Physiologists have made “identikit” of God
American psychologists have interviewed hundreds of people, to see how, in their opinion, would look like a God. The respondents ‘ answers, the scientists combined in one image and got a sort of “identikit” of God. The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Scientists from the University of North Carolina at chapel hill conducted a study, which was attended by 511 persons (all respondents called themselves Christians). People were shown several pairs of images of persons from each pair they had to choose the face that looks more like their idea of the appearance of God. The authors then combined all images which were chosen by the respondents, one — happened portrait of God as it is seen by the Americans.
The study involved both men and women, presented different races and different political opinions. In the “portrait” of God are different in separate groups. For example, the conservatives see God more powerful and more “white”, and the liberals God is a younger and more feminine. In the face of God derived from the responses of African Americans, scientists have found more traits typical of this race. The same tendency scientists have noticed and for different age groups: young participants in the study see God younger.
To conduct the study, researchers used a technique so-called inverse correlation. First, the authors took the image of the “average American” — a person, derived from 50 pictures of Americans of all races and ages. Then he put on “noise” — random noise, distorting the face — and got 300 images, which then showed the participants of the experiment.