Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2008, Vol. 95, No.

1, 18 35

Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 0022-3514/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18

God and the Government: Testing a Compensatory Control Mechanism for the Support of External Systems
Aaron C. Kay and Danielle Gaucher
University of Waterloo

Jamie L. Napier
New York University

Mitchell J. Callan
University of Western Ontario

Kristin Laurin
University of Waterloo

The authors propose that the high levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and the defense of external systems, including increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God (Studies 1 and 2) and defense of the overarching socio-political system (Study 4). A 4th experiment (Study 5) showed the converse to be true: A challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. In addition, a cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control (across 67 nations; Study 3). Each study identified theoretically consistent moderators and mediators of these effects. The implications of these results for understanding why a high percentage of the population believes in the existence of God, and why people so often endorse and justify their socio-political systems, are discussed. Keywords: system justification, control, God, religion, governmental support

Approximately 95% of the American population believes in the existence of God (Gallup & Castelli, 1989). Given the prevalence of this belief, understanding its psychological foundations has obvious implications for our understanding of basic psychological functioning. Surprisingly little is known, however, about why the majority of people, in the majority of the cultures around the world, believe in a higher order controlling influence such as God. Likewise, people have a remarkable ability to justify and defend the sociopolitical systems that control, at least in part, their fate (see Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Kay et al., 2007). In this context too there is little empirical evidence examining why this is the case. In noting the dearth of research on the psychological bases of religion, Baumeister (2002) drew particular attention to the utility of research in this domain for uncovering broad psychological

principles and for developing social psychological theory. Following that perspective, and inspired by previous psychological theory (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982), in this article we describe a general social psychological model developed to help explain the relationship people hold with external systems of controlsystems such as governments, societal institutions, religious ideologies, and the likeand then test this model first in the context of religious beliefs and then in the context of beliefs about governmental systems.

Compensatory Control and the Endorsement of External Systems

A long line of research has made it clear that people are often motivated to perceive that they possess personal control over their social environments and outcomes (Kelly, 1955; Perkins, 1968; Presson & Benassi, 1996; Seligman, 1975, 1976; Skinner, 1995; White, 1959; but see Burger, 1989). One reason for this motivation, it has been proposed, is to help prevent feelings of randomness and chaos in the social world. Such perceptions can be psychologically stressful, traumatic, and anxiety provoking (e.g., Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Pennebaker & Stone, 2004) and are therefore often avoided in favor of perceptions of structure and order (Kruglanski, 1989; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Landau et al., 2004; Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006). From this perspective, the motivation to perceive personal control is considered a subgoal of the larger and more inclusive motivation to defend against perceptions of randomness and chaos
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Aaron C. Kay, Danielle Gaucher, and Kristin Laurin, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo; Jamie L. Napier, Department of Psychology, New York University; Mitchell J. Callan, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario. This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada research grant to Aaron C. Kay. We would like to thank Gra inne Fitzsimons, John Holmes, Ian McGregor, and Steven Spencer for their constructive comments on this article and the ideas within. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Aaron C. Kay, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1. E-mail: ackay@uwaterloo.ca

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within the social environment.1 Such a perspective is particularly common among social justice theorists (e.g., Jost et al., 2004; Lerner, 1980). However, at the same time that the field has demonstrated the tendency to prefer feelings of personal control, it has also made it clear that perceptions of personal control, the motivation to achieve such perceptions, and the positive effects of such perceptions all fluctuate greatly, both situationally and chronically, between and within cultures (e.g., Burger, 1989; Burger & Cooper, 1979; Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Pepitone & Saffiotti, 1997; Rodin, Rennert, & Solomon, 1980; Sethi & Lepper, 1998; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984; Wohl & Enzle, 2003). This latter set of findings coupled with the extent to which perceptions of personal control have been asserted as a primary means of fulfilling the motivation to guard against randomness in the social world (Hafer & Be ` gue, 2005; JanoffBulman, 1992; Lerner, 1980)raises an intriguing question: How might people maintain beliefs in order and structure, and defend against perceptions of randomness, in the face of fluctuating perceptions of personal control? We propose that perceptions of personal control, although a very effective means of preventing feelings of randomness in the social world, are only one (substitutable) means of doing so. The endorsement of external systems that impose order on ones social world, we believe, can also help people to meet this goal. In other words, because of a psychological need to insulate the self from feelings of randomness and chaos (and, conversely, to promote feelings of order and structure), we posit a substitutability of the belief in personal control with the belief that things are under control (Antonovsky, 1979). That is, to the extent that external systems of control, such as religions, governments, or broad societal institutions, suggest a reduction of randomness in the social order, people should show an increased tendency to rely on and endorse these systems when levels of personal control are low or under threat.2 As an analogy to this model, imagine a glass that only when full represents a given individuals preferred level of perceived order within his or her environment. As one way to fill this glass, this individual might rely on his or her perceptions of personal control over his or her outcomes: To guard against perceptions of randomness in the world, that is, he or she can affirm the belief that whatever happens, good or bad, will be due to his or her own actions and therefore not random. Often, however, such perceptions will only partially fill the glass because levels of perceived personal control, for a variety of reasons, tend to fluctuate (see Burger, 1989, 1992). Much of the time, therefore, to fill the glass completely, he or she will need to complement these beliefs in personal control with one or more external systems of control. Thus, to the extent that an individual is motivated to maintain a psychologically comfortable level of perceived order in his or her environment, when levels of personal control dip, the endorsement and defense of external systems of control should increase. This prediction is based on a rich history of theory and empirical research suggesting that in times of threatened personal control, people will increasingly align themselves with external sources of control. Most notably, Rothbaum, Weisz, and Snyders (1982) influential two-process model of perceived control suggests that when peoples means of primary controlthat is, peoples ability to directly influence their environment in line with their personal

desiresare thwarted, they may engage in any number of secondary control strategies (for a review, see Morling & Evered, 2006; Rothbaum et al., 1982). Although Rothbaum et al. outlined a number of such strategies, most relevant to this line of research is their notion of vicarious control, a secondary control strategy in which people are presumed to gain a sense of personal control by identifying with powerful others. Although we are unaware of any experimental tests of this model in the context of beliefs about the existence of God or the defense of sociopolitical systems, in discussing the likely manifestations of their two-process model of perceived control Rothbaum et al. noted that the religious sphere may ultimately prove to be one of the most fruitful for the assessment of the relations among secondary control phenomena (p. 20). The empirical predictions offered here, therefore, have not emerged out of the blue, so to speak. They are instead borne out of previous theoretical approaches, the most important of which is that of Rothbaum et al. (1982). Our aim here is not to compete with or supplant these previous approaches, but to build on and apply them in such a way that we can provide empirical and theoretical explanations for important social psychological phenomena that have yet to be adequately understood. (For a discussion of the ways in which our model also differs from this approach and other related conceptions of compensatory control, see the General Discussion.) Despite this solid theoretical footing, empirical (and, especially, experimental) evidence for this phenomenon is scarce. There are, however, data suggesting that under times of low personal control people do rely on higher level sources of control. For example, increases in beliefs and appeals to higher, supernatural sources of control have been shown to occur among Melanesian fisherman in foreign and dangerous waters (Malinowski, 1954); among Israelis when under military threat (Keinan, 1994); among those with a high chronic need for personal control (Keinan, 2002); and among baseball players who more strongly believe that personal, primary control only goes so far in controlling their performance on the field (Burger & Lynn, 2005). An important corollary to the specific model we are proposing is that this process should be most likely engaged for certain types of external systems. In this set of experiments, we focus primarily on the role of perceived system benevolencethe extent to which people believe the system holds an actual intention of serving the interests of its constituents. A specific external system should be less likely to be relied on if it is not perceived as having the goal of serving the interests of the system it is governing. For example, the control and order offered by an invading regime one that is seen as present only to help serve its own interests elsewhereis
There are, of course, other proposed functions for the motivation to perceive personal control (see Skinner, 1995). 2 To be clear, we are not suggesting that only negative instances of uncontrollability lead to increased dependence on external systems. Rather, any outcome that signifies a lack of personal control should lead to this phenomenon. Although people may very well prefer a positive random outcome (e.g., a $20 bill blowing in through the window) to a negative controllable one (e.g., forgetting to remove a $20 bill before throwing a pair of pants in the wash), any event that serves to lower feelings of personal control, regardless of valence, should instigate processes of compensatory control.
1

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unlikely to be endorsed as a means of psychological coping. We therefore predict that the extent to which an external system is perceived as benevolent will moderate the extent to which it will be increasingly relied on following reductions in personal control. Studies 3 and 4 directly test this notion. We are not proposing, however, that perceived benevolence is the only potential moderator of this relationship. Other moderators also likely exist. For example, an external system may also need to be perceived of as capable of providing order, or as being efficacious, to serve as a likely source of compensatory control. Moreover, in extreme circumstances, such as following dramatic reductions in perceived personal control, people may rely on any external system available. We discuss these possibilities further in the General Discussion. In the remainder of this article, we review empirical evidence that supports the notion that when personal control is low or threatened, people increasingly support external sourcesmost typically, God and government. Then, in five studies, we empirically test the compensatory control model in the context of both religious and governmental systems of control.

