The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 21:3042, 2011 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

C ISSN: 1050-8619 print/1532-7582 online DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2011.532445

Political Orientation and the Psychology of Christian Prayer: How Conservatives and Liberals Pray
Kathrin J. Hanek
Department of Psychology University of Michigan

Bradley D. Olson
Department of Psychology National Louis University

Dan P. McAdams
Department of Psychology Northwestern University

The authors of this study examined relations between self-reported political orientation and the content of prayer narratives in a sample of 128 midlife North American Christians. Politically liberal Christians were more likely than politically conservative Christians to emphasize provision in prayer, asking God to provide resources for people and to fulll human needs. Conservatives, however, were no more likely than liberals to emphasize protection in prayer, contrary to prediction. Nonetheless, politically conservative Christians tended to emphasize praise and thanksgiving in their prayers and tended to ask God for both guidance and forgiveness to a greater extent than did politically liberal Christians. The results are discussed in terms of recent research and theory on ideological scripts, life narratives, and the intersection of religion and politics in human lives.

Prayer lies at the intersection of religion and psychology. Across many different traditions, practices of prayer and meditation connect people to what they perceive to be the ultimate sources of their religious and spiritual inspirations (James, 1902/1982; Watts, 2001). At the same time, prayer often reects central psychological needs and concerns in peoples lives (Brown, 1994; Francis & Evans, 1995). When people pray, they enact behaviors and express thoughts and emotions that convey deep religious meanings on the one hand and their own psychological states and dispositions on the other.
Correspondence should be sent to Dan P. McAdams, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. E-mail: dmca@northwestern.edu

30

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS PRAY

31

Research on the psychology of prayer has tended to focus on the development of prayer in children; the role of prayer in psychotherapy and counseling; and the effects of prayer on coping, mental health, and the quality of life (Finney & Malony, 1985; Francis & Astley, 2000; Spilka, 2005; Watts, 2001). A relatively consistent nding in this literature is that people who engage in higher levels of prayer tend to enjoy higher levels of both psychological and physical well-being, compared to individuals who rarely pray. Spilka (2005) concluded that prayer is a very signicant aid in coping with life (p. 372; see also Pargament, 1997). Few studies, however, have examined how differences in prayer practices map onto psychological dimensions that are not themselves directly reective of well-being, such as personality traits, goals, and values. As an exception to this general rule, researchers have shown that higher levels of prayer (and church attendance) are associated with traits suggestive of agreeableness and sociality (Francis & Astley, 2000). Byrd and Boe (2001) found that patterns of personal prayer tend to reect corresponding patterns of interpersonal attachment. To date, researchers have not examined how political beliefs and values may play themselves out in prayer. The omission is surprising in light of recent evidence of relatively strong links between political attitudes and religious belief. In the United States, for example, recent national elections have shown that those Christians who regularly attend religious servicesespecially evangelical and fundamentalist Christianshave tended to vote disproportionately for conservative Republican candidates (Wallis, 2005; Wills, 2007). Furthermore, throughout American history religious sentiments have helped to motivate major political movements, as witnessed in the prohibitionist movement in the early years of the 20th century and civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Like traits and goals, political values themselves are part and parcel of personality (McAdams & Pals, 2006); therefore, questions regarding the relationship between personality and prayer in human lives should, in principle, address how peoples political orientations are reected in prayer and other religious practices. Settling on the simple dimension of political conservatism versus political liberalism, the current study examines how midlife American Christians describe the content and structure of their prayers, as a function of political orientation. Research on the psychology of political orientation shows that the simple, self-report dimension of politically conservative versus liberal is an extraordinarily robust variable (Jost, 2006; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; McAdams, 2011). Not only do self-reports of political orientation strongly predict voting patterns among American adults, but the same selfattributions are associated with a host of psychological variables. For example, self-identied conservatives tend to score lower on trait measures of openness to experience, integrative complexity, and tolerance for ambiguity and higher on measures of death anxiety and needs for order and closure, compared to more liberal individuals (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996; Jost et al., 2003; Tetlock, 1984; Trapnell, 1994; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2004). More than liberals, conservatives tend to adopt system-justifying frameworks for making sense of the world, holding strong to the belief that established and conventional systems of authority and government are the best systems that can be invoked, even if they do not always lead to equitable life outcomes (Jost et al., 2003; Kay et al., 2009). Adopting politically conservative values and beliefs may help people to feel safe in the face of danger, grounded in the face of uncertainty, and more or less comfortable, self-assured, and connected to like-minded others (Landau et al., 2004). Examining the life stories of politically conservative and liberal American Christians, McAdams and colleagues have documented striking linkages between political orientation and the ways people narrative their lives. Politically conservative Christians tend to emphasize the

