Three independent labs converged that religious belief tracks intuitive thinking.
Evidence
Will Gervais and I set out to test these predictions. Little did we know at the time that two other teams of psychologists were trying to answer the same questions. It turned out that all three teams independently found similar results that converged: Religious belief is the brainchild of intuitive thinking, and one pathway to religious doubt goes through analytic thinking. Amitai Shenhav, David Rand, and Joshua Greene were first to publish their results. In a series of studies, they measured the tendency to think intuitively, the tendency to think deliberatively, and the tendency to endorse belief in God. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 600
Categorization
- XREF: Robustness across independent teams strengthens the reader’s shared mechanism claim linking belief to intuition. — connects to: Priming intuitive thinking temporarily raises belief in God. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 602; Religious-belief effects are testable through temporary thought-priming experiments — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 133; Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (+9 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Priming intuitive thinking temporarily raises belief in God. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 602; Religious-belief effects are testable through temporary thought-priming experiments — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 133; Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Analytic thinking style independently predicts lower religious belief.
#corroborates(0.95) - Religious disbelief is linked to a stable analytic cognitive style.
#corroborates(0.93) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 602 - Priming intuitive thinking temporarily raises belief in God.
#exemplifies(0.92) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 602