Religious Beliefs as a Compensatory Mechanism of Control

We believe that this good God, after He had created all things, did not abandon them or give them up to fortune or chance [italics added], but that according to His holy will He so rules and governs them that in this world nothing happens without His direction. . . . This doctrine gives us unspeakable consolation, for we learn thereby that nothing can happen to us by chance [italics added], but only by the direction of our gracious heavenly Father. He watches over us with fatherly care, keeping all creatures so under His power that not one hair of our headfor they are all numberednor one sparrow can fall to the ground without the will of our Father. (de Bres, 1561/1984, pp. 449 450)

To the extent that people are motivated to preserve beliefs in order and structure, and thereby prevent beliefs in randomness and chaos (e.g., Dechesne, Janssen, & van Knippenberg, 2000; Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, & Pyszczynski, 1995; Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002; Kruglanski, 1989; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Landau et al., 2004, 2006), religious beliefs may represent a particularly effective means for doing soa point that is illustrated vividly in the quotation above. Believing in a God who exerts some sort of control over the universe or even a religious doctrine that posits a particular spiritual order, such as Karmashould therefore be particularly likely to surface as a compensatory resource during times of lowered personal control. Although there have been a number of correlational and, to a much lesser extent, experimental investigations into the underpinnings of religious beliefs, none have tested the specific model we offer here. A number of studies have investigated the links between religious beliefs and generalized threat or stressful and negative life experiences (for a review, see Pargament, 2002). Some of these studies are complementary to our approach, insofar as stressful life experiences are often accompanied by reductions in personal control. In fact, despite the generality of much of this research, it is within this tradition that perhaps the most supportive evidence for the theory we are proposing can be found. Sales (1972, 1973), using archival data, conducted a fascinating examination of the relationship between broad societal threats and

temporary increases in authoritarianism. Although Saless interests lay in demonstrating the relationship between threatening experiences and the display of behaviors typically associated with authoritarianism, and not on the relationship between levels of personal control and the endorsement of external systems of control, some of his data are very supportive of the latter position. Namely, Sales demonstrated that during times of threat, such as the Great Depression and other economic downturns, (a) conversion rates into religious sects offering high levels of imposed order increased, (b) conversion rates into religious sects offering low levels of imposed order decreased, and (c) interest in supernatural sources of order in general (as measured by the publication of books dealing with such topics) increased. Although these data are of course correlational, to the extent that such threatening and restrictive historical incidents may have reduced feeling of personal control, it is suggestive of our general model. Other findings within this tradition are also worth noting. Again, although none of them test our exact model, and most are correlational, many are supportive of the notion that believing in religious sources of control, such as God, can compensate for decreased perceptions of personal control. Work on elderly people, for example, has demonstrated that as people age, their beliefs in God-mediated control increase, an increase that is associated with increased well-being (Krause, 2005). Indeed, this increase in beliefs in God-mediated control may explain why well-being does not generally decrease with age, despite the fact that levels of personal control do (Shapiro, Sandman, Grossman, & Grossman, 1995). Other research has demonstrated that marginalized social groups tend to more strongly believe in religious doctrine (Argyle & Beit-Hallami, 1975; Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1960; Pargament, 1997). To the extent that the life experiences of such groups can be assumed to produce lower perceptions of personal control, these findings are also in line with our theoretical model. Finally, research on the relationship between well-being and the different types of religiosity has also yielded some supportive findings. For example, it has been demonstrated that the association between intrinsic religiosity and adjustment to uncontrollable life events is much stronger for those who ascribe to religious sects that are high in faith (such as Protestantism). Along the same lines, it has also been shown that irrespective of religious sect, those who hold less superficial and more intrinsically driven beliefs in the existence of God tend to experience more health and well-being benefits. This pattern of data has been found in examinations of the differing outcomes associated with intrinsic versus extrinsic religiosity (Allport & Ross, 1967), internalization versus introjection of religious ideals (Ryan, Rigby, & King, 1993), and positive versus negative religious coping methods (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998). Each of the latter religious orientations, which involve more doubt as to the true existence of God, has been shown to be less psychologically beneficial (for a review of these findings, see Pargament, 2000). Within the domain of terror management theory, there have been several notable tests of the psychological function of religious beliefs (Greenberg et al., 1995; Jonas & Fischer, 2006; Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006; also see Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973). The emphasis in that work has been on the role that religion and belief in an afterlife can play in reducing existential angst associated with the fear of death, and not, as we are suggesting, on the role such beliefs can play in compensating for lowered perceptions

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of personal control. We do not dispute the important role that mortality concerns play in the adoption of religion, especially as it pertains to beliefs in an afterlife and the cultural norms supported by religious ideology. Our emphasis here is merely on a different, and likely complementary, existential basis for the belief in God. Although it is conceivable that mortality concerns (or, for that matter, many other sets of concerns, including uncertainty needs, beliefs in the ability of the individual to seek positive outcomes and avoid negative ones, etc.) are themselves a significant contributor to the desire to protect ones self from perceptions of randomness, the goal of the present set of studies is to gain a deeper understanding of the role external systems may play in helping us meet this desire to perceive order as opposed to randomness. It is not on why we hold this desirewhich is a topic that has received considerable attention elsewhere (e.g., Dechesne et al., 2000; Greenberg et al., 1995; Kay et al., 2002; Kruglanski, 1989; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Landau et al., 2004, 2006) nor on documenting the desire itself, which also has been widely addressed (for reviews, see Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Skinner, 1995).

defense of external systems. When motivated to defend God, the most pressing argument one generally needs to make is to convince others (or ones self) that he or she exists. When motivated to defend governmental and sociopolitical systems, however, people do not need to argue for their existence (as this is self-evident); instead, in such cases, defending them is generally manifested as defending their legitimacy and promoting their continued existence.

Overview of Studies
In five studies, we systematically tested the proposition that individuals are more likely to endorse and defend external systems of control, such as God and government, when personal control is low or threatened. In Study 1, we experimentally manipulated feelings of personal control (via a memory task, in which participants were asked to remember events from their recent past over which they did or did not have control) and then assessed the effects of this manipulation on beliefs in the existence of God as an external source of control. To the extent that beliefs in God serve a compensatory control function, we predicted that beliefs in the existence of God would increase after the manipulation designed to temporarily decrease feelings of personal control. To more precisely examine the compensatory control mechanism we suggest underlies this effect, we also introduced a moderator variable into this design. The dependent measure was varied such that half the participants were asked about beliefs in the existence of God framed in a way that emphasized a controlling nature (i.e., God as controller), whereas the other half were asked about beliefs in the existence of God framed in a way that deemphasized a controlling nature (i.e., God as creator). We expected this to moderate our findings, such that beliefs in the existence of God would show significantly more movement as a function of the control manipulation when the controlling, rather than creationist, nature of God was emphasized in the dependent measure. In Study 2, we sought to demonstrate that the effects of the control manipulation on beliefs in the existence of a controlling God occurred, at least in part, for the reason we presumed: the threat that this manipulation posed to participants general beliefs in order, structure, and nonrandomness in their world. Thus, we introduced a mediator variable into our design that assessed the extent to which the control manipulations threatened beliefs in order and nonrandomness. If the effect of the control manipulation on beliefs in the existence of God observed in Study 1 was due to the threat it posed to participants overarching beliefs in the order, structure, and nonrandomness that exists in their world, we expected the threat variable to mediate the relevant effect. In Studies 3 and 4, we sought to demonstrate that processes of compensatory control can also explain the defense of external systems of control other than religion, such as governmental and societal institutions. In Study 3, using a representative, crossnational, and cross-cultural data set, we examined whether beliefs in personal control predict support for governmental systems that exert control over peoples lives. If it is the case that people rely on governmental systems to compensate for lowered levels of perceived personal control, then we would expect these two variables to be significantly and negatively correlated: Lower perceptions of personal control should predict higher beliefs in the extent to which governmental systems should have control. Also, given