32

HANEK, OLSON, McADAMS

themes of external rules and self-discipline in salient autobiographical memories, and they tend to accentuate the importance of authority, loyalty to in-group, and sacredness in their discussion of their own moral, ethical, and religious beliefs (McAdams & Albaugh, 2008a; McAdams et al., 2008). By contrast, politically liberal Christians tend to emphasize themes of openness and empathy in salient autobiographical memories, and they accentuate the importance of fairness and the relief of suffering in their discussion of values and beliefs (McAdams & Albaugh, 2008a; McAdams et al., 2008). In a study asking Christians to imagine what human life might be like without God, conservatives imagined a world of social chaos and unbridled impulse, whereas liberals imagined an empty world without texture, energy, or resources (McAdams & Albaugh, 2008b). Adopting what Tomkins (1987) described as a normative perspective on life (which underscores the need for rules and norms in the face of human failings), conservatives may look to government and religion to assure the order of cherished institutions while protecting individuals from danger. By contrast, liberals may adopt what Tomkins (1987) described as a humanistic perspective on life (which underscores human goodness and potential), looking to government and religion for provision. As Janoff-Bulman (2009) put it, conservatives are oriented toward protection, and liberals are oriented toward providing (p. 120). From the conservative standpoint, then, good government and God should (rst and foremost) protect individuals from the travails of a dangerous world. From the liberal standpoint, good government and God should (rst and foremost) provide resources for a full and fullling human life in a world of scarcity (see also de St. Aubin, 1999; Haidt & Graham, 2007; Lakoff, 2002). The current study adopts the conservative versus liberal frame and the thematic distinction between protection and provision to examine the relationship between political orientation and prayer among American Christians. As such, the study follows Brown (1994) in conceiving of prayer as talking to God (p. 13), investigating differences in the content and function of what people describe as that sacred talk. Rather than ask respondents to complete questionnaires or rating scales on prayer, furthermore, the current study obtains rich, open-ended narrative accounts of how people actually pray, as in Lindgren (2005). The prayer accounts are then content analyzed for themes of protection and provision. We hypothesize that among observant Christian adults political conservatism should be associated with greater emphasis on the theme of protection in prayer, whereas liberalism should be associated with greater emphasis on provision. In addition, the study examines three other themes that turn out to appear frequently in the data collected for the study and which past research (e.g., Spilka, 2005; Watts, 2001) suggests are salient in Christian prayer: forgiveness/confession, thanksgiving/praise, and guidance. Gender differences are explored as well, and because the sample contains reasonable representations of both European American (White) and African American (Black) participants, we are also able to examine prayer differences related to race/ethnicity.

METHOD Participants The participants in the present study were recruited for a project entitled Personal Faith, Politics, and the Life Story, described in McAdams et al. (2008). The researchers contacted

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS PRAY

33

various and diverse Christian congregations in the greater Chicago area and suburbs. To qualify for the study, participants had to be active members of these congregations and to have voted in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. They also had to be willing to share in detail their religious and political beliefs and important events in their life stories. Case studies were established for 128 participants, consisting of 78 women (61%) and 50 men (39%) with an age range of 28 to 74 years (M D 49.2, SD D 8.47). Of these participants, 92 were European American (71.9%), 33 African American (25.8%), 2 Asian American (1.6%), and 1 Hispanic (0.8%). The sample was generally highly educated, with 85.9% reporting that they had received at least a bachelors degree. In terms of political orientation, 53.2% of participants identied as Democrats, 33.1% as Republicans, 12.9% as Independents, and 0.8% as other. For religious orientation, the largest group of participants (42.1%) identied as nondenominational or generally Christian, followed by 19.5% Catholic, 10.2% Lutheran, 7% Baptist, 5.4% Episcopalian, 3.9% Presbyterian, 3.9% United Church of Christ, 3.2% Methodist, 2.4% African Methodist Episcopal, 0.8% Orthodox, 0.8% Christian Science, and 0.8% other.

