Of Dogs and Gods

There was an article recently about a study headed by Nicholas Epley, a professor of human behaviour at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. The study suggests that people who are lonely are more likely to believe in supernatural beings like God(s) and/or to anthropomorphize their pets.

Recently there was a lady on Dr. Phil who insisted that her Chihuahua was her son. Her other dogs were dogs - but not her Chihuahua - she treated it like it was a person.

It sounds like in the study that the researchers attempted to create feelings of loneliness in some people and connectedness in others and then asked various questions - including beliefs in various things. So these were not long standing beliefs, but manipulated temporary ones.

1st part -

...the team recruited subjects online, gave them a personality test to determine how lonely they felt, and then explored how they perceived four objects...Those who described themselves as chronically lonely were much more likely to perceive one of these gadgets as having intentions, free will, consciousness and emotions.

2nd part -

They gave 99 individuals from the University of Chicago – half of them religious and half non-believers – a standard personality test, then randomly doled out "future life predictions" supposedly based on individual test results. The students were told either that they'd suffer from loneliness throughout their lives or would always have rewarding relationships.

Everyone in the lonely group reported more belief in God, the devil, ghosts, angels, miracles and curses. Most significantly, even those who had described themselves as non-believers before getting a prognosis of loneliness reported more religious belief than the non-believers in the not-lonely group.

3rd part (influenced by movies) -

The subjects were then asked to rate their belief in the same supernatural agents cited in the second study, and to describe their own pet or that of someone in their circle.

Again this time, says Epley, the lonely group reported stronger belief in "commonly anthropomorphized" supernatural entities like God and the devil. These lonely subjects were also more likely to describe pets as possessing human traits such as being thoughtful, considerate and sympathetic.

A lot of people use belief in God(s) to overcome addictions and such. That is the model of AA. And it's not surprising that dogs become surrogate children for people postponing (or avoiding altogether) child raising or for older people whose children are no longer at home.

It's interesting to have the two things linked - as two alternatives. Gods or dogs.

Though I'm sure that there are plenty of other alternatives such as sports teams, soap operas, video games, consumption, etc. that provide a sense of belonging to people - and which can also rely to some extent on some level of delusion.