What Americans Think God Looks Like—And the Science Behind It

A Younger, More Feminine God

The study ¹ involved 511 Christian participants who were shown hundreds of randomly varying face pairs and asked to select which face from each pair most closely resembled their image of God.

By combining all the selected faces, the researchers assembled a composite “face of God” for each person.

Surprisingly, the resulting faces depicted a God who appeared younger and more feminine than the stern, elderly, white-bearded man often portrayed in popular culture. This challenges the conventional imagery of God that has been perpetuated by centuries of art and literature.