Materials and Procedure All participants gave a one-on-one interview, roughly 2 hr in length. The rst third of the interview was devoted to key events in the persons life story; the middle third focused on religious beliefs, practices, and experiences; and the nal third considered political issues. The interview was modeled on life-narrative research procedures developed and validated by McAdams (1985, 2006). The interviews were digitally recorded and later transcribed. After the participants completed the interview portion of the study, they also completed a packet of self-report measures, which took about 2 hr to nish. They were each paid $100 for their participation. The portions of these interviews and self-report measures that are relevant for the present study are described next. Political orientation. Participants completed two self-report scales designed to measure political orientation. The rst was a straightforward 5-point scale by which participants ascribed a rating to themselves according to the following: 1 (very liberal ), 2 (liberal ), 3 (middle of the road ), 4 (conservative), and 5 (very conservative). Likert scales like these are common in political survey research and are highly accurate in predicting voting patterns in the United States (Jost, 2006). The second measure was the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale (Altemeyer, 1996; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992), which uses 30 items to measure political and social attitudes that tend to be strongly associated with political conservatism. Previous research has shown that scores on the RWA Scale are reliable predictors of various beliefs and attitudes about social, economic, and political conservatism (Altemeyer, 1996; Jost et al., 2003; Peterson, Doty, & Winter, 1993). Among North American samples, scores on RWA tend to be highly correlated with simple self-report ratings of conservatism. Psychological researchers, therefore, have sometimes used RWA as a proxy for political conservatism (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996), and they have often combined RWA scores with other self-report scales of political orientation to obtain more reliable and robust estimates of political conservatism.

34

HANEK, OLSON, McADAMS

Prayer. In the middle section of the interview, participants were asked specically about prayer. The question was posed as follows, and the interviewer varied it slightly depending on the response of the participant (as marked in brackets):
Many Christians pray. Do you ever pray? [If participant says no, ask why. Then proceed to next question.] When and under what circumstances do you pray? If it is okay with you, I would like you to give me an example of a prayer you might offer to God. Tell me what you might say to God. Please narrate the prayer to me. Why might you offer that particular prayer to God? [If the participant is not comfortable doing this, then ask him or her simply to tell you what he or she prays about.]

Transcribed responses to this question ranged in length from 40 to 1,893 words (M D 492, SD D 287). Coding The open-ended narrative accounts of prayer were rst rated for the salience of two basic themes: protection and provision. Two independent coders, blind to identifying information on the participants, provided a rating of 0, 1, or 2 for each of the two themes. A rating of 0 indicated that no evidence of the theme was to be found in the full account, a rating of 1 indicated some evidence (the theme was mentioned but not fully elaborated), and a rating of 2 indicated strong evidence (full elaboration of the theme). For example, a rating of 0 on protection would indicate that the coder found no reference whatsoever to a concern with protection in the entire narrative response, a rating of 1 on protection would indicate that the participant showed some modicum of evidence of the theme of protection in the prayer account but that the theme was not prominent or elaborated, a score of 2 on protection would indicate that the theme of protection was a central or prominent or well-elaborated feature of the prayer narrative. Therefore, rather than identifying different types of prayers, the rating system assessed the relative salience of any given theme in a prayer account. With this logic, a particular account could show evidence of the salience of more than one themethat is, for example, a single prayer account could score greater than 0 on both protection and provision. Protection was dened as any appeal in the prayer to God or some higher power to protect the participant or others from danger, harm, attack, sickness, injury, conict, or other threats to the well-being of people. The participant asks God to protect himself or herself or others from harm and threat, to keep people safe, to provide a haven during threatening times. For example, a participant might ask that God protect his son from danger during the sons military stint in Iraq, or protect her daughter from temptations of evil, or keep the family safe from harm during travel, or protect people from alcohol and drug abuse, or keep people safe from their own aggressive tendencies, or make the world safe from war. Protection may be invoked in response to perceived external threatssuch as aggression, crime, or natural disastersor internal threats, such as temptations, negative thoughts and urges, destructive feelings, and the like. The key is that the participant asks God to assure safety in response to danger. Provision was dened as any appeal in the prayer to God or some other higher power to provide resources for people, to nurture people in some way, and/or to meet human needs.

