Journal article
Supernatural belief is not modulated by intuitive thinking style or cognitive inhibition
- Abstract:
- According to the Intuitive Belief Hypothesis, supernatural belief relies heavily on intuitive thinking—and decreases when analytic thinking is engaged. After pointing out various limitations in prior attempts to support this Intuitive Belief Hypothesis, we tested it across three new studies using a variety of paradigms, ranging from a pilgrimage field study to a neurostimulation experiment. In all three studies, we found no relationship between intuitive or analytical thinking and supernatural belief. We conclude that it is premature to explain belief in gods as ‘intuitive’, and that other factors, such as socio-cultural upbringing, are likely to play a greater role in the emergence and maintenance of supernatural belief than cognitive style.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Authors
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Pages:
- 15100
- Publication date:
- 2017-11-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-10-03
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:732174
- UUID:
-
uuid:6408d74b-3848-4a73-a9a7-ca89d044a677
- Local pid:
-
pubs:732174
- Source identifiers:
-
732174
- Deposit date:
-
2017-10-04
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Savulescu et al
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Notes:
- © The Author(s) 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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