Compensatory Control, Governmental Control, and the System Justification Motive

Dozens of experiments under the umbrella of system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) have demonstrated that people often defend, justify, excuse, and trust the social systems within which they function (see Jost et al., 2004; Kay et al., 2007, for reviews). Whether operationalized as society in general, the government, or specific institutions such as ones university, people have been shown to engage in psychological processes aimed at defending the legitimacy of their social systems (Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay et al., 2002; Kay & Jost, 2003; Kay, Jost, & Young, 2005; Lau, Kay, & Spencer, 2008). Although several theoretical explanations have been put forth to explain this phenomenon (see Jost & Hunyady, 2002, 2005; Kay & Zanna, in press), there is a dearth of empirical evidence offered to account for this motivated defense of external systems. The model of compensatory control we have proposed above and the test of it we provide below can, we believe, help to explain why people are motivated to place their faith in these types of external systemsthat is, because of their potential for compensating for lowered levels of personal control. Although not traditionally viewed as such, governmental and organizational institutions, we believe, can serve very similar existential needs to those served by religious ideologies. Given the clear rules, guidelines, norms, and structure formal systems provide, governments and organizational systems, much like religions, hold the potential to help people imbue their worlds with order and control. Indeed, it has been explicitly suggested that existential needs are a key underlying driver of the system justification motive (Jost & Hunyady, 2005). To this end, although the first set of studies presented investigates the relation between personal control and beliefs in religious control, the later set tests this model specifically in the context of defending societal and governmental systems, making explicit the contribution of our model of compensatory control to system justification theory. Although believing in God and defending the legitimacy of ones social system may seem like conceptually unrelated dependent measures, they both fit our main construct of interest: the

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the moderator we have proposed in regards to perceived system benevolence, we would expect this correlation to be moderated by perceptions of government corruption, such that the relevant relation should be weakest in those countries with governments seen as most corrupt. In Study 4, we assessed the effects of our control manipulation on explicit defense of the sociopolitical system (or system justification), operationalized as resistance to societal change. Our prediction was that participants in the low perceived control condition would defend the sociopolitical system more strongly than those in the high perceived control condition. Additionally, to test our hypothesis that perceived system benevolence will moderate the likelihood that a specific external system will be used to compensate for lowered levels of perceived personal control, we included a moderator variable in this design, namely, the extent to which participants believe the relevant political system to be benevolent. We predicted the perceived personal control manipulation would be most likely to lead to increased system justification for those who believe this particular system to be a benevolent force.3 In Studies 1 to 4, we examined whether low or threatened personal control will lead or relate to the endorsement and justification of external systems of control. In Study 5, we examined the converse prediction that a threat to the justness and orderliness of an external system of control would cause enhanced perceptions of personal control, using a paradigm known to be effective for measuring illusions of personal control (Alloy & Abramson, 1979). Our compensatory control model suggests that because people are motivated to defend and justify external systems that can add order and control to their lives, threatening the viability and effectiveness of such social systems should lead to enhanced perceptions of personal control. Across these five studies, therefore, we aim to provide novel empirical evidence for two very important, but still not satisfactorily understood, psychological phenomena: (a) the prevalence of religious beliefs and (b) the operation of the system justification motive.

affected by the manipulation. To adjust for preexisting levels of religious endorsement, we also included a measure of religiosity.

Method
Participants. Thirty-six participants (19 women and 17 men; 17 45 years of age; 31 Canadian and 5 other) were recruited from a public venue on a southern Ontario university campus and participated in exchange for a chocolate bar. Procedure. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire about self-thoughts and attitudes towards religion on site. The first page in the questionnaire booklet was our manipulation of personal control. Participants were exposed to one of two memory tasks asking them to recall a recent positive event over which they did or did not have control. Specifically, participants read and completed the following: Please try and think of something positive that happened to you in the past few months that was [not] your fault (i.e., that you had [absolutely no] control over). Please describe that event in no more than 100 words. On the following page, participants were asked to rate their beliefs in the existence of God. Half of the participants completed the dependent measure that referred to God in a way that deemphasized a controlling nature (God as creator). These God-ascreator items were To what extent do you think it is feasible that God, or some type of nonhuman entity, created the universe? and To what extent do you think that it is feasible that God, or some type of nonhuman entity, created all life on the planet? Items used a 7-point response format (1 tremendously doubtful, 7 very likely) and were averaged to form a highly reliable composite ( .96). The other half of the participants completed the dependent measure that referred to God in a way that emphasized Gods controlling nature (God as controller). These God-as-controller items were To what extent do you think it is feasible that God, or some type of nonhuman entity, is in control, at least in part, of the events within our universe? and To what extent do you think that the events that occur in this world unfold according to Gods, or some type of nonhuman entitys, plan? Again, items used a 7-point response format (1 tremendously doubtful, 7 very likely) and were averaged to form a highly reliable composite ( .94). Last, participants completed a demographics page that assessed their age, gender, and religiosity. The one-item measure of religiosity was How religious do you consider yourself? The item used a 5-point response format (1 not at all religious, 5 extremely religious). Once finished, participants were probed for awareness or suspicion of our hypotheses and any presumed relation between our independent and dependent variables, which none reported. Finally, they were thanked, debriefed, and given a chocolate bar as payment. Check on the manipulation of personal control. Using a separate sample of participants, we examined whether reporting pos3 In Studies 1, 2, and 4, our manipulation of perceived personal control involved memories only for positive events. This was done to distinguish our approach from those that emphasize the role that beliefs in God, religion, and the government play in helping people to cope solely with negative and traumatic life events and experiences.

Study 1
In Study 1, we experimentally assessed our hypothesis that lowered levels of perceived personal control would predict higher levels of belief in religious sources of control, that is, the existence of God. In particular, we experimentally assessed whether a personal control manipulation could actually shift peoples reports of the extent to which they believe God as a controlling entity exists. Using a 2 2 factorial design, we exposed participants to one of two memory tasks that asked them to recall recent positive events over which they did or did not have control. All participants were then asked to rate their beliefs in the existence of God. For half the participants, the dependent measure referred to God in such a way that deemphasized a controlling nature (God as creator), and for the other half of the participants, the dependent measure referred to God in such a way that emphasized a controlling nature (God as controller). To the extent that beliefs in the existence of God can serve as an external source of compensatory control, we expected a two-way interaction to emerge, such that participants asked about a controlling God would endorse the existence of God more strongly following the no-control memory task, whereas participants asked about the existence of a creationist God would not be

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itive events over which participants either did or did not have control (a) affected their perceptions of personal control, as we assumed it would; (b) did so in the direction we presumed; (c) did not produce contrast effects in the belief that everybody and everything has more control (recall that our prediction is that threats to personal control are only compensated via the defense of external systems that the self may be under the control of, not just any system); and (d) did not affect other variables that might have been related to our effects, such as mood or self-esteem. Using a neutral cover story (i.e., study of daily events), we asked participants to complete one of our two manipulations, embedded within other questions about daily events (e.g., Please list the last three movies you saw). They were then asked to complete one of two sets of dependent measures. In one sample (n 29), participants were asked to rate their agreement (1 strongly disagree, 7 strongly agree) with four items related to beliefs in the control of irrelevant agents (e.g., The Chinese government has control over its citizens lives, Seniors (i.e., people over 70 years of age) have control over their lives, and Hockey coaches have control over their team [this was, after all, conducted in Canada]), and items related to their control over their own lives (i.e., The events in my life are mainly determined by my own actions and I am not in control of most things that occur in my life [reverse scored]). In another sample (n 39), participants were asked to complete standard measures of self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1979) and mood (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). As expected, participants who were asked about a time when they did not have control reported lower levels of belief in personal control (M 4.1) compared with participants who were asked about a time when they did have control (M 4.9), t(27) 2.45, p .02, d 1.10. However, there was no effect of our manipulation in terms of generalized control of irrelevant agents, t(29) 1, ns, nor in terms of self-esteem, t(37) 1, ns; positive mood, t(37) 1; or negative mood, t(37) 1. These findings confirm that our manipulation is indeed a specific threat to participants sense of personal control.

Figure 1. Mean endorsement of God as controller or creator as a function of personal control (adjusted for religiosity; Study 1).

controlno personal control memory manipulation exerted the hypothesized effect: Participants who first remembered events over which they had no control were significantly more likely to subsequently believe in the existence of a God who has control than those participants who first remembered events over which they had control (adjusted Ms 4.89 and 3.08, respectively), F(1, 16) 5.12, p .04.

Discussion
Study 1s findings support our compensatory control model. Participants asked to recall events from their recent past over which they had no control subsequently reported stronger beliefs in the existence of (a controlling) God (or a similar supernatural controlling influence) than those participants asked to recall instances of controllability from their recent past. Given the extent to which beliefs in the existence of God are something most people have spent a good deal of time thinking about in their lives, the fact that our manipulation significantly shifted these beliefs is rather striking. In addition, and in line with our theoretical explanation, this effect was also moderated by the manner in which God was framed within the dependent measure: Only when the controlling nature of God was emphasized did participants show the relevant effect. Why in the God-as-controller condition did we observe increasingly strong beliefs in the existence of God following the no personal control manipulation? We believe this was due to the threat this manipulation posed to participants overarching sense of
4 The manipulation of personal control did not significantly affect this covariate (Ms 2.93 and 2.59 in the no-control and control conditions, respectively). Theoretically, this is not surprising. Our predicted effect of the control manipulation on beliefs in the existence of God is specific to God as a controlling agent (indeed, we are not predicting it will affect ratings on beliefs in a strictly creationary God). A general measure of religiosity such as the one we used as the covariate likely gauges several aspects of religiosity unrelated to beliefs in a controlling God (see Allport & Ross, 1967).