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS PRAY

35

God may provide the resources needed to grow, as the mother provides an infant with food, or as nature provides plants with water, sunshine, and nutrients. Examples include asking God or a higher power to provide food for hungry people, education for young people, health care for a sick family, friendship for a person who is lonely, encouragement for an individual who is feeling down, greater opportunities for a person who is looking for a job, opportunities for fulllment for a person who feels her life is empty and lacking in meaning, and so on. The basic idea behind provision is that God provides something that lls a gap in a persons life. The implicit imagery is that of pouring provisions into an empty vessel. In addition to the themes of protection and provision, coders rated the full prayer accounts for three other themes that appeared frequently in the narratives: forgiveness, thanksgiving/ praise, and guidance. These three themes were identied early in the research process. All three are commonly invoked in Christian prayer, as indicated in past research (Banziger, Janssen, & Scheepers, 2008; Brown, 1994; Poloma & Gallup, 1991; Watts, 2001). For example, Watts (2001) described ve types of Christian prayer: confession, thanksgiving, petition/ intercession, adoration/praise, and meditation. In confession, a person typically asks for forgiveness for sins and wrongdoing. In petitions or intercessions, a person may ask God for guidance in life. Thus, our theme of forgiveness corresponds roughly to Wattss confession type, our theme of thanksgiving/praise draws from Wattss second and fourth types, and our theme of guidance ts roughly in Wattss much larger category of petition/intercession. Unlike Watts, however, the current coding system treats these ideas as themes rather than types. In other words, the salience of each of the themes is rated in the full prayer account, adopting the same 3-point scale (0 D no evidence of theme; 1 D theme is present but not strong; 2 D strong salience of theme) used for the themes of protection and provision. Two independent coders, blind to identifying information on the participants, rated each of the three themesforgiveness, thanksgiving/praise, and guidanceon the 3-point scale. Forgiveness was deemed present whenever a participant mentioned confession, his or her own sinfulness, the fact that he or she has done something wrong, or a wish for God to forgive or cleanse the person because of wrongdoing. Examples would include asking God to cleanse the self from sins, begging Gods indulgence for past mistakes, emphasizing the persons unworthiness in the face of God, and so on. Thanksgiving/praise included thankfulness and gratitude as well as awe, worship, and adoration for God and His works. For this theme, the participant might thank God for good things that have happened in life or praise God for His power, goodness, glory, and so on. The emphasis is on recognizing and providing positive emotional afrmation of the positive features of God or of Gods creation. In accounts that scored high (a score of 2) on thanksgiving/praise, the participant might devote an extended portion of his or her prayer narrative to praising God, acknowledging Gods wonder and glory, offering gratitude to God for life or the world or prosperity or some other gift that God has made manifest for the participant. Guidance included passages from prayer narratives in which the participant explicitly petitioned God to give instructions or directions for life. Examples would be appeals to Gods wisdom or discernment in the face of difcult decisions, asking God to show the way or the path for life, looking for guidance from God in dealing with job or family struggles, invoking Gods plan for life, or being open to following Gods will. As one participant put it, I am sure theres a reason for all of this [what is happening in life]; thank you for leading me on my path. (Note that this account would also score for thanksgiving/praise.)

36

HANEK, OLSON, McADAMS

Ratings of the ve themes showed good intercoder reliabilities, with intraclass correlations for the two coders ratings ranging from .78 for protection to .96 for thanksgiving/praise. In each case, the two independent ratings were averaged to give each participant a single score per theme to be used for the statistical analyses.

