People with autism have more difficulty perceiving minds and believing in gods

Evidence

Fourth, the fact that mind perception abilities vary in the general population can give us clues about the origins of religious belief. Some people are much less versed in “mentalizing” than others. The extreme low end of this continuum overlaps with what is now understood as the autism spectrum. Autism spectrum disorders are complex and multifaceted. But one key characteristic is that individuals marked by this spectrum have more difficulty in mind perception—that is, recognizing emotions from faces, inferring beliefs and desires from overt actions, and telling the difference between the intended meaning of an utterance and its literal meaning. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 79

Categorization

• QUESTION: Would the fumi-e’s psychological devastation be weaker in low-mentalizers, because the implicit ‘perceiving God’ model is itself a mind-perception act? This links the reader’s causal mechanism to individual variation.