Results
We conducted a two-way univariate analysis of variance in which the memory for instances of personal control manipulation (two levels: control vs. no control) and the moderator (God as controller vs. God as creator) were entered as fixed factors and religiosity was entered as a covariate.4 The dependent measure was belief in the existence of God (or similar supernatural beings). The analyses yielded a main effect of religiosity, indicating that participants who were more religious more strongly endorsed the existence of God, F(1, 31) 66.65, p .001. Although no other main effects were obtained, the two-way interaction between the controlno-control memory manipulation and the dependent measure manipulation also attained statistical significance, F(1, 31) 6.32, p .02. As can be seen in Figure 1, this interaction unfolded in the predicted direction. Whereas the control versus no-control memory manipulation exerted no effect on participants ratings of the existence of God when Gods controlling nature was deemphasized (adjusted Ms 4.27 and 4.06, respectively), F(1, 14) 0.03, ns, when Gods controlling nature was emphasized, the personal

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order and structure in their environment and the usefulness of God as an external source of control in compensating for this threat. That the findings from Study 1 were moderated by the extent to which God was framed as a controlling entity is supportive of this reasoning. However, this notion can be addressed more directly. In particular, a mediational design that measures the extent to which the control manipulation actually threatened overarching beliefs in order and structure and the extent to which such threat, in turn, influenced beliefs in the existence of God, would accomplish this. Study 2 provides such a test.

Study 2
When important motivations or core beliefs are threatened, people often respond defensively, strengthening their original convictions and beliefs through both direct and indirect means. For example, when meaningful identities, such as ones self- or group identity, are attacked, the result is often an increased belief in the worth of that particular identity (e.g., Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Dunning, 2003; Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992; Tesser, Crepaz, Beach, Cornell, & Collins, 2000). Similarly, when epistemic belief systems are threatened, such as beliefs in personal uncertainty (McGregor & Marigold, 2003; McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001), system legitimacy (Jost et al., 2004), cognitive consistency (Tesser et al., 2000), and belief in a just world (Lerner, 1980), similar processes of defensive zeal and conviction often ensue. One way to test whether a particular manipulation has threatened a given motivated belief, therefore, is to assess the extent to which the relevant threat manipulation produces defensive conviction in the domain it is presumed to threaten (in this case, general beliefs in nonrandomness and order). Thus, if the personal control manipulation used in Study 1 threatened the overarching motivation to guard against randomness and chaos in ones environment (via lowered levels of personal control), then following that manipulation, we would expect participants to react by increasingly defending their beliefs in generalized order and structure in their lives (or, likewise, by increasingly denying the role of chance). Moreover, if this threat was what caused participants to increasingly believe in the existence of a controlling God, then we would also expect the magnitude of this defensive response to mediate the effect of the personal control manipulation on the relevant dependent measure belief in the existence of a controlling God. Thus, in Study 2, we introduced a measure into our design designed to tap explicit denial of randomness and chance in the participants lives. The pretest data in Study 1 demonstrated that the personal control manipulation lowered feelings of personal control, and so one might assume it should have the same effects on a scale measuring general beliefs in nonrandomness. However, beliefs in personal control and beliefs that the world is nonrandom do not sit at the same end of one continuum. Why is this? Although beliefs in personal control are one way to fulfill the overarching motivation to believe the world is not random, many other beliefs can also serve the same function. In other words, although increased levels of perceived personal control naturally imply increased levels of perceived nonrandomness, decreased levels of perceived personal control do not necessarily imply decreased levels of perceived nonrandomness.

As an example, imagine an individual, such as a devout Calvinist, who very strongly believes God is in complete control of his fate. This person would be very low on a scale of perceived personal control, but also very high on the overarching belief that the world is nonrandomthat is, he could very easily see himself as having little personal control without also believing that the world operates randomly. These two constructs, therefore, although related, should not be thought of as one and the same. Indeed, as will be seen, and as our model predicts, the same manipulation can have different, even opposite, effects on measures designed to gauge beliefs in personal control versus beliefs that outcomes are due to randomness or accidental happenings.

Method
Participants and procedure. Thirty-eight participants (12 women, 10 men, and 16 gender unknown; 19 23 years of age; 16 Canadian, 6 other, and 16 unknown; 10 Christian, 4 not religious, 5 other, and 19 religion unknown) completed our materials in exchange for course credit. All participants were recruited from a university campus in southern Ontario. Participants were told that the study concerned how individuals think about themselves and various social institutions. All of the measures were completed online. First, participants were exposed to one of the same two memory task manipulations of personal control that were used in Study 1. On the following Web page, participants completed two items that were designed to assess feelings of perceived randomness in their lives. The two items, each answered on 7-point scales (ranging from 1 tremendously doubtful to 7 very likely), were To a great extent my life is controlled by accidental happenings and The things that occur in my life are mostly a matter of chance. The responses to these items were reverse coded so that higher responses indicated increasing defense against randomness and averaged to form a reliable defensive reactions composite ( .88). Last, to measure beliefs in the existence of God, participants were asked To what extent do you think it is feasible that God, or some type of nonhuman entity, is in control, at least in part, of the events within our universe? The item used a 7-point response format (1 tremendously doubtful, 7 very likely). Once finished, participants were thanked for their participation and debriefed.

Results
To investigate whether the personal control manipulation did in fact produce defensive reactions regarding overarching views of the role played by randomness and chance in the participants lives, and whether these reactions mediated the effect of the personal control manipulation on belief in the existence of God as an external source of control, we conducted a series of separate regressions, as depicted in Figure 2. Two separate regressions showed an effect of the personal control manipulation on the denial of randomness, 0.362, t(36) 3.13, p .003, and the belief in the existence of a

GOD AND THE GOVERNMENT

25 Studies 3 and 4

Figure 2. Mediation model. The no personal control and personal control conditions were dummy coded as 1 and 0, respectively (Study 2). p .10. * p .05.

controlling God, 0.278, t(36) 1.78, p .086,5 indicating that following the low personal control manipulation, compared with the high personal control manipulation, participants more strongly denied randomness and chance (Ms 4.12 and 3.05, respectively) and more strongly endorsed the existence of God (Ms 4.78 and 3.70, respectively). When personal control and defensive reactions were entered simultaneously into the regression to predict the belief in the existence of a controlling God, the direct association between personal control and the belief in the existence of God was greatly diminished, whereas the association between defensive reactions and the belief in the existence of God remained statistically significant, 0.132, t(36) 1, ns, and 0.415, t(36) 2.61, p .013, respectively. To test the significance of the indirect path, we used the bootstrapping procedure described by Preacher and Hayes (2004), who suggested that the bootstrapping method is the most appropriate option when testing indirect paths with small samples. The bootstrapping procedure was used to test the null hypothesis that the indirect path from personal control to the belief in the existence of a controlling God through defensive reactions was not significantly different than zero. As per the bootstrapping procedure, the 95% confidence interval values did not cross zero (1.64 and 0.01), which confirms that the defensive reactions did mediate the effect of the personal control manipulation on beliefs in the existence of God ( p .05). To rule out a possible reverse mediation interpretation (i.e., control manipulation 3 beliefs in God 3 denial of randomness), we also conducted analyses of the reverse mediation path. This path did not reveal significant mediation, allowing for confidence regarding the direction of this effect.

Beyond religion, processes of compensatory control should also generalize to other external systems that can offer order and control to peoples lives. System justification theory research has documented numerous cases in which people defend external systems of control, ranging from their governments to societal norms and institutions (for reviews, see Jost et al., 2004; Kay et al., 2007). Why might people do so? Despite the abundance of research on system justification phenomena, there are virtually no experimental tests of why this occurs. We believe that the motivated defense of societal arrangements and the systems and institutions that uphold these arrangements (i.e., system justification) may represent a means of compensatory control. That is, we believe the compensatory control model is generalizable beyond religion; just as we have observed in Studies 1 and 2 in the context of religion, people should also endorse and defend other types of external sources of control such as the government and prevailing sociopolitical systemsto compensate for fluctuating levels of personal control. In Study 3, we first test this hypothesis correlationally. Using nationally representative samples from 67 countries, we assessed the extent to which beliefs in personal control predict support for increased governmental intervention in peoples lives. We predicted that these variables would correlate negatively and significantly: The less people perceive personal control over their own lives, the more they will endorse governmental control. In addition, to assess our prediction that these effects should be strongest for those external systems perceived as benevolent, we investigated the moderating role of reports of government corruption. In Study 4, we test this hypothesis again. In this study, however, we used an experimental rather than a correlational methodology, introduced a moderator to the design (i.e., perceived system benevolence), and used a different measure of support for the sociopolitical system (i.e., resistance to system change).

