When God's (not) needed: Spotlight on how belief in divine control influences goal commitment ☆ Jamel Khenfer a, ⁎, Elyette Roux b , Eric Tafani b , Kristin Laurin c a Zayed University, College of Business, P.O. Box: 144534, Khalifa City B, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates b Aix-Marseille University, Graduate School of Management, Aix-en-Provence 13100, France c University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada HIGHLIGHTS • People defensively mobilized their religiosity under control threat to pursue goals. • Belief in divine control increased goal commitment when self-efficacy was low. • This facilitating effect occurred as external agency strengthens contingency beliefs. abstract article info Article history: Received 22 June 2015 Revised 6 January 2017 Accepted 15 January 2017 Available online xxxx People regularly set goals, but often fail to remain committed to them. In particular, people's commitment to their goals flags when their self-efficacy is low—when they doubt their ability to bring about their desired outcomes through their actions. We propose that when people feel low self-efficacy, reminders of external forces that en- sure contingency in the world can help them restore their goal commitment. Moreover, we propose that one such external force is a powerful, interventionist God, and thus that reminders of a powerful God can help restore people's goal commitment when they feel low self-efficacy. In Study 1, we manipulated self-efficacy and mea- sured religiosity. More religious people were more committed to their goals—a facilitating effect—but only when we had first made them feel low self-efficacy. In Study 2, we manipulated both self-efficacy and the sa- lience of religious belief in a controlling vs. creating God. When we reminded participants of their beliefs in a con- trolling God, we again observed a facilitating effect when we also made them feel low in self-efficacy. Their beliefs in a creating God, in contrast, had no effect. In Study 3, we used a different experimental paradigm, and found additional support for the facilitating effect at low self-efficacy while providing evidence of mechanism. © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Religion Religious belief Control threat Self-efficacy Goal commitment Belief in contingencies 1. Introduction People do not always pursue the goals they claim to hold. Dieters make New Year's resolutions they fail to keep, young professionals open retirement savings accounts that they fail to contribute to, and stu- dents set goals for their academic courses that they fail to live up to with their studying behavior. Of course, there are all sorts of reasons why people's commitment flags, even toward goals they sincerely value, but one such factor is self-efficacy, or their belief in their capacity to pro- duce given attainments (Bandura, 2006). Here, we propose that one way of helping people low in self-efficacy stay committed to their goals is to reinforce their belief in the contingency between actions and outcomes, and more specifically to remind them of a powerful su- pernatural agent—God—who enforces that contingency. 2. Low self-efficacy, belief in contingencies, and goal pursuit People's commitment to a valued goal, or their determination to pursue it in spite of obstacles, is strong when they feel they can achieve it—that is, when they feel that attaining the desired outcome is feasible (Kruglanski et al., 2002). When individuals sense that they are able to reach their goal through behaviors they can perform—i.e., when they feel high in self-efficacy—they are generally committed, and willing to take goal-directed actions. In contrast, when self-efficacy is low, people are unlikely to be com- mitted even to goals they value highly (Bandura, 1989, 2006). Part of what it means to feel low self-efficacy is to doubt that one's outcomes are within reach. In such a state, people's goal commitment may benefit Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 70 (2017) 117–123 ☆ Preparation of this paper was facilitated by research funds received from Grenoble Ecole de Management during the postdoctoral fellowship of the first author. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jamel.khenfer@zu.ac.ae (J. Khenfer), elyette.roux@iae-aix.com (E. Roux), eric.tafani@iae-aix.com (E. Tafani), klaurin@psych.ubc.ca (K. Laurin). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.005 0022-1031/© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp