The God Squad, Part 3: Projection

When I took General Psychology many years ago, I memorized the definitions of the Freudian defense mechanisms—repression, regression, reaction formation, etc. One of them was projection, usually defined as attributing one's negative qualities to other people. For example, a person who is tempted to cheat on his or her spouse may be suspicious that the partner is fooling around. It isn't clear, however, that projection should be limited to negative attributes.

A more general principle that encompasses Freudian projection is the false consensus effect—a cognitive bias in which we overestimate the percentage of people who share our attitudes and behaviors. Social psychologists usually explain false consensus at least in part by a need for social validation. If other people share our attitudes, presumably those attitudes are more likely to be “correct.” (The fact that we selectively associate with people similar to ourselves is another explanation for false consensus.)

The YouGov poll cited in Part 1 asked participants whether they thought Jesus would support or oppose each of the seven social policies included in the survey. In general, participants thought Jesus was more conservative than they were, and Protestants thought he was further to the right than Catholics did. However, there were large differences between what Republicans, Independents and Democrats thought Jesus's opinions were.

Do you think Jesus would support . . .?	Republican	Independent	Democrat
Gay marriage	9%	32%	48%
Legal abortion	6%	19%	29%
Death penalty for murderers	43%	35%	27%
Stricter gun laws	28%	40%	68%
High taxes on the wealthy	18%	43%	63%
Universal healthcare	23%	52%	80%
Reducing carbon emissions	31%	51%	68%

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Decades of social psychological research show that one of the best predictors of friendship is attitude similarity. We like people who agree with us. It follows that if you are going to spend time conversing with an imaginary friend, you would want to create one who shares your attitudes. Thus, Republicans see Jesus as a Republican and Democrats see him as a Democrat. As sociologist Phil Zuckerman noted:

[R]eligion is one big Rorschach test. People look at the content of their religious tradition . . . and they basically pick and choose what suits their own secular outlook.

This is most consistent with a false consensus interpretation of projection. What better way to increase your confidence in your own political attitudes than to believe they are shared by the gods?

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

The God Squad, Part 1:  Religion as Selfish Individualism

The God Squad, Part 2:  The "Greening" of Christianity