Autism-linked mentalizing deficits reduce belief in a personal God

Evidence

People scoring high on the autism spectrum expressed lower levels of belief in a personal God, an association that was due to the lower levels of mentalizing among participants scoring high on the autism spectrum. Other factors, such as personality, age, education, income, IQ, or interest in science were taken into account but did not change the results. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 591

If mind perception supports reasoning about God, then mind perception deficits should erode its cognitive foundations. Indeed, Kurt Gray and his colleagues showed that people who score high on the autism spectrum see God less as a personlike being with a mind of its own and more like an abstract, impersonal force. It is hard to be a devoted believer of God or other supernatural beings without having mentalizing capacities that enable one to interact with them. And it is hard to interact with gods without seeing them as agents with minds. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 80

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Empirical anchor for the reader’s claim that the perceived omniscient gaze requires intact theory of mind to function as a moral monitor.

Related

• Impaired mentalizing, not social isolation, explains atheism among autistics (similarity 0.91)
• Lower mentalizing ability erodes belief in a personal God. (similarity 0.88)
• People with autism have more difficulty perceiving minds and believing in gods (similarity 0.87)
• Autistic deficits in mentalizing predict higher rates of religious disbelief. (similarity 0.86)
• Mentalizing capacities are cognitive foundations for belief in God (similarity 0.85)
• Religious belief requires intuitive mentalizing about a personal God (similarity 0.83)
• Mind-reading capacity supplies the cognitive basis for belief in disembodied gods (similarity 0.82)
• Mentalizing deficits are only one contributing factor to religious disbelief. (similarity 0.82)
• Reduced mentalizing capacity directly lowers belief in God (similarity 0.79)
• Autistic religiosity lacks an interpersonal relationship with a communicating God (similarity 0.78)
• Believers implicitly represent even an omniscient God as having humanlike mental limits (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Impaired mentalizing, not social isolation, explains atheism among autistics #corroborates (0.98) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 882
• Religious belief requires intuitive mentalizing about a personal God #corroborates (0.95) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 584
• Mind-reading capacity supplies the cognitive basis for belief in disembodied gods #expands (0.92) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 71
• Believing in God is inseparable from anthropomorphizing God as a personlike mind #corroborates (0.90) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 77
• Mind-reading capacities are prerequisites for believers to interact with and be policed by gods #expands (0.88) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 75
• Perceptual processing difficulty itself triggers religious skepticism. #complicates (0.82) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 605
• Cultural evolution fills in god content within evolved mentalizing constraints #qualifies (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 81
• Distinct pathways to atheism reinforce one another in real populations #expands (0.78) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 626