RESULTS On the 5-point self-rating scale of liberalismconservatism, the mean rating (2.94) was close to the midpoint (3 D middle of the road ). Out of 128 participants, 11% described themselves as very liberal (self-rating of 1), 26% liberal, 26.8% middle of the road, 29.9% conservative, and 6.3% very conservative (self-rating of 5). As in past research among North American samples, self-ratings of liberalismconservatism correlated strongly with RWA, r (127) D .60, p < .001. Hence, a composite variable for political orientation was computed by summing the standard scores of liberalismconservatism and RWA. As in past research (e.g., Jost et al., 2003; McAdams et al., 2008), the high correlation between RWA and self-rated conservatism justied the composite strategy. However, scores for each of the two scales liberalism/conservatism and RWAwere also each individually employed in subsequent analyses, to provide a full picture of the results. Descriptive statistics for all main variables as well as the intercorrelations of the ratings on the ve prayer themes are displayed in Table 1. The relatively high mean scores on the prayer themes (ranging from a low of .35 for forgiveness to a high of .73 for guidance) suggest that participants talk with God often invoked ideas of protection, provision, forgiveness, thanksgiving/praise, and guidance. Many individual prayer accounts scored 1 (some evidence of theme) or 2 (strong evidence of theme) for more than one of the themes. The intercorrelations of

TABLE 1 Descriptive Statistics for Main Variables and the Intercorrelations of Prayer Themes Variable Political orientation Measures Lib/Con RWA Composite Prayer Themes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Protection Provision Forgiveness Thanksgiving/praise Guidance .52 .64 .35 .68 .73 .66 .65 .68 .64 .76 02 02 02 02 02 M SD Range

2.94 136.98 .00

1.12 37.78 1.79

15 57216 3.853.92 1 .14 .25** .16 .16 2 3 4 5

.01 .14 .02

.19* .16

.04

Note. Lib/Con D 5-point self-rating of liberalism-conservatism; RWA D right-wing authoritarianism; Composite D sum of standard scores for the 5-point self-rating and RWA. *p < .05. **p < .01.

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS PRAY

37

the prayer theme ratings revealed few signicant associations, suggesting that the ve themes were generally independent of each other. However, forgiveness was modestly but signicantly related to both thanksgiving/praise, r (127) D .19, p < .05, and protection, r (127) D .25, p < .01. Independent samples t tests were performed to examine gender and race/ethnicity differences in the sample. There were no signicant gender differences for the political orientation variables (liberalismconservatism, RWA, composite) nor any of the ve prayer themes. Although there were signicant race/ethnicity differences for some of the political orientation variablesAfrican Americans scored signicantly higher than European Americans on RWA (MAfrican American D 169.23, SD D 27.93, MEuropean American D 126.07, SD D 34.42), t (123) D 6.47, p < .001, and on the composite (MAfrican American D .88, SD D 1.34, MEuropean American D .30, SD D 1.84), t (122) D 3.37, p < .01no signicant differences emerged for the prayer themes. In other words, whereas African Americans showed higher scores on rightwing authoritarianism and (as a result) the composite political orientation variable, the ratings of the ve prayer themes in their narrative accounts were similar to those shown for the European American participants. To test our hypotheses, we conducted correlational and regression analyses to determine the relationships between the prayer themes and political orientation variables. The regression analyses involved regressing (simultaneous) each individual prayer theme on age, race/ethnicity, a social class variable (family income and education), and the particular political variable being used (the self-rating, RWA, or the composite). Table 2 displays the results of the correlational and regression analyses. With respect to the central hypothesis of the study, the results were decidedly mixed. Contrary to prediction, conservatives were no more likely than liberals to express the theme of

TABLE 2 Correlational and Multiple Regression Results for Relations Between Self-Report Political Attitude Measures and Prayer Themes Lib/Cona Prayer Theme Protection Provision Forgiveness Thanksgiving/praise Guidance r .02 .42*** .10 .15 .20* .045 .432*** .089 .108 .184* r .10 .38*** .17* .28** .20* RWA .108 .377*** .286** .252* .256* r .05 .45*** .15 .24** .22* Composite b .022 .444*** .187 .181 .235*

Note. For each set of ndings, the rst number is the Pearson correlation between the political variable and the prayer theme, and the second number is the standardized beta for the political variable in the multiple regression analysis wherein each prayer theme was regressed on age, race/ethnicity, a social class index (the sum of the standard family income and level of education attainment), and the particular political variable. Lib/Con D 5-point self-rating of liberalism-conservatism; RWA D right-wing authoritarianism; Composite D sum of standard scores for the 5-point self-rating and RWA. a The 5-point liberalism-conservatism self-rating, ranging 1 (very liberal) to 5 (very conservative). b The composite variable is the sum of the standard scores for RWA and the 5-point self-rating on liberalism-conservatism. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

