Scientists have conjured up an image of what people think God looks like and it’s probably not what you imagined.
The University of North Carolina psychologists studied American Christians to create an Electronic Facial Identification (e-fit) of God and he surprisingly doesn’t look like the old white-bearded man that has been so commonly illustrated in popular culture.
In fact, he’s quite youthful looking with feminine features.
The psychologists came up with the sketch with the help of 511 American Christians, who looked at hundreds of varying face pairs and selected which face from each pair they thought resembled God the most.
Researchers found people’s perceptions of God stemmed from their individual demographics, with younger people believing in a younger-looking God, while African-Americans thought he was less caucasian. Their findings were published in PLOS One.
People who considered themselves good looking also seemed to picture God being attractive.
“People’s tendency to believe in a God that looks like them is consistent with an egocentric bias,” said Professor Kurt Gray, the study’s senior author and a psychology professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“People often project their beliefs and traits onto others and our study shows that God’s appearance is no different — people believe in a God who not only thinks like them but also looks like them.”
Political preferences also factored into how people pictured God, according to the study.
Liberals tended to see God as more feminine, younger and more loving than conservatives, while conservatives saw God as Caucasian and more powerful than liberals.
“These biases might have stemmed from the type of societies that liberals and conservatives want,” Joshua Conrad Jackson, the study’s lead author said.
“Past research shows that conservatives are more motivated than liberals to live in a well-ordered society, one that would be best regulated by a powerful God.”
“On the other hand, liberals are more motivated to live in a tolerant society, which would be better regulated by a loving God.”