Are daily supernatural attributions to God and the devil/demons linked with meaning in life?

ABSTRACT

Do supernatural attributions to God and the devil relate to a sense of meaning in life? We investigated this question by conducting a three-week experience sampling study (N = 75), in which we measured daily causal attributions for both positive and negative events and assessed daily meaning (n = 1,425 total daily reports). Correlational and multilevel path analyses revealed several reliable between-person associations. People who made more attributions to God (particularly for positive events) had higher meaning, and people with stronger religious worldviews who made more attributions to the devil/demons (particularly for negative events) had higher meaning. These findings were largely robust when controlling for relevant meaning and religious/spiritual covariates. We did not find evidence for within-person associations; daily changes in attributions and meaning were not related. Consistent and enduring attributions to God and the devil/demons may be particularly meaningful ways of understanding the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Supernatural attributions
• God
• devil/demons
• meaning in life
• religion/spirituality

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation Grant #59916.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2169630

Notes

1. Due to experimenter error, we failed to capture demographic information on our sample.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation [59916].