E-Mail Feeling anxious can direct our attention and memory toward supernatural beings such as gods, a University of Otago study has found. Lead author Dr Thomas Swan, of the Department of Psychology, says the research may help explain how religious beliefs are formed. For the study, published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 972 participants completed an online recall test to determine if a bias to recall supernatural agents was stronger in anxious people, rather than non-anxious people. Those who felt anxious were more likely to remember beings with supernatural abilities than beings without. "Anxiety is an emotion that evolved to make us pay greater attention to potential threats, so when we feel anxious, a god that can read our thoughts and punish us for them, or flood the Earth, is going to be memorable," he says.