Study 3
In this study, we used data from the European and World Values Survey to examine whether low feelings of personal control are associated with increased dependence on governmental institutions. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it is important to establish that the findings from Studies 13 are not limited to beliefs about God, per se, but rather that low personal control should be associated with greater dependence on external systems of control in general (see also Rothbaum et al., 1982). Second, if this process is part of basic psychological functioning, it should not be limited to a specific culture or type of governmental system. Of course, the concept of personal control may vary in different cultures around the world, but we expected to find that the relationship is at least not limited to one particular governmental system. Furthermore, in this study, we tested the notion that external sources of control will be most useful in compensating for
Although this effect is only marginal, when meta-analyzed across Studies 1 and 2, the effect of our personal control manipulation on the belief in God produces a moderate to large effect size and is highly significant (d 0.634, Z 2.32, p .01).
5

Discussion
Study 2, therefore, provides further support for our theoretical reasoning. The personal control manipulation was shown to be threatening to participants overarching sense of order and structure (insofar as it engaged defensive reactions surrounding the role that chance and randomness play in the participants lives), and the extent of these defensive reactions mediated the effect of the personal control manipulation on beliefs in the relevant external source of control. In Studies 3, 4, and 5, we test this model in the context of other potential sources of external control and also make explicit the potential for our model to contribute to our understanding of other important, but not fully understood, social psychological phenomena, such as system justification.

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KAY, GAUCHER, NAPIER, CALLAN, AND LAURIN

low personal control to the extent the external source is deemed benevolent.

Method
Data for this study came from the third and fourth waves of the World Values Survey (World Values Survey Association, n.d.). These surveys were conducted by face-to-face interviews in countries around the world from 1994 to 2003, and the sample is representative of about 85% of the worlds population (see Inglehart, Basan ez, Diez-Medrano, Halman, & Luijkx, 2004, for a more detailed description of this dataset). Participants. The variables that we were interested in (described below) were available for 93,122 individuals from 67 countries.6 Person-level variables. The dependent measure, increased support for governmental control, was operationalized with one item that asked respondents to place themselves on a scale ranging from 1 to 10 (1 People should take more responsibility to provide for themselves, 10 The government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for). Personal control was operationalized with one item that read, Some people feel they have completely free choice and control over their lives, while other people feel that what they do has no real effect on what happens to them; respondents were asked to indicate how much control they feel on a scale ranging from 1 (none at all) to 10 (a great deal). In addition to our two main variables of interest, we included many adjustment variables in our models, including age, income, education, and sex. Age was coded in six categories (1524, 2534, 35 44, 4554, 55 64, and 65 and older). Income was coded with three steps representing the lower, middle, and upper income levels on the basis of the standard of living in the survey country. Education was coded in eight categories representing the level of schooling obtained. Sex was dummy coded so that males were 0 and females were 1. Because views about government responsibility could be, in part, ideological, we also adjusted for leftright political orientation in all of our models. This was measured on a scale ranging from 1 (left wing) to 10 (right wing). National-level variables. We used the 1999 Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International (n.d.) as a measure of perceived benevolence on a country level. The Corruption Perceptions Index is calculated on a yearly basis for a large set of countries and is considered one of the most reliable cross-national comparison indexes (see You & Khagram, 2005). The index ranges from 1 (most corrupt) to 10 (least corrupt). The data were weighted with a weight provided by the European and World Values Survey to reflect national distributions of demographic variables. All continuous variables were centered on the scale midpoint.

level differences in how much (or how little) the government is perceived to be taking responsibility for. We also included random effects for the intercept and slope between personal control and preference for governmental responsibility. The results from this model (Model 1) are shown in Table 1. Above and beyond the effects of random variation between countries (2 .01, p .001) for both the intercept and slope, personal control is significantly and negatively associated with preference for governmental responsibility (b 0.07, SE .01, p .001), supporting the notion that those with a low sense of personal control are more likely to prefer governmental involvement. According to the compensatory control model, people with low feelings of personal control should be most likely to look to a given external source of control to the extent it is seen as benevolent. To examine this, we ran a second multilevel model with Transparency Internationals (n.d.) Corruption Perceptions Index included as a moderator of the relationship between personal control and governmental responsibility. As shown in Table 1, the results from this model (Model 2) support our reasoning. Above and beyond the effects of random variation between countries (2 .01, p .001, for the intercept and 2 .005, p .001, for the slope between personal control and governmental responsibility), we found that personal control was again significantly and negatively associated with preference for governmental responsibility (b 0.07, SE .01, p .001). This effect is qualified by a significant interaction between personal control and governmental benevolence (b 0.01, SE .00, p .05). As shown in Figure 3, individuals living in countries with benevolent (as opposed to corrupt) governments are much more likely to turn to the government when personal control is lacking. Simple slope analyses (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006) show that the relationship between personal control and preference for government responsibility is negative and significant for all countries, but is stronger in countries with benevolent governments (b 0.14, SE .03, p .001) as compared with corrupt governments (b 0.09, SE .01, p .001).
Specifically, the analyses include the following countries: Albania (n 1,787); Argentina (n 1,530); Armenia (n 1,448); Australia (n 1,589); Austria (n 992); Belgium (n 1,256); Azerbaijan (n 1,154); Belarus (n 1,619); Brazil (n 960); Bulgaria (n 1,342); Canada (n 1,488); Chile (n 1,721); Colombia (n 2,732); Croatia (n 764); Czech Republic (n 2,391); Denmark (n 768); El Salvador (n 821); Estonia (n 1,334); Finland (n 1,575); France (n 1,058); Georgia (n 1,561); Germany (n 2,818); Great Britain (n 507); Greece (n 829); Hungary (n 753); Iceland (n 811); India (n 1,908); Indonesia (n 727); Ireland (n 695); Italy (n 1,205); Japan (n 897); Jordan (n 393); Korea (n 1,131); Kyrgyzstan (n 946); Latvia (n 1,517); Lithuania (n 1,262); Luxembourg (n 447); Macedonia (n 1,220); Mexico (n 2,580); Moldova (n 1,358); Morocco (n 479); Netherlands (n 901); New Zealand (n 700); Nigeria (n 3,375); Norway (n 1,015); Pakistan (n 177); Peru (n 2,060); Philippines (n 1,133); Poland (n 806); Romania (n 1,479); Russia (n 2,516); Serbia (n 1,645); Slovakia (n 1,814); Slovenia (n 490); South Africa (n 4,187); Spain (n 1,909); Sweden (n 1,804); Switzerland (n 758); Tanzania (n 744); Taiwan (n 701); Turkey (n 5,521); Uganda (n 69); Ukraine (n 1,854); United States (n 2,268); Uruguay (n 833); Venezuela (n 1,645); Vietnam (n 891); and Zimbabwe (n 699).
6

Results
We tested a two-level model in HLM version 5.05 (Raudenbush, Bryk, & Congdon, 2001). On the individual level, we included personal control, leftright orientation, and demographic adjustments as predictors of preference for governmental responsibility. On the country level, we adjusted the intercept with the national mean of the government responsibility item to account for country-

GOD AND THE GOVERNMENT

27

Discussion
In this study, we found additional evidence that is consistent with the compensatory control model. By examining peoples feelings about government responsibility, we have shown that the need for personal control is associated with increased support for external systems of control, not only religion. The relationship between feelings of personal control and support for governmental control was negative and significant after adjusting for random variation between countries and was above and beyond the effects of ideological orientation. We also predict that people who have low levels of personal control will be most likely to turn to a given external system of control to the extent it is deemed benevolent. The data from this study seem to support this notion. For those living in countries in which the government is perceived as benevolent (as measured by lack of corruption), the relationship between personal control and preference for governmental responsibility was stronger than for those living in countries in which the government is perceived as corrupt. Still, it should be noted that even for those countries deemed highly corrupt, the relationship remained significant (albeit at a considerably weaker level). This is a testament to the power of the motivation to guard against randomness.

Figure 3. Preference for governmental responsibility as a function of personal control and government benevolence (Study 3).

Study 4
Not all external sources of control are equally likely to be relied on following a threat to personal control. Some should lend themselves more to this role than others. Although there are likely many factors that can determine this, one likely candidate is the extent to which an external system is perceived as benevolent or as representing its constituents best interests. Because our two experimental studies (Studies 1 and 2) involved an external source of control thatif it existsis mostly thought to be benevolent, those

Table 1 Feelings of Personal Control and Governmental Benevolence (Vs. Corruption) as Predictors of Preference for Governmental Responsibility in 59 Countries (Study 4)
Fixed effects b (SE) Predictors Country level Intercept Mean government responsibility Government benevolence (vs. corruption) index Individual level Sex Age Income Education Right-wing orientation Personal control Cross-level interaction Personal Control Government Benevolence
*

Model 1 0.41 (.02)** 0.96 (.02)

**

Model 2 0.42 (.02)** 0.96 (.02)

**

studies did not provide the ideal context in which to test this particular aspect of our model. That is, although beliefs in the extent to which God exists certainly run the gamut, beliefs about the extent to which God, in real or fictional form, cares about the welfare of humanity obviously vary much less.7 Beliefs in the benevolence of governmental and federal systems and institutions of control, however, are likely to show much more of a rangeindeed, system justification theory does not posit that all people tend to uniformly believe that their systems hold their best interests at heart, just that structural aspects of systems are often deemed more justifiable than one would expect and that people tend to resist large systemic changes (Jost et al., 2004; Kay & Zanna, in press). Thus, in our fourth study, we experimentally tested the extent to which the tendency to defend ones sociopolitical federal system following a threat to personal control would be moderated by views of the benevolence of said system. To this end, in Study 4, we first threatened participants sense of personal control and then gauged the extent to which participants engaged in system justification (operationalized as resistance to system change). We also measured participants beliefs in the benevolence of their national system. We expected responses to this measure to moderate the effects of the personal control manipulation on system justification, such that those participants who perceive the system to be most benevolent would be most likely to defend it following a threat to personal control.