38

HANEK, OLSON, McADAMS

protection in their prayer accounts. Whether considering conservatism in terms of the 5-point self-rating scale, RWA, or the composite of the two, correlations between political orientation and the prayer theme of protection were all low and nonsignicant. Consistent with the hypothesis, however, liberals showed a much stronger emphasis than conservatives on the prayer theme of provision. In terms of all three analyses (using the self-rating of political orientation, RWA, and the composite), provision in prayer showed a robust connection to political liberalism. The multiple regression analyses, furthermore, mirror the simpler correlational results. In sum, whereas conservatives were no more likely than liberals to ask God for protection from danger, liberals were much more likely than conservatives to ask God to provide them and others with resources and to fulll human needs. Table 2 also shows relationships between political orientation and each of the other three themes rated: forgiveness, thanksgiving/praise, and guidance. Modest and, in some cases, statistically signicant associations are shown for each of these three themes with respect to their relationship to political conservatism. The most consistent ndings appear for guidance. Whether assessed via the self-rating of political conservatism, RWA, or the composite, conservatism was positively and signicantly associated with asking God for guidance. Thanksgiving/praise, furthermore, showed a signicant positive association with RWA and the composite, though it failed to reach statistical signicance for the simple self-report rating of conservatism. Thus, participants high in right-wing authoritarianism (itself strongly associated with self-ratings of conservatism) tended to describe prayers that emphasized praising God and offering thanks for Gods power and goodness. A modestly signicant association was also found between RWA and the prayer theme of forgiveness. With respect to the three ancillary prayer themes, then, conservatism (however it was measured) tended to be associated with asking God for guidance in life. Right-wing authoritarianism (itself highly correlated with conservatism) was associated with (a) praising God and offering thanks in prayer and to a lesser extent (b) asking God for forgiveness.

DISCUSSION The results provide partial conrmation for the studys central hypothesis. The content analyses of the open-ended prayer narratives described by American Christians showed that, whereas political conservatives were no more likely than liberals to petition God for protection from danger, political liberals were signicantly more likely than conservatives to ask God for provision of resources. Thus, the prediction of a link between conservatism and protection was not supported, but the prediction of a link between liberalism and provision received strong empirical support. Although conservatives were no more likely than liberals to emphasize the theme of protection, conservatives were more likely than liberals to ask God for guidance in their lives. To a lesser extent, furthermore, conservatism (assessed via right-wing authoritarianism, itself highly correlated with self-ratings of conservatism) was associated with emphasizing praise and thanksgiving in prayer and with asking God for forgiveness. No gender or race/ethnicity differences were observed for prayer themes. According to Tomkins (1987), political liberals tend to hold a humanistic script about life. Accordingly, they tend to believe that humans are fundamentally good and deserving of ample resources to grow and ourish (de St. Aubin, 1999). They show a preoccupation with nurturing

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS PRAY

39

and growing the self, being fullled, and emphasizing the needs of others while expressing empathy and concerns for fairness (McAdams et al., 2008; McAdams & Albaugh, 2008b). As expressed in the following two examples, political liberals utilize prayer to petition God for resources that nurture the self and others:
Prayer might help people and it might grow them and stretch them in their understanding. My prayer life is really seeking that kind of spotlighting in my inner world : : : God lls us and enables us to do stuff.

In contrast, Tomkins (1987) has argued that conservatives tend to hold a normative script about life, emphasizing the importance of norms and rules to regulate the self. From the standpoint of a normative script, humans are fundamentally bad (de St. Aubin, 1999) and in need of authority and regulation in order to assure order and to stave off the chaos that unbridled human impulses might produce (McAdams & Albaugh, 2008b; McAdams et al., 2008). Accordingly, we expected that conservatives would ask God for protection in prayer, given the many dangers and threats that a normative script suggests. Even though no support for this prediction was obtained, the results for the other three prayer themes appear to be generally consistent with Tomkinss conception of the normative script. For example, asking for forgiveness in prayer suggests that human beings are sinful and awed creatures who repeatedly need to confess their sins and obtain absolution. The imperfections of human beings accentuate in contrast Gods goodness and omnipotence, from a normative standpoint. It should not be surprising, therefore, to see that individuals holding to a normative script might emphasize thanksgiving to and praise of God and might also look to God for guidance in their lives. All three of the ancillary themesforgiveness, thanksgiving/praise, and guidanceemphasize Gods ultimate authority in a hierarchy, wherein human beings hold a lower position. Past research has shown that political conservatives tend to value authority in hierarchies to a much greater extent than do political liberals (Jost et al., 2003; McAdams et al., 2008). As the next passage exemplies, asking God for forgiveness directly addresses the apprehension of a tainted self and, by placing God in a position of moral authority, enables a person not only to be cleansed but also to lead a life closer to Gods wishes:
I might pray, it is just to give up all of my sins, anything that I may have done [or] said that was unpleasing to You, to cleanse me, so that I can be able to come to You and ask anything because I understand that sinning separates me from God.

