked
to an atheist about Christ. The other major categories are below:
• God saved/rescued someone from a negative event (30.6%):
This involves negative events where God acted as a protector or
rescuer. For example, In my country there was a bad war and God
gave me a chance to move to the U.S.A. and I did with my family.
Ever since then I have been succeeding greatly in my life.
• God influenced the protagonist’s thoughts in a positive way
(15.6%): This category involved situations where God influences
the thoughts and decisions of the protagonist. For example, God
was involved in my breakup with my last boyfriend who was
mentally abusive. I honestly feel as if God told me it was the best
thing for me even though I didn’t want it.
• God influenced the protagonist positively through another
person (15.6%): This involves other people being acting as an
agent of God. For example, The first day of [freshman] orientation
I met a great, strong, Christian guy who made me want to love
God....
• God allowed or used a negative event (14.4%): This category
was used when there is no indication that the event was caused by
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6RAY, LOCKMAN, JONES, AND KELLY
God, but the event was used to bring out some positive purpose.
For example, My sister was with her abusive boyfriend for 5 years
and it seemed like she would never leave him. But one day he
finally beat her SO severely we had to take her to the doctor and
it was like a wake-up call for her. She left him and got a good job
and went back to school. I feel God used that horrible situation to
show her where she would end up if she did not leave him.
• God caused a positive event (13.8%): This category was used
when God caused something positive to happen to the participant.
For example, I have a friend named Caleb whom I have always
wanted to date. . . . When I was 16 years old I prayed for a long
time for God to let me have a chance with him because I truly
loved him. When I was 16 me and him (sic) started to date. It was
the best experience that I have been through in my life.
• God helped the person cope with a difficult situation (10.0%):
God’s role was to help the person cope with a bad situation. For
example, When I was a senior in high school my mom was
diagnosed with cancer. She passed away 5 months later. At first I
was so angry with God. I didn’t understand why my mom [died].
It was so hard but God strengthened me throughout this and he
sent different people in my life to fill those holes my mom couldn’t.
He brought me and my dad closer than we’ll prolly (sic) ever be.
(This was also categorized as “influence through another person.”)
Narratives about Satan. Of the 109 participants, 59 (54.1%)
provided narratives about Satan that could be coded; 27 (24.8%)
were eliminated because they left the question blank; 9 (8.3%)
wrote that they did not believe in Satan and/or did not believe
Satan was involved in our everyday lives; and 14 (12.8%) only
provided general or hypothetical situations.
We examined narratives for information about the types of
situations in which Satan was involved. Categories were not mu-
tually exclusive, so Mezzich’s Kappa was calculated, ⫽.86.
Some of the same topics reported in God narratives were also
present in Satan narratives; for example, medical issues (29.8%)
and relationships (40.4%). Other prominent issues in the God
narratives were less present in Satan narratives; for example school
and work combined together only composed 1.8% of Satan nar-
ratives while school was the most common category for God
stories. Finally, there were categories that were very minor or
nonexistent in the God narratives that appear frequently in Satan
narratives: negative behavior (43.0%), which included defying
authority figures, drinking alcohol, drug use, and sexual behavior
(we only classified these behaviors as negative when the partici-
pant perceived it as sinful or unwise); negative thoughts or feelings
(7.9%), which included feelings of sadness, depression, anxiety or
hopelessness; victimization experiences (2.6%); spiritual crises
(1.9%); and other (7.9%). The “other” category was examined by
the primary author and no new theme emerged.
Concerning the age when events in Satan narratives happened,
coders had good agreement, ⫽.86. The participant’s age was not
clear in 23.7% of narratives. As with God narratives, the majority
(56.1%) of events took place during adolescence/emerging adult-
hood and few (4.4%) occurred in childhood. Another 15.8% of
events were lifelong/ongoing.
Satan narratives were classified according to who was involved
in or affected by the event. Percentage of agreement was good,
Meschler’s ⫽.91. For the majority (85.1%), the participant was
mentioned as involved rather than merely a reporter of the event.
The breakdown was largely similar to that of God narratives, with
other individuals involved (from most common to least) being
friends (34.2%), extended family (15.8%), parents (14.0%), ro-
mantic partners (11.4%), other acquaintances (10.5%), and sib-
lings (5.3%).
Regarding prayer, percentage of agreement was 100%, ⫽
1.00. Mentions to prayer were rare—96.5% did not mention it and
3.51% did.
