My mind to your mind: Christians egocentrically estimate God's and Satan's attitudes

In addition to sources (e.g. scripture) that directly disseminate religious agents' minds (e.g. attitudes), an egocentric model suggests one's own mind may serve as a basis for estimating religious agents' minds. However, the egocentric model is rarely directly tested for inferences of religious agents' minds, and such tests have largely been limited to correlational methodologies, morally charged topics, and to a focus on God or Jesus rather than evil religious agents (e.g. Satan). To expand testing, we conducted two studies with Christians that addressed these limiting factors. In Study 1, correlational evidence supported the egocentric model in how participants estimated both God's and Satan's attitudes on moral topics. In Study 2, experimental evidence supported this conclusion and extended it to both moral and amoral topics: People estimated God's and Satan's attitudes differently as a function of a persuasion manipulation that changed their own knowledge on issues. These findings extend support for an egocentric account of how Christians can infer religious agents' minds.