By offering thanksgiving/praise to God in prayer and afrming Gods greatness and the benecence of His work, political conservatives essentially reafrm the hierarchy (which is necessary for order and stability) that exists between humans and God. The following passage provides a clear example of this:
Look, I have ngers. No one thought of this but You: : : : No man could have thought about ngers. Why would they think about ngers? So You created ngers: : : : God, YouThis is awesome.

Asking God for guidance reinforces His role as an omniscient authority gure and foregrounds a concern for following rules and exercising self-control. A typical example follows:

40

HANEK, OLSON, McADAMS

My normal prayer is not my will but Gods will be done in your life : : : I just say, Lord, let Your will be done in their life. : : : He has some plans for their purpose and destiny, it will come to pass, because oftentimes we may want something that He has no intentions of us having. It humbles me to say, Okay, not my will but that Your will be done. I want what You want. Ill go where You say go. Ill do that if You say do.

In some of the analyses, scores on RWA tended to show slightly stronger connections to prayer themes than did the simple, 5-point self-rating of liberalism versus conservatism. Although measures like self-ratings of liberalism-conservatism are common tools for political surveys and are accurate in predicting voting patterns (Jost, 2006), RWA may tap somewhat more broadly into peoples ideology, which fans out into social, economic, and political realms. For example, RWA has been positively associated with pro-capitalist attitudes and severity of jury punishments, and negatively with liberal attitudes like environmentalism and abortion rights (Altemeyer, 1996; Jost et al., 2003; Peterson, Doty, & Winter, 1993). As Jost et al. (2003) pointed out, what underlies all of these beliefs is the core denition of conservatism as a resistance to cultural change and societal instability, which is captured well by Altemeyers (1996) RWA Scale. In the current study, then, it may be a conservative fear of change that drives high scores on RWA and high scores on the prayer themes of forgiveness, thanksgiving/praise, and guidance (low scores on RWA drive high scores on provision). Why were conservatives no more likely than liberals to ask for protection in prayer? Protection from harm may be such a basic need that its compelling nature trumps ideological differences among Christians. When it comes to prayer, Christians of different political stripes may routinely be reminded of the many dangers prevalent in the world and may therefore routinely look to God for protection from threat. It is also possible that the coding scheme used for protection in the current study was not sensitive enough to detect subtle differences between liberals and conservatives with respect to how this general theme is revealed in prayer narratives. The current study is limited in numerous ways. Whereas the open-ended narrative accounts of prayer provide rich, qualitative data, the response format surrenders a good deal of control for researchers. The interview was not structured to give interviewers the opportunity to ask probing questions about prayer, or to pose direct questions regarding the prayer themes to the participants. Had the interview been structured to ask participants to consider each of the ve prayer themes systematically, then the results of the study might have been different. Having said that, such a constrained methodology would have taken control of the procedure away from the participants and limited the variability in responses. Furthermore, the ve themes used in the present study emerged, in part, from the careful reading of the interviews after the interviews were obtained. As often happens in qualitative research, the themes emerged (in part) inductively, grounded in the data from the case studies. It is difcult to determine the extent to which the prayer responses the participants gave during the interview reect their typical prayer practices rather than concerns specic to that particular interview day. In this regard, recording prayer in vivo, perhaps through experiencesampling methodologies, would offer an improvement on the current studys design. Finally, the studys sample represents a specic population of devout American Christians who are also politically active. Whether prayer practices among less politically engaged American Christians and among people of other faiths and other nationalities would show the

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS PRAY

41

same results remains an open question for future research. The studys frame and its ndings are couched in a particular cultural and historical context. They derive from midlife North American Christians living in a midwestern urban area in the rst decade of the 21st century. Religious faith and practices, including the practice of prayer, are part and parcel of a given cultures norms, traditions, and characteristic ways of being (Banziger et al., 2008; Brown, 1994; Lindgren, 2005; McAdams, 2006). The ndings from the current study, therefore, are meaningful within a particular cultural context. Their generalizability to other cultural contexts, however, cannot be readily assumed but instead provides a challenge for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The research was supported by a grant from the Foley Family Foundation to Dan P. McAdams to establish the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University. The authors thank Bill Revelle for advice on methodology and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an early version of this manuscript.