Regarding the “theory” about which Satan worked, we had
lower than desirable interrater agreement than on other items,
Meschler’s ⫽.72. Because of the lower reliability, we are not
reporting percentages for each theme, but instead merely reporting
the major themes that both coders agreed were present in a sub-
stantial number of narratives.
• No theory present: These involved situations where an event
was merely described with no explanation about how Satan was
involved: I lied to my parents about school. Although there were
narratives where coders disagreed about whether a theory was
present (a contributor to the low Kappa), it is noteworthy that for
26 narratives (44% of the codable narratives), coders were both in
agreement that there was no theory present. “No theory present”
was therefore a very common theme.
• Temptation due to others’ influence: This theme mirrors a
similar one in the God narratives; however, here the influential
person is an agent of Satan and a negative influence rather than an
agent of God, a positive influence. For example, In high school I
spent a lot of time with people that like to drink alcohol on
occasion. I was always strongly against drinking for myself, but I
never held this opinion against my friends. Over time, however, I
wore down and actually began to get drunk on occasion. I believe
that Satan was able to break me down and put me into situations
that I did not belong in.
• Satan influenced thoughts/actions in a negative way: This
category is analogous to the one where God influences the pro-
tagonist’s decisions or thoughts in a positive direction. Satan
proves to be a more nefarious influence: I was 15 and I was at my
aunt’s house. I stole one of her Kool cigarettes, took the four-
wheeler into the woods, and attempted to smoke it. No one told me
to try it, but Satan did....
• Satan caused/planned a negative event: Satan directly causing
an event such as an illness.
Discussion
One important issue addressed by this study is the contextual-
ized nature of God and Satan attributions. Based on the data
presented, a few general conclusions can be drawn. First, results
from our preliminary belief questions indicated that our partici-
pants see God as heavily involved in the details of life. God is not
just a being who occasionally causes an isolated event, but an
active presence. In the vignettes, participants were attentive to the
long-term progression of the event as they evaluated what oc-
curred. In participant’s narratives, they interpreted the meaning of
the event based on their ideas about God’s purpose for getting
involved.
Another interesting issue concerned the role of prayer in peo-
ple’s attributions to God and Satan. This pool of participants
indicated that prayer was an important part of their life. However
in the vignettes, prayer was not a predictor of whether they saw
God as being involved in a situation. In participant narratives,
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7
ATTRIBUTIONS TO GOD AND SATAN
prayer was occasionally mentioned as part of an event attributed to
God, but the majority of both God and Satan narratives did not
mention prayer. We would argue that many of the events follow
less of a “person prays ¡God acts” sequence but instead that a
“God acts ¡person interprets” narrative. Prayer is important to
participants, but it might be more essential in the interpretation
process, as a way to communicate with God about the events in
their lives and gain insight about their meaning and purpose.
In previous research, people were found to rarely attribute
negative events to God (Lupfer & Layman, 1996; Ritzema, 1979).
Our research is consistent with this, but with some qualification.
First, in direct questioning, the majority of our participants en-
dorsed the statement that God causes negative events to bring
about a purpose. Although it is accurate to say that Christians
believe God is a causal agent in negative events, the wording of the
question allowed for positive or benevolent purpose for the neg-
ative event. So, God is not seen as randomly or purposelessly
causing bad events, but might play a role if a long-term positive
purpose could be accomplished. This was confirmed in the vi-
gnettes, as people were willing to attribute a role for God in
negative events, especially when a long-term positive outcome was
the result. Participant-produced narratives extend this theme some-
what. Participants were not reluctant to assign a role for God in
negative events, but it was generally not a causal role. Instead, God
got involved as a rescuer, comforter, or one who uses the negative
to bring about positive. In future research, it would be fruitful to
clarify the difference between God playing a role in a negative
event (the wording in our vignettes) and causing a negative event
(the category we used in our coding) because our participants seem
to make a distinction.
One finding that we did not anticipate was the number of stories
that did not involve external events. It was quite common for our
participants to attribute internal, psychological events to both God
and Satan. With God, this involved shaping a person’s good
decisions or helping their emotional state. With Satan, this was
more likely to involve the induction of bad decisions or the
temptation to think or act in unhealthy ways. In any event, these
are not “events” in the usual sense of causing something in the
person’s external environment, but are very important to the par-
ticipants nevertheless. The issue of psychological and emotional
influence by God and Satan may be an interesting subject for
future research, especially research relating to religious coping
behavior. If the subject believes emotional difficulties they are
having can be exacerbated by Satan—or healed by God—then this
may affect their responses to the situation and the way they use
prayer.