Method
Participants. Twenty-eight participants (12 women and 16 men; 16 27 years of age; 15 Canadian, 8 East Asian, 4 other, and 1 unknown) were recruited from a public venue on a southern Ontario university campus and participated in exchange for a chocolate bar.
7 Many conceptions of the Judeo-Christian God involve a God who is vengeful, strict, and punishing; this does not, however, imply any lack of benevolence or interest in the welfare of humanity. One can be strict, punishing, and vengeful with the intentions of doing so for the greater good. A strict parent is an excellent example of this. Of course, there may be individuals or groups who view God as nonbenevolent. For these people, we would not expect a replication of the effects from Studies 1 and 2.

0.00 (.01),ns 0.14 (.02)** 0.01 (.01),ns 0.17 (.02)** 0.08 (.01)** 0.07 (.01)** 0.07 (.01)** 0.14 (.02)** 0.01 (.01),ns 0.17 (.02)** 0.08 (.01)** 0.07 (.01)** 0.07 (.01)**

0.01 (.00)*

p .05.

**

p .01.

28

KAY, GAUCHER, NAPIER, CALLAN, AND LAURIN

Procedure. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire about self-thoughts and social institutions on site. First, participants were exposed to one of the same two memory task manipulations of personal control that were used in Studies 1 and 2. Participants then completed four items that were designed to assess their beliefs in the benevolence of the national system. The four items, each answered on 9-point scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree), were The current federal government has my best interests at heart, I feel the current federal government, all in all, is doing a very good job, The current federal government ensures that its citizens are, for the most part, well taken care of, and All in all, I feel that the current federal government is run for the benefit of its citizens. The responses to these items were averaged to form a reliable benevolence of national system composite ( .88).8 Next, participants completed three items that were designed to assess defense of the current sociopolitical system, operationalized as resistance to system change. The three items, each answered on 9-point scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree), were Societal change is disruptive, When societal change occurs, the consequences of this change on society are almost always negative, and Promoting national stability should be the Canadian governments main goal. The responses to these items were averaged to form a system justification composite ( .62). Once finished, participants were probed for awareness or suspicion of our hypotheses or any presumed relation between our independent and dependent variables.9 Finally, participants were thanked, debriefed, and given a chocolate bar as payment.

Figure 4. Mean resistance to system change scores as a function of the personal control manipulation and belief in the benevolence of government. Belief in the benevolence of the government was plotted at 1 standard deviation below and 1 standard deviation above the mean (Study 4).

Discussion
This fourth study further corroborates our compensatory control model of support for external systems in two important ways. First, and most generally, it provides experimental evidence for our proposition that people will respond to threats to personal control via increased support for external systems in a context outside of religious beliefs. In this study, following a threat to personal control, participants increasingly defended their sociopolitical system. This finding both complements the correlational data regarding the relation between chronic levels of perceived personal control and support for governmental control attained in Study 3 and also provides a noteworthy link to system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Second, we obtained important experimental evidence supporting our prediction that the more an external system of control is deemed benevolentthat is, perceived to hold the goal of serving a systems constituents to the best of its abilitythe more likely it will be relied on during times of low perceived personal control. Indeed, those participants who did not a priori deem the Canadian sociopolitical system as representative of their interests did not increasingly defend it following the personal control manipulation. This suggests a key, theoretically sensible moderator. We would to remind the reader, however, that we are not suggesting that perceived system benevolence is the only moderator of this phenomenon. Other factors, such as perceptions regarding the systems ability to competently and effectively meet its goals, are also likely to play a moderating role.

Results
We hypothesized that (a) people would increasingly defend the legitimacy of their sociopolitical systemthat is, they would resist system changefollowing a threat to personal control and (b) this effect would be moderated by views of the benevolence of this system. To test this, we used regression analyses to predict participants resistance to social change. Predictors were the control no-control memory manipulation (contrast coded), mean-centered ratings of the benevolence of the sociopolitical system, and the interaction between these two variables. There were no main effects of the controlno-control memory manipulation or ratings of the benevolence of the national system on participants resistance to system change. However, the predicted two-way interaction between the personal controlno-personal control memory manipulation and ratings of the benevolence of the national system attained statistical significance, 0.467, t(25) 2.64, p .015. As can be seen in Figure 4, this interaction unfolded in the predicted direction. For those participants who did not perceive the national system to be benevolent, the control manipulation did not affect defense of this external system of control, 0.297, t(25) 1.19, ns. For those who believed this system to be benevolent, however, the control manipulation exerted the hypothesized effect: Participants defended their sociopolitical system to a significantly stronger extent following the no personal control manipulation compared with the personal control manipulation, 0.691, t(25) 2.63, p .015.

Study 5
Our first four studies provided consistent and converging evidence that people are motivated to enhance their faith in external
It is important to note that there were no effects of our manipulation on the benevolence of the national system measure, F(1, 24) 0.025, ns. 9 Two participants suspected a connection between the independent and dependent measures and were therefore excluded from the analyses. Neither participant, however, suspected our specific prediction.
8

GOD AND THE GOVERNMENT

29

systems of controlsuch as in God and the governmentas means of compensating for lowered levels of personal control. Given that the primary purpose of this article is to test and develop a theoretical model that can help explain why people so often endorse and defend external systems of control, we have chosen to test this particular direction of causality in the majority of our experimental studies. However, if our general theoretical model is correct, the converse should also be true: That is, if endorsing external systems of control and believing in personal control do in fact serve substitutable means (i.e., maintaining overarching beliefs in nonrandomness and order), then when external systems of control are challenged, people should increase their perceptions of personal control. Thus, to offer even more converging evidence for the general model tested in Studies 1 4, we included a fifth study that experimentally tests this reverse path. To test this hypothesis, in Study 5 we presented participants with a video that portrayed the governmental system as either capable or incapable of restoring order following an injustice and then measured illusory perceptions of personal control. If our model of compensatory control is in fact correct, and beliefs in external systems of control are, to some extent, substitutable with perceptions of personal control, then exposing participants to an instance in which the system could not help to alleviate a random injustice should cause these participants to enhance their perception of personal control. That is, we should observe the converse effect of that obtained in Studies 1 4. Following the video presentation, we examined participants perceptions of personal control by using a modified version of Alloy and Abramsons (1979) classic contingency task, which has been successfully used in a number of studies examining illusions of control (e.g., Alloy, Abramson, & Viscusi, 1981; Presson & Benassi, 2003; Tennen & Sharp, 1983; Thompson et al., 2004). In this task, we asked participants to control the onset of a green circle appearing on a computer screen by either pressing the space bar or not. After the task was completed, participants judged the extent to which they believed they had controlled the onset of the green circle. If enhanced personal control serves a system justifying function, then participants who learn that the system could not rectify the injustice should engage in the compensatory process of believing that they had more control over the onset of the green circle than participants who learn that the system was effective (despite the fact that the amount of control they actually had over the appearance of the green circle was held constant by the experimenter).

Method
Participants. Fifty-one undergraduate students participated for course credit. Two participants data were removed because of their suspicions and another participants data were removed because the participant failed to follow the proper procedures. The resulting sample consisted of 41 women and 7 men with a mean age of 20.75 years (SD 2.85). Procedure. Participants entered the laboratory under the guise that the study was about attentional distractions and the processing of emotional cues. They were told that they would watch an emotionally involving video presentation and then complete an attention-distracting problem-solving task before answering questions about the video. The problem-solving task was a modified

version of Alloy and Abramsons (1979) illusions of control paradigm. Participants were told that that the problem-solving task was designed to temporarily shift their attention away from the video presentation. To facilitate the credibility of the cover story, participants then completed a bogus Emotions and Feelings of Others Scale that we developed. Participants were then given instructions on how to complete the problem-solving task. Specifically, they were told that they were required to make a green circle appear on a computer screen on the basis of whether they pressed the space bar or not. Participants were informed that they could press or not press the space bar and that the green circle would appear or not appear. Because it was their task to make the green circle appear, we told the participants that it would be to their advantage to press the space bar on some trials and not on other trials to see what happened when they did and did not press the space bar. Participants then completed four practice trials of the task. Participants were then given a description of the video presentation. They were informed that the video presentation involved a two-part interview with a young woman named Kerry who is infected with HIV (Fisher & Fisher, 1992). They were told that because of time constraints, they would only be able to view a few clips from the initial interview session, but that they would receive a summary after the video presentation of what the young woman discussed in the follow-up interview. Before the video, participants were told that Kerry contracted HIV after protected sex in which the condom broke. The experimenter then started the video presentation and left the room. The video ran for approximately 4 min. During the video, Kerry discusses the many ways in which her life has now been negatively affected as a result of this extreme misfortune. Kerry also discusses how the system has tried to come to her aid by prescribing various antiviral medications. (In Canada, the medical system is wholly governmental, and all our participants were Canadian.) Once the video was finished, the experimenter reentered the room and orally administered the manipulation. In the ineffective system condition, participants learned that the treatment recommended by the medical (i.e., governmental) system had done little to minimize the consequences of Kerrys misfortune. In the effective system condition, participants learned that the recommended course of action had effectively and significantly minimized her suffering and bad luckthe virus was now in a total state of remission. Using this manipulation, Callan, Ellard, and Nicol (2006) found that knowledge of the ineffectiveness (vs. effectiveness) of the treatment led to an implicit activation of the justice motive as revealed by a modified Stroop task (cf. Hafer, 2000; Kay & Jost, 2003). Moreover, despite the potential association between HIV and death, during the modified Stroop task participants did not evidence greater concerns with mortality as a function of the systems effectiveness in alleviating the young womans unjust suffering. Participants then completed the problem-solving task, which consisted of 40 trials. Participants were reminded that their task was to make the green circle appear on the screen on the basis of their responses or nonresponses. The green circle appeared on the screen 75% of the time for each participant. Because we were interested in perceptions of control between system threat conditions, each participant received the same ordering of green circle appearance or nonappearance, which was determined by a random

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KAY, GAUCHER, NAPIER, CALLAN, AND LAURIN

list generated before the commencement of the study. Each trial during the task began with a beeping sound that signaled to participants that they had to choose to press the space bar or not. When the circle appeared, it remained on the screen for 500 ms and was followed by an intertrial interval that ranged between 500 ms and 2,500 ms. The green circle appeared at the center of the screen and was 4 cm (1.5 in.) in diameter. On the trials in which the circle did not appear, the participants saw a blank screen until the beginning of the next trial. Immediately following the problem-solving task, participants were asked to complete a survey about the task itself, ostensibly because we were still testing its attention-shifting capabilities and were interested in their opinions of it. In the survey, participants were asked questions about how often they thought about the video presentation while completing the task and whether they thought the task effectively shifted their attention. Within this survey, participants completed an item assessing our critical dependent measure of compensatory control. Participants were asked to rate on a scale ranging from 1 (no control) to 10 (complete control) how much control they had over the onset of the green circle during the task. Participants then completed an Emotional Cues Questionnaire and a number of items related to the video to further facilitate the credibility of the cover story. Finally, participants were debriefed and thanked for their time.

As expected, participants rated the progress of the young womans suffering as more unfair when the system was ineffective (M 4.54, SD 1.45) than when it was effective (M 3.17, SD 1.34), t(23) 2.45, p .02, d 0.98 (one participant did not complete this item). However, there were no significant differences between the ineffective system and the effective system conditions in terms of state self-esteem (Ms 3.89 and 3.90, respectively, p .98), or self-enhancement (Ms 6.93 and 7.36, respectively, p .29). These findings corroborate and extend Callan et al.s (2006) Stroop task findings that the ineffectiveness of the system to alleviate the young womans unjust suffering produces concerns specific to justice.

Results and Discussion

We hypothesized that participants would enhance their perceptions of personal control following the condition in which the system was shown to be ineffective at minimizing the unfairness of Kerrys situation. Our hypothesis was supported. Participants in the ineffective system condition reported having more control over the onset of the green circle (M 6.67, SD 1.43) than participants in the effective system condition (M 5.38, SD 2.10), t(46) 2.49, p .02, d 0.72. This fifth and final study, although using a very different methodology and approach, nicely complements the results of our first four studies. We found that participants exposed to a situation in which the system was wholly ineffective at alleviating a womans unfair suffering subsequently enhanced their perceptions of personal control relative to participants who learned the system could help to restore fairness. Furthermore, our manipulation check study, combined with the results of prior research (Callan et al., 2006; Kay & Jost, 2003; Kay et al., 2005), bolsters our interpretation that enhanced perceptions of personal control were guided by the unfairness of the systems ineffectiveness in alleviating the young womans suffering (and not concerns associated with selfesteem or self-enhancement). Interestingly, increased compensatory control was instigated by an outcome (i.e., the onset of the green circle) that was noncontingently related to the participants responses. That is, their perceptions of control were illusory, but nonetheless varied as a function of the success of the womans treatment. Moreover, enhanced perceptions of control occurred even though the outcome participants were pursuing was rather trivial. Indeed, requiring participants to make a green circle appear on a computer screen was sufficient to instigate compensatory control processes when the effectiveness of the medical governmental system at restoring order and fairness was threatened. This finding may speak to the substitutable nature of control beliefs, such that peoples compensatory strivings to restore a belief in an orderly and nonrandom world may potentially occur in any domain relevant to control, including those related to God and the government.

Check on the Manipulation of System Effectiveness

Using a separate sample of participants (n 26), we examined whether peoples concerns associated with the medical systems ineffectiveness in alleviating the young womans suffering were specific to fairness or were more generally related to self-esteem or self-enhancement concerns. Research has demonstrated that illusions of control in nondepressed individuals stem, in part, from the desire to protect self-esteem (e.g., Alloy & Abramson, 1982; Koenig, Clements, & Alloy, 1992; Mikulincer, Gerber, & Weisenberg, 1990; but see Msetfi, Murphy, & Simpson, 2007). Thus, if our manipulation of system threat produces changes in self-esteem or self-enhancement when the system is ineffective, then our predicted results (i.e., increased illusions of personal control when the system is ineffective) might be more straightforwardly explained in terms of self-esteem maintenance. Thus, in this manipulation check study we included measures of state self-esteem and self-enhancement to examine whether our manipulation alternatively produced reduced self-esteem or increased selfenhancement. Using a nearly identical cover story and procedure as described above (i.e., processing of emotional cues), after the video presentation participants completed an established measure of state selfesteem (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991), a better-than-average selfenhancement measure, and an item assessing the perceived unfairness of the youngs woman suffering status (in counterbalanced order). The self-enhancement measure asked participants to rate themselves relative to the average university student on 20 personality characteristics (10 positive and 10 negative; e.g., polite, lazy, friendly, and snobbish) using scales ranging from 0 (much less than average) to 10 (much more than average; .79). The measure of perceived fairness asked participants to rate the unfairness of how Kerrys condition has progressed on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all unfair) to 7 (a great deal unfair).

General Discussion
Across five studies, we tested a compensatory control model of support for external systems, which suggests that in coping with the existential threat posed by lowered (or chronically low) levels of personal control, people increase their support for broad external systems that impose order and control on their personal lives,

GOD AND THE GOVERNMENT

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such as religious and sociopolitical systems. In three experimental studies, we demonstrated that a manipulation designed to remind people of their lack of personal control led to increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God and increased defense of the overarching sociopolitical system. In a fourth experiment, we demonstrated that the converse is also true: A manipulation designed to challenge the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. In addition, in three of the experimental studies, we also demonstrated that these effects were (a) moderated by the extent to which the relevant external system was framed as offering control and order (Study 1), (b) moderated by the extent to which the participants perceived the external system as benevolent or concerned with the best interests of the systems constituents (Study 4), and (c) mediated by the extent to which the personal control manipulation induced defensive reactions surrounding overarching beliefs regarding the existence of randomness and chance in the participants lives (Study 2). Last, in a cross-cultural, nationally representative correlational study, we demonstrated that those who chronically perceive lower levels of personal control over their lives evince more support for governmental control in their personal and professional lives, a relationship that was especially strong for those living in countries with more benevolent (less corrupt) governments.