REFERENCES
Altemeyer, R. A. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Altemeyer, R. A., & Hunsberger, B. E. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113133. Banziger, S., Janssen, J., & Scheepers, P. (2008). Praying in a secularized society: An empirical study of praying practices and varieties. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 18, 256265. Brown, L. B. (1994). The human side of prayer. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Byrd, K. R., & Boe, A. (2001). The correspondence between attachment dimensions and prayer in college students. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 924. de St. Aubin, E. (1999). Personal ideology: The intersection of personality and religious beliefs. Journal of Personality, 67, 11051139. Finney, J. R., & Malony, H. N. (1985). Empirical studies of Christian prayer: A review of the literature. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 13, 104115. Francis, L. J., & Astley, J. (2000). Psychological perspectives on prayer. Leominster, UK: Gracewing. Francis, L. J., & Evans, T. E. (1995). The psychology of Christian prayer: A review of empirical research. Religion, 25, 371378. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20, 98116. James, W. (1982). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. (Original work published 1902) Janoff-Bulman, R. (2009). To provide or protect: Motivational bases of political liberalism and conservatism. Psychological Inquiry, 20, 120128. Jost, J. T. (2006). The end of the end of ideology. American Psychologist, 61, 651669. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339375. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Peach, M. M., Lauren, K., Friesen, J., Zanna, M. P., et al. (2009). Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things are as they way they should be. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 421434. Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral politics (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

42

HANEK, OLSON, McADAMS

Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszcynski, T., Arndt, J., et al. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 11361150. Lindgren, T. (2005). The narrative construction of Muslim prayer experiences. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 159174. McAdams, D. P. (1985). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press. McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P. (2011). George W. Bush and the redemptive dream: A psychological portrait. New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P., & Albaugh, M. (2008a). The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife. In J. A. Belzen & A. Geels (Eds.), Autobiography and the psychological study of religious lives (pp. 255286). Amsterdam: Rodolpi. McAdams, D. P., & Albaugh, M. (2008b). What if there were no God? Politically conservative and liberal Christians imagine their lives without faith. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 16681672. McAdams, D. P., Albaugh, M., Farber, E., Daniels, J., Logan, R. L., & Olson, B. (2008). Family metaphors and moral intuitions: How conservatives and liberals narrate their lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 97890. McAdams, D. P., & Pals, J. L. (2006). A new Big Five: Fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality. American Psychologist, 61, 204217. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: Guilford. Peterson, B. E., Doty, R. M., & Winter, D. G. (1993). Authoritarianism and attitudes towards contemporary social issues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 174184. Poloma, M. M., & Gallup, G. (1991). Varieties of prayer: A survey report. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Spilka, B. (2005). Religious practice, ritual, and prayer. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirtiuality (pp. 365377). New York: Guilford. Tetlock, P. E. (1984). Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of Commons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 365375. Tomkins, S. S. (1987). Script theory. In J. Aronoff, A. I. Rabin, & R. A. Zucker (Eds.), The emergence of personality (pp. 147216). New York: Springer. Trapnell, P. D. (1994). Openness versus intellect: A lexical left turn. European Journal of Personality, 8, 273290. Van Hiel, A., & Mervielde, I. (2004). Openness to experience and boundaries of the mind: Relationships between cultural and economic conservative beliefs. Journal of Personality, 72, 659686. Wallis, J. (2005). Gods politics. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Watts, F. N. (2001). Prayer and psychology. In F. N. Watts (Ed.), Perspectives on prayer (pp. 3952). London: SPCK. Wills, G. (2007). Head and heart: American Christianities. New York: Penguin.

Copyright of International Journal for the Psychology of Religion is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.