What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.

People use numerous metaphors to describe God. God is seen as a bearded man, light, and love. Based on metaphor theories, the metaphors people use to refer to God reflect how people think about God and could, in turn, reflect their worldview. However, little work has explored the common metaphors fo...

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Autores principales:	Adam K Fetterman, Nicholas D Evans, Julie J Exline, Brian P Meier
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/77532b770b4648e6a8a4bb436851dd3a
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:77532b770b4648e6a8a4bb436851dd3a2021-12-02T20:15:26ZWhat shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0254626https://doaj.org/article/77532b770b4648e6a8a4bb436851dd3a2021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254626https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203People use numerous metaphors to describe God. God is seen as a bearded man, light, and love. Based on metaphor theories, the metaphors people use to refer to God reflect how people think about God and could, in turn, reflect their worldview. However, little work has explored the common metaphors for God. This was the purpose of the current investigation. Four trained raters coded open-ended responses from predominantly Christian U.S. undergraduates (N = 2,923) describing God for the presence or absence of numerous metaphoric categories. We then assessed the frequency of each of the metaphor categories. We identified 16 metaphor categories that were present in more than 1% of the responses. The top categories were "GOD IS POWER," "GOD IS HUMAN," and "GOD IS MALE." These findings were similar across religious affiliations. We attempted to support our coding analysis using top-down and bottom-up automated language analysis. Results from these analyses provided added confidence to our conclusions. We discuss the implications of our findings and the potential for future studies investigating important psychological and behavioral outcomes of using different metaphors for God.Adam K FettermanNicholas D EvansJulie J ExlineBrian P MeierPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 7, p e0254626 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Adam K Fetterman Nicholas D Evans Julie J Exline Brian P Meier What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.
description	People use numerous metaphors to describe God. God is seen as a bearded man, light, and love. Based on metaphor theories, the metaphors people use to refer to God reflect how people think about God and could, in turn, reflect their worldview. However, little work has explored the common metaphors for God. This was the purpose of the current investigation. Four trained raters coded open-ended responses from predominantly Christian U.S. undergraduates (N = 2,923) describing God for the presence or absence of numerous metaphoric categories. We then assessed the frequency of each of the metaphor categories. We identified 16 metaphor categories that were present in more than 1% of the responses. The top categories were "GOD IS POWER," "GOD IS HUMAN," and "GOD IS MALE." These findings were similar across religious affiliations. We attempted to support our coding analysis using top-down and bottom-up automated language analysis. Results from these analyses provided added confidence to our conclusions. We discuss the implications of our findings and the potential for future studies investigating important psychological and behavioral outcomes of using different metaphors for God.
format	article
author	Adam K Fetterman Nicholas D Evans Julie J Exline Brian P Meier
author_facet	Adam K Fetterman Nicholas D Evans Julie J Exline Brian P Meier
author_sort	Adam K Fetterman
title	What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.
title_short	What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.
title_full	What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.
title_fullStr	What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.
title_full_unstemmed	What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.
title_sort	what shall we call god? an exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of god from a large u.s. undergraduate sample.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/77532b770b4648e6a8a4bb436851dd3a
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What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.

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