© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/15736121-12341349 Archive for the Psychology of Religion 40 (2018) 32-59 brill.com/arp Explaining Death by Tornado: Religiosity and the God-Serving Bias Heidi R. Riggio, a) Joshua Uhalt, b) Brigitte K. Matthies, c) Theresa Harvey, c) Nya Lowden, c) and Victoria Umana c) a) Corresponding author, Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, C A 90032, USA; (323) 343-2250, (323) 343-2281 (FAX) hriggio@calstatela.edu b)  New Mexico State University, USA c) California State University, Los Angeles, USA Summary Two self-report experiments examined how religiosity affects attributions made for the outcome of a tornado. Undergraduate students (N = 533) and online adults (N = 537) read a fictional vignette about a tornado that hits a small town in the United States. The townspeople met at church and prayed or prepared emergency shelters for three days before the tornado; either no one died or over 200 people died from the tornado. Participants made attributions of cause to God, prayer, faith, and wor- ship. In both studies, individuals identifying as Christian made more attributions to God, prayer, faith, and worship, but only when no one died; when townspeople died, Christian participants made fewer attributions to God, prayer, faith, and worship (the God-serving bias). Individuals identifying as agnostic or atheist did not show this bias. Directions for future research in terms of implicit religious beliefs and normative eval- uations of religion are discussed. Keywords God-serving bias – religiosity – attributions – natural disaster – atheist – agnostic – Christian