Mentalizing capacities are cognitive foundations for belief in God

Evidence

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. In my own studies with Will Gervais and Kali Trzesniewski, this is exactly what we have found. Reduced mentalizing was associated with lower levels of belief in God, even after controlling for various factors that are related to religious belief. Mentalizing minds are prepared to be believing minds. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the reader’s Big God mechanism: mentalizing deficits (autism spectrum) weaken belief — connects to the novel’s premise that Rodrigues’ Jesuit worldview depends on mentalizing God as a personlike agent.
• DEFINE: Establishes mentalizing as the cognitive prerequisite for supernatural person-like agency, key to the analytical bridge between Norenzayan and the novel.