Even scientists fall back into purpose-driven thinking under time pressure

Evidence

Finally, another related and widespread intuition that appears to play a critical role in religious thinking is teleology—or the sense that natural events and objects exist for a purpose. Teleological intuitions appear early in children’s thinking, and seem untutored. As early as five years of age, children have the intuition that lions exist so that we can visit them at the zoo, clouds are for raining, and mountains are for climbing. Adults hold them too, sometimes overtly, other times more clandestinely. There is evidence that science education, far from rooting out these intuitions, merely suppresses them. For example, even professional scientists slip into teleological thinking when under time pressure. Many of these insights come from the work of psychologist Deborah Kelemen, who has studied teleological thinking in adults and children. She calls this phenomenon “intuitive theism,” because it seems to prepare our minds for creationist thinking: if all things were designed for a purpose, doesn’t it make sense that there is a creator who designed them? — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Kelemen’s “intuitive theism” and the phenomenon of suppressed-but-present teleological intuitions.
• XREF: The staying power of teleological intuitions under cognitive load resonates with dual-process accounts and with psychological claims about why naturalistic explanations never fully displace religious ones. — connects to: Time pressure drives designers to copy old solutions to new problems — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2091; Time pressure makes everyone rely on intuition and mistake fluency for truth — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 76
• QUESTION: What does ‘under time pressure’ mean experimentally here, and how strong is the suppression effect vs. outright replacement?