Religious Attribution in social psychology refers to how individuals attempt to explain/understand causes of behavior and/or events. Religious attribution is a theory derived from attribution theory of social psychology.
Most people under most circumstances initially employ naturalistic attributions and explanations, such as references to people, natural events, accidents and chance. This is the most common type of religious attribution.
Religious attributions
Religious religious attributions are used when naturalistic ones do not satisfy the needs for meaning, control, and esteem.
Use
Use of religious attribution stems from basic motivational themes that underlie much religious thinking and behavior—the human need for meaning, control and esteem. The nature of people makes us "need to know" things, and we need for control and mastery of our lives. Research suggests people assign causality to maintain and enhance their self-esteem. Attributions are triggered when meanings and control are unclear, and self-esteem is challenged.
Influences
Situational factors that combine and intertwine play a significant role in the prevalence and use of religious attribution. These situational influences fall into the broad categories of contextual factors and event-character factors. Contextual factors are concerned with the degree to which situations are religiously structured i.e. was the person at church? In deep prayer? Event character factors are concerned with the nature of the event. Research on contextual factors ifound the salience of religion in general seems to be the largest influence. This suggests the availability heuristic is important and that religious influence in situations increases the probability of making religious attributions.
Importance of event
People attribute things that are beyond their control, such as the death of a loved one and natural disasters, to God. All of these things can be explained with religious attribution by saying it is God's will. Science cannot answer questions like "why me", which people seem to ask whenever something momentous happens in their lives.
Positivity and negativity of an event are important to consider because people often attribute events to God but do not often blame God for negative occurrences. Attributions to God are overwhelmingly positive.
Event domain
Event domains are important when explaining attribution. Some domains are "ready made" for the application of secular understanding while others seem more appropriate for invoking religious possibilities; for example medical situations elicit more religious attributions than other social or economic circumstances.
Personal relevance
Events occur to the person are much more personally important than when they happen to others. A person may be upset or deeply concerned when something bad happens to a friend but may ask "why me" when he or she is the centre of the event. If something good happens for someone else, like a lottery win, we may say "well that is lucky" and be happy for the person. A positive event that happens to a person may be interpreted as "God looking out for me"; personal relevance elicits more religious attribution.
Users
People who attend church frequently, have knowledge in their faith, and hold importance of faith highly are more likely to rely more heavily on religious attribution then would people who are less religious. The more conservatively religious or orthodox the home and family in which a person is reared, the greater the person's likelihood of using religious attributions later in life. Some research claims Protestants will turn to internal or religious attribution more often than more-orthodox Catholics on average.
Religion has a relationship with self-esteem and locus of control. In general, people with high self-esteem relate more positive and loving images to God whereas people with low self-esteem may not do this because they feel God has been unloving and cold to them. Locus of control is explained with two modes. The deferring mode, where people believe all power resides with God, would be a low locus of control. In the self-directive mode, the person is active and God plays a passive role in which they share power. People who use the latter mode tend to draw stronger associations to God then do people with low locus of control.
