Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Epiphenom

Home
About

Home
Nonreligious
Deep thinkers are more likely to lose their faith

Deep thinkers are more likely to lose their faith

Last updated on: November 12, 2014 at 3:54 am by Epiphenom

Deep thinkers are more likely to lose their faith 2014-11-12T03:54:37+01:00 Epiphenom

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

There’s always a fair amount of interest in whether atheists are more intelligent than believers. When I’ve reported on this in the past, I’ve always been a little sceptical about whether the purported statistical association is meaningful or even real. SO here’s a couple of studies that shed an intriguing light on the problem.

The first by psychologists Gary Lewis, Stuart Ritchie, and Timothy Bates at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has provided some of the most rigorous evidence to date that the link is indeed real. They took data from the large MacArthur Foundation Survey of Midlife Development in the United States and found that high IQ was significantly associated with every one of six different measures of religion.

For the most part, this association still held even after adjusting for factors like education, sex, age and even personality – the only exception with spirituality, the weakest of all indicators of religion. Overall, link between religion and IQ was strongest for the ‘fundamentalism’ measure.

The authors point out that the effect is very small. And what’s more, there’s still no reason to suppose that atheists are less religious because of their intelligence. There might be some other factor that they didn’t account for that’s related to both.

And that’s where the second new analysis comes in. Led by Amitai Shenhav, a psychologist at Harvard University, the team looked at cognitive style. Basically, they were interested in whether people make snap decisions based on their gut feelings, or whether they ponder things a bit more deeply.

So they asked the questions like this:

“A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”

The intuitive answer (10 cents) is the wrong one. Stop and think about it for a while and you’ll figure it out! You’ll probably take less time than I did…

Anyway, it turned out that intuitive thinkers (who get the wrong answer) are more likely to believe in god and immortal souls. Even more intriguingly, deep-thinkers were also more likely to say that they had lost their belief since childhood.

That seems to fit with other research showing that believers in the paranormal seem to have a bunch of faulty, intuitive beliefs about how the world works.

But maybe you’re thinking this isn’t really about IQ? Maybe the religious just couldn’t figure out the right answers (it took me quite a lot of puzzling before I figured that example question out).

Well, in one study they did measure IQ, and IQ was indeed correlated with ‘thinking style’ test scores. That means that cleverer people were more likely to get the answer right.

However, even after adjusting for their higher IQ, deep-thinkers were still more likely to be atheists, and to have lost their childhood religion.

Now, you can probably invent explanations for that just as well as anyone. But one implication, it seems to me, is that this might help to explain the apparent link between atheism and IQ.

You see, if cognitive style and IQ are linked, then it might be that IQ is an innocent bystander here – a case of guilt by association. How you think, and whether you take the time to ponder things through, might be all that matters.

Lewis, G., Ritchie, S., & Bates, T. (2011). The relationship between intelligence and multiple domains of religious belief: Evidence from a large adult US sample Intelligence DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2011.08.002

Shenhav A, Rand DG, & Greene JD (2011). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God. Journal of experimental psychology. General PMID: 21928924

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

September 26, 2011

Autism and atheism

Next Post

October 4, 2011 Supernatural explanations just don't occur to kids - they need to be taught them

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Causes of religion - evolution Causes of religion - psychological Causes of religion - social Demographics Digest Effects of religion - health Effects of religion - psychological Effects of religion - social Notifications Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which book of the Bible ends with "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalms Proverbs Revelation Isaiah