Anger toward God
Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6205101 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julie Exline (0000-0003-3544-2469, Case Western Reserve University), Julie J Exline, Crystal L Park (0000-0001-6572-7321, University of Connecticut), Joshua M Smyth (0000-0002-0904-5390, Syracuse University), Michael P Carey (0000-0003-4652-964X, Syracuse University) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 100 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 129-148 |
| Publication date | 2011-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037/a0021716 |
| PMID | 21219078 |
| OpenAlex | W2092540488 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 170 |
| References cited | 56 |
Many people see themselves as being in a relationship with God and see this bond as comforting. Yet, perceived relationships with God also carry the potential for experiencing anger toward God, as shown here in studies with the U.S. population (Study 1), undergraduates (Studies 2 and 3), bereaved individuals (Study 4), and cancer survivors (Study 5). These studies addressed 3 fundamental issues regarding anger toward God: perceptions and attributions that predict anger toward God, its prevalence, and its associations with adjustment. Social-cognitive predictors of anger toward God paralleled predictors of interpersonal anger and included holding God responsible for severe harm, attributions of cruelty, difficulty finding meaning, and seeing oneself as a victim. Anger toward God was frequently reported in response to negative events, although positive feelings predominated. Anger and positive feelings toward God showed moderate negative associations. Religiosity and age correlated negatively with anger toward God. Reports of anger toward God were slightly lower among Protestants and African Americans in comparison with other groups (Study 1). Some atheists and agnostics reported anger involving God, particularly on measures emphasizing past experiences (Study 2) and images of a hypothetical God (Study 3). Anger toward God was associated with poorer adjustment to bereavement (Study 4) and cancer (Study 5), particularly when anger remained unresolved over a 1-year period (Study 5). Taken together, these studies suggest that anger toward God is an important dimension of religious and spiritual experience, one that is measurable, widespread, and related to adjustment across various contexts and populations
Anger · Attribution · Developmental psychology · Feeling · Harm · Population · Religiosity · Clinical Psychology · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion · Demography · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology
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Death salience moderates the effect of trauma on religiosity
Religious and Spiritual Struggles as Concerns for Health and Well-Being
CAD or MAD? Anger (not disgust) as the predominant response to pathogen-free violations of the divinity code
Religion and Health in African Americans
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Religious and spiritual struggles.
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A Descriptive and Phenomenological Exploration of the Spiritual Needs of Chinese Children Hospitalized with Cancer
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Examining the Validity of the Rush Protocol to Screen for Religious/Spiritual Struggle
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God owes me
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Anger, exit, and assertion
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Perceived and actual change in religion/spirituality in cancer survivors
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Struggles experienced by religious minority families in the United States
Impacts of perceptions of parents on individuals’ reactions to unanswered prayers
Imagined Conversations with God during Divine Struggles
Dispositional Forgiveness and Meaning-Making
Religious coping among older, unemployed workers
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Spiritual Struggles and Mental Health
Prevalence and Social-Cognitive Predictors of Anger Toward God in a Polish Sample
Can Religion Promote Virtue
Forgiving Hurts from Religious Communities
Seeing God as Cruel or Distant
Religious and Spiritual Struggles, Past and Present
Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Image of God as a Core Aspect of Religiousness
Perceptions of Divine Figures Among Polish People Struggling with Homelessness or Alcohol Addiction
Meaning Violations, Religious/Spiritual Struggles, and Meaning in Life in the Face of Stressful Life Events
Spirituality, Forgiveness, and Quality of Life
Agnostics Have More Spiritual Struggles Than Atheists—But More Positive Images, Emotions, and Motivations Around the Idea of God
How Religious Doubt Moderates Depression Symptoms Following Older Adult Bereavement
The experience of divine struggle following child loss
Assessing posttraumatic growth, complicated grief, and psychological distress in bereaved atheists and believers
Inventory of Complicated Spiritual Grief
Anger toward God and well-being in Ukrainian war refugees
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Posture in Relation to God and Ethnic Background
How Long, O Lord? Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory and the Practice of Lament
Why Did God Make Me this Way? Anger at God in the Context of Personal Transgressions
Resolving Anger toward God
Negative Views of Parents and Struggles with God
Fine-tuning the Relationship between Religion and Intellectual Humility
Humbling Yourself before God
Intellectual Humility
God Knows Best
Sad Eyes, Crooked Crosses
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Spiritual Contradiction Scale
Beliefs About God and Mental Health Among American Adults
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God Attachment
The psychology of religion and coping
A spiritual strategy for counseling and psychotherapy.
Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth
Anger and Aggression
Society and the Adolescent Self-Image
The Psychology of Physical Symptoms
Spiritual Struggle
God as a Substitute Attachment Figure
Social-Cognitive Mechanisms in the Development of Conduct Disorder and Depression
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The Cognitive Basis of Trait Anger and Reactive Aggression
The many methods of religious coping
Target Article
Examining the links between spiritual struggles and symptoms of psychopathology in a national sample
Religious and spiritual struggles.
Religiousness, Race, and Psychological Well-Being
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The CES-D Scale
The Social Psychology of Groups
The psychology of interpersonal relations.
Development, refinement, and psychometric properties of the Attitudes Toward God Scale (ATGS-9)
Anger, exit, and assertion
Understanding the Role of Relational Factors in Christian Spirituality
The Emotional Burden of Monotheism
Attachment to God
The Initial Development and Factor Analysis of the Spiritual Assessment Inventory
Communion and Complaint
The Development and Preliminary Validation of the Belief in Divine Intervention Scale
Development of reliable and valid short forms of the marlowe-crowne social desirability scale
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Impact of Event Scale
Hostility, Anger, Aggressiveness, and Coronary Heart Disease
Forgiveness in marriage
Perceptions of Humility
Making sense of the meaning literature
A Psychological Measure of Islamic Religiousness
Spiritual Coping in American Buddhists
Initial development of a measure of religious coping among Hindus
Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships
Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness
Explaining our sins
Literal and symbolic immortality
Assessing individual differences in constructive versus destructive responses to anger across the lifespan
Terror management and religion
Dealing with betrayal in close relationships
Assessing attributions in marriage
Accommodation processes in close relationships
Target Article
When God Disappoints
Culpable control and the psychology of blame
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Patterns of Positive and Negative Religious Coping with Major Life Stressors
The Spiritual Assessment Inventory
| Unique citing works | 170 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 11,33 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2026 (16) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 163 |