Implications and Future Directions

This psychological process may have important implications in helping us to understand several central sociopsychological phenomena. The implications of our analyses for the widespread adoption of basic religious ideologies and phenomena of system justification should be clear from our five studies, but similar processes may also play a role in more dramatic circumstances that are not easily bottled within the laboratory. In situations in which personal control is threatened to an extreme level, for example, people may respond with equally extreme levels of endorsement of external sources of control. The noted trend of increased rates of religious extremism, and even terrorism in the name of extreme religious ideology, among members of populations in which personal freedom is particularly restricted (Krueger & Laitin, 2004; Krueger & Maleckova, 2003; Kruglanski & Golec, 2004) may be one such example of this process. Future research that fleshes out this possibility more definitively could prove very fruitful. It is also worth noting the particular cultural context in which our results and general theoretical position have been embedded. Although we think it likely that most people, in most cultures, do need to maintain a comfortable level of perceived order and structure in their environments, the means by which they reach this level is most certain to differ across cultures. In cultural contexts in which personal choice and the ability to influence the environment are less inherent to positive views of the self, such as, for example, certain East Asian cultures (e.g., Heine & Lehman, 1997; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; Kim & Markus, 1999), endorsing external systems of control may play a much more significant role than feelings of personal control. Moreover, in some cultural contexts the meaning of personal control may be quite different than how we have operationalized it in our studies. For example, members of low socioeconomic status (SES) and high SES groups, because of their very disparate experiences with the material and social world,

tend to view control and personal agency quite differently from one another (Snibbe & Markus, 2005), with members of lower SES groups placing more emphasis on their ability to control integrity-based attributes, such as honesty, reliability, consistency, and loyalty, than on constructs such as free choice and environmental influence, which tend to be favored by members of higher SES groups. Although the cross-cultural data from Study 4 suggest that certain processes of compensatory control may act similarly across very disparate contexts, research examining the different manifestations of compensatory control among groups who have had very different experiences with, and views of, the material world would be a worthwhile avenue of research. Another question worth considering involves the extent to which external systems of control are themselves substitutable for one another. According to our model of compensatory control, systems of external control should not only be substitutable with reductions in personal control, but also with one another. Indeed, it may be the case that a particularly high level of endorsement of one system of control (e.g., religion) can free people up to criticize and lash out at other such sources (e.g., the scientific community, the police, and the government). Although it may seem odd to suggest the psychology of governmental support can serve similar existential needs to the psychology of religion, such an approach is consistent with recent theoretical positions regarding the function of the system justification motive (Jost & Hunyady, 2005). A refined analysis of which external systems of control are substitutable for one another, and which serve as best substitutes for reductions in personal control, would be a logical next step to pursue. Similarly, one could imagine that not all governmental systems or all religious ideologies would be equally effective channels of compensatory control. As we observed in Study 3, members of countries known to have more corrupt governments appear less likely to compensate for lowered levels of personal control with increased support for their government. Perhaps in regions such as these, people are more likely to rely on other external sources, such as religious beliefs or ethnic and cultural norms, to compensate for lowered levels of personal control. Even among religious beliefs, though, not all religious sources of external control will be equally effective. The extent to which a given religion imbues more or less order to the universe will have obvious implications for its usefulness as a means of compensatory control. It is also possible that certain individuals, such as those with especially high levels of self-esteem or defensiveness, may not rely on external systems at all following a threat to personal control. Rather than opting to preserve beliefs in order through a separate (but equifinal) means (see Kruglanski, 1996), such as God or the government, following a threat to personal control such individuals may cope by steadfastly and straightforwardly reasserting feelings of personal control (McGregor, 2006; McGregor et al., 2001). In addition, we have argued here that those external systems perceived as benevolent are especially likely to serve as means of compensatory control. This, however, may not be the only such factor. When compensating for lowered levels of personal control, external systems perceived as competent or able to effectively meet their goals may also be preferred. Indeed, it is possible to perceive the moderators in both Studies 3 and 4 as assessing governmental competence and governmental benevolence. Other factors, such as stability, may also play a moderating role. More-

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over, given the strength of the need to perceive order and structure in the world, under circumstances of extreme loss of personal control, or when no other feasible external systems exist, people may be willing to adopt any external system of control, whatever its features and characteristics. Research that more precisely assesses the other features that make an external system more and less likely to serve this purpose, as well as when people will and will not care about these features, is needed. Last, we interpret our findings as indicating that when ones perception of personal control (i.e., the extent to which they have control over their outcomes) is lowered, their overall motivation to believe in order becomes threatened, and they compensate for this threat by increasingly defending external sources of control, such as God and government. It is also possible, however, that the effects we have observed could be an instantiation of an even broader need for a sustained sense of certainty, self-integrity, or broad-based meaning system that beliefs in order and nonrandomness themselves may feed into (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; McGregor, 2006; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynksi, 2004; van den Bos, van Ameijde, & van Gorp, 2006). Our manipulation check data, mediational study, and triangulation across multiple manipulations and measurements suggests that personal control and the defense of external systems of control are clearly related, but this does not exclude the possible involvement of an even larger motivational system. Regardless of which motivational system the need for order is best subsumed withinif it is subsumed within a broader motivational system, such as mortality-based worldview defense or general uncertainty avoidance, at allthe specific findings we have demonstrated are interesting in their own right because they make predictions about important social phenomena that have not been illuminated before in other research programs and identify novel and important causal factors that contribute to religious and political defense.

Relation to Other Theories of Compensatory Control

As described in the introduction, the model of compensatory control we have put forth is similar to Rothbaum et al.s (1982) two-process model of perceived control and the uncertainty hypothesis recently tested by Burger and Lynn (2005; also see Malinowski, 1954) It is not, however, identical to either of these. Proponents of the uncertainty hypothesis suggest that as a means of preserving the belief in personal control during times of uncontrollability, people will engage in superstitious behavior. According to the two-process model of perceived control (Rothbaum et al., 1982), when peoples means of primary controlpeoples ability to directly influence their environment in line with their personal desiresis thwarted, they may engage in any number of secondary control strategies (for a review, see Morling & Evered, 2006; Rothbaum et al., 1982). Most relevant to this line of research, however, is Rothbaum et al.s notion of vicarious control, a secondary control strategy in which people are presumed to gain a sense of personal control by identifying with powerful others. Although both the uncertainty hypothesis and the two-process model of perceived control, like the one presented here, begin with the assumption that people will engage in motivated processes of coping following experiences that threaten personal control, neither is redundant with what we are proposing. According to the uncertainty hypothesis, people are said to rely on superstition as

way to regain personal control (i.e., by enacting superstitious behavior, people find a way to feel they personally, but indirectly, are controlling their outcomes even in uncontrollable situations). Likewise, Rothbaum et al. (1982) proposed that people may identify with powerful others to psychologically share in the powerful others control and thereby regain personal control. Both of these notions are qualitatively different from what we are proposing regarding the endorsement of external systems. In particular, we are not suggesting that by endorsing external systems of control people are trying to regain personal control, but that they are instead trying to affirm the more general and overarching belief that things are under control, even if not by their own means (see Antonovsky, 1979). The data presented here are the first to experimentally test any of these theoretical approaches (in this context), and the moderational and mediational evidence presented in Studies 2, 3, and 4 are supportive of our specific presumed mechanism. In addition, these alternative formulations do not explicitly predict the findings of Study 5, in which a threat to an external system of control led to increased perceptions of personal control. Nonetheless, future work is needed to better distinguish between these theoretical perspectives at an empirical level. Other previous models of compensatory control, however, bear less of a similarity to ours. Within the health and coping literature, a model of compensatory control is outlined to explain how people cope with decreasing senses of control during periods of illness (see Morling & Evered, 2006). In such models, people compensate for their reductions in control in a given domain by focusing their control on other areas that they can control. Thus, they are compensating for their lack of personal control in one domain by increasing their personal control in other domains. This is different from the model proposed here, which suggests that people compensate for decreases in personal control via increases in the endorsement of broad external systems that impose a particular social order.

Concluding Remarks
Despite the dearth of evidence, an overwhelming majority of people believe in the existence of God (Gallup & Castelli, 1989). Likewise, despite the objective unfairness of many aspects of sociopolitical systems, people tend to defend and support the continued existence of these institutions at a surprising rate (for a review, see Jost et al., 2004). Although beliefs in God and the government obviously differ in many important ways, the high levels of support they both receive may be due to one particular aspect they share: their potential to serve as compensatory systems of control and order.

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Received March 6, 2007 Revision received February 4, 2008 Accepted February 5, 2008

Members of Underrepresented Groups: Reviewers for Journal Manuscripts Wanted

If you are interested in reviewing manuscripts for APA journals, the APA Publications and Communications Board would like to invite your participation. Manuscript reviewers are vital to the publications process. As a reviewer, you would gain valuable experience in publishing. The P&C Board is particularly interested in encouraging members of underrepresented groups to participate more in this process. If you are interested in reviewing manuscripts, please write to the address below. Please note the following important points: To be selected as a reviewer, you must have published articles in peer-reviewed journals. The experience of publishing provides a reviewer with the basis for preparing a thorough, objective review. To be selected, it is critical to be a regular reader of the five to six empirical journals that are most central to the area or journal for which you would like to review. Current knowledge of recently published research provides a reviewer with the knowledge base to evaluate a new submission within the context of existing research. To select the appropriate reviewers for each manuscript, the editor needs detailed information. Please include with your letter your vita. In the letter, please identify which APA journal(s) you are interested in, and describe your area of expertise. Be as specific as possible. For example, social psychology is not sufficientyou would need to specify social cognition or attitude change as well. Reviewing a manuscript takes time (1 4 hours per manuscript reviewed). If you are selected to review a manuscript, be prepared to invest the necessary time to evaluate the manuscript thoroughly. Write to Journals Office, American Psychological Association, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242.