The role of social influence is also interesting, because many of
our participants not only attributed external and internal events to
God, but also saw other people as agents of God or Satan. Both
God and Satan are depicted as affecting the individual through
other people’s influence, for good or ill. The common thread here
is that often people did not see God or Satan as causing a particular
chain of physical events, but instead affecting them psychologi-
cally, emotionally, and socially.
Regarding Satan, 93.6% of our sample believed in Satan and
82.7% strongly endorsed the view that Satan can cause negative
events in life. In the vignettes, however, they were less likely to
attribute events to Satan even in those situations where a bad
long-term outcome resulted. When asked to produce narratives
relating to Satan, 27 (24.8%) participants left the item blank as
compared with 18 (16.5%) for the God question. Of the 59 par-
ticipants (54.1%) who provided a codable narrative, a very com-
mon theme was to simply provide an event without explaining how
Satan was involved or why they believe this. Although there were
reliability issues with our Satan narratives that prevent our making
strong claims about the exact percentage of narratives lacking a
theory, in 44% of the codable narratives, coders were both in
agreement that there was no theme present, as compared to the
theory being lacking in only 6.9% of God narratives. One possi-
bility, based on the theological background of the participants, is
that these conservative Christians endorse the doctrine of Satan
being real, but do not have a well-developed theology of how
Satan works. A similar result was found by Jensen (2009) in her
study of concepts of God and the Devil among conservative/liberal
Presbyterians; their subjects generated more descriptions of God
than Satan.
The present study is limited because of the homogenous reli-
gious background and age of our sample. Specifically, we propose
that Christians from different backgrounds may have different
views about the action of God and Satan. In ongoing research, we
are exploring the perceptions of Satan among Pentecostal Chris-
tians, who might have a more well-developed theology of Satan.
Regarding the types of events that participants cited and the
people involved in them, this seems highly reflective of the de-
velopmental stage of the participants. As college freshmen enter-
ing emerging adulthood, issues related to school problems and
decisions, romantic relationships, and “risky behavior” would be
expect to be on their minds. The most central relationships in the
lives of people these age—friends, dating partners, parents, and
siblings (Arnett, 2000)—are also present to a large degree. Re-
search on autobiographical memory is also consistent with our
findings, in that recent events (and events of emergent adulthood)
seem to be central to adult’s memories (Jansari & Parkin, 1996).
We believe the age of our research participants poses a limitation
of this study (and of many other similar studies). In ongoing
research, we are exploring some of these developmental issues by
surveying people from a broader age range. We anticipate that as
people enter early, middle, and late adulthood, the types of events
they perceive God and Satan as influencing, and the people who
play a central role in these events, may change. We also expect to
find maturing of spiritual beliefs that comes with time and life
experience. How this maturation process is reflected in the ways
they report actions of God and Satan remains to be seen.
In summary, our study suggests that people’s reasoning about
the role of God and Satan in their lives is complex and highly
contextual. People did not just see one way or one type of event as
being caused by God/Satan, but a variety of events. They made
meaning out of those events because of the way they unfolded over
time, not just by considering events in isolation. Understanding the
richness and complexity of people’s reasoning about the events
encountered in life has a great deal of practical utility for helping
people use their spirituality as a healthy coping mechanism.
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(Appendix follows)
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9
ATTRIBUTIONS TO GOD AND SATAN
Appendix
Sample Vignette
PA (Prayer): Jim knew his son needed help and was praying for
God to intervene and help Trevor overcome his alcoholism.
PA (Wish): Jim knew his son needed help and wished he could
help Trevor overcome his alcoholism.
Jim’s 23-year-old son, Trevor, had been abusing alcohol for
many years. Because of his alcohol consumption, he had dropped
out of school and lived in his parents’ basement. One night, Trevor
was very drunk while driving home from a party and he crashed
into a tree. He couldn’t move his body from the waist down and
was rushed to the ER. When the surgeon operated, he found that
Trevor’s spinal cord was completely severed from the crash, and
there was nothing he could do to repair it. He told Trevor that he
would be permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
LTO (positive): Trevor saw this as a wake-up call and decided
to change his ways. He entered a treatment program and eventually
went back to school to become a substance abuse counselor.
LTO (negative): Trevor became very depressed and his alco-
holism worsened. He continued to live in his parents’ basement
and never went back to school.
Received August 29, 2013
Revision received July 21, 2014
Accepted July 24, 2014 䡲
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10 RAY, LOCKMAN, JONES, AND KELLY
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