The Effects of Life Experiences Over a 50-Year Period on the Certainty of Belief and Disbelief in God.

A group of 84 male college graduates were classified individually according to their degree of certainty regarding their belief in God while still in college in 1942, and this certainty of belief was compared to their certainty of belief in God in 1984. Changes in certainty of belief or disbelief for each individual were then related to the self-reported lifetime experiences of the graduates as revealed in autobiographical accounts and telephone interviews conducted during 1994 and 1995. Especially important in the determination of the degree of certainty of belief in adulthood were the unique personal interactions of the individual graduates with religious persons, and favorable and unfavorable cognitive-affective reactions to specific experiences involving religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]