Abstract
This exploratory study seeks to relate the tendency to invoke God's agency as an explanation to (a) the images of God held by the person, and (b) the person's beliefs about why people fail in their duty to God. Brief descriptions of hypothetical events were presented to subjects who were asked to rate how likely it was that the events expressed the will of God. Subjects were also asked to rank the importance of 21 attributes for their conception of God and to rank the plausibility of 10 explanations for a person's failure to do their duty to God. Subjects’ conceptions of God had a significant effect on the tendency to invoke God's agency. However, beliefs about why people fail in their duty to God seem unrelated to concepts of God or to invoking God's agency. Furthermore, there is a greater tendency to invoke God's agency for positive than for negative events. The implications of these results for understanding explanations in terms of God and their role in coping with misfortune as well as for judgements of praise and blame for everyday events are discussed.
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