How U.S. Christians imagine God contributes to discriminatory hiring practices

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How people visualize God can have real consequences to life on Earth, Stanford research has found.

The researchers, led by Stanford psychologist Steven O. Roberts, conducted a series of studies with U.S. Christians and found that when people conceptualize God as a white man, they are more likely to perceive white male job candidates as more fit for leadership than black and female applicants, Stanford research has found.

Their data, published Jan. 30 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reveals the consequences of intuiting a particular identity to God and how those beliefs manifest in everyday life.

"Basically, if you believe that a white man rules the heavens, you are more likely to believe that white men should rule on Earth," said Roberts, an assistant professor of psychology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.

How U.S. Christians imagine God

Roberts and his team conducted seven different studies, including two experiments with atheists and agnostics, that tested perceptions about God and leadership.

"People are constantly exposed to the image of God as a white man," Roberts said.

As part of their first study, the researchers analyzed images resulting from a Google search engine query for the word "God." They found that of the images that depict God in a human form, 72 percent were of a white man (6 percent were images of actor Morgan Freeman, who portrayed God in the 2003 film Bruce Almighty).

Given the pervasive depiction of God as a white man, Roberts wanted to see whether people believed that to be true. The researchers recruited 444 U.S. Christians and showed them 12 pairs of faces that differed in age, race and gender. They were asked which face in the pair looked more God-like.

Overall, the researchers found that participants reported that God was more male than female. They also found that white Christians were more likely to say God was white and black Christians were more likely to say God was black.

"It was somewhat shocking that our participants explicitly attributed a gender and a race to God," Roberts said.

Roberts wanted to test that finding with beliefs about who should be in leadership.

For their second study, the researchers recruited a new sample of 1,012 U.S. Christians. In addition to completing the same set of questions and exercise administered in the first study, respondents were asked to imagine that they worked for a company that was hiring a new supervisor. They were then shown faces of 32 job applicants and asked to rate how well each applicant would fit the supervisory position.

Roberts found that when Christians conceptualized God as white and male, they rated white male job applicants more favorably than white female candidates, who were rated more favorably than black male and black female candidates. This result was found with white, black, male and female respondents.