Perceptual processing difficulty itself triggers religious skepticism.

Evidence

In another experiment, we relied on a more subtle method to encourage analytic thinking. We induced participants to experience what psychologists call perceptual disfluency. This happens when information is difficult to process or understand. When information doesn’t flow smoothly through the cognitive system, people are more reflective and skeptical. They are also more eager to question and learn. Not surprisingly, many studies show that disfluency—for example, presenting information in a difficult-to-read font—improves performance in tasks that involve analytic thinking, including syllogistic reasoning as well as the Cognitive Reflection Task discussed earlier. We randomly assigned participants to read our questionnaire in a typical, easy-to-process font (sample) or a difficult-to-process font (sample). The experience of disfluency also produced a dip in belief in God, angels and the Devil. Interestingly, we also found that analytic thinking reduced belief at every level of prior religious conviction. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 605

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines perceptual disfluency — when information is hard to process, people become more reflective and skeptical.

Related

• Cognitive disfluency reduces religious belief across all conviction levels (similarity 0.92)
• Analytic thinking style independently predicts lower religious belief. (similarity 0.84)
• Inducing a merely analytic thinking style lowers stated belief in God. (similarity 0.81)
• Religious disbelief is linked to a stable analytic cognitive style. (similarity 0.81)
• Priming intuitive thinking temporarily raises belief in God. (similarity 0.79)
• Disbelief requires deliberate effort against natural cognitive dispositions. (similarity 0.79)
• Mentalizing deficits are only one contributing factor to religious disbelief. (similarity 0.78)