Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief

Overthinking Religion? Many theories of human cognition make a distinction between System I, which tends to be rapid and to rely on heuristics or rules of thumb, and System II, which tends to be more deliberative and analytic. This dual-process framework, within which both processes may operate simultaneously and competitively, has been used to explain a variety of situational influences upon decision-making. Gervais and Norenzayan (p. 493) studied the application of a dual-process framework to religious disbelief and found that triggering analytic thinking processes through a variety of experimental manipulations resulted in a tendency for subjects to report lower levels of religious belief. A dual-process theory posits a competition between analytical thought and religious belief. Scientific interest in the cognitive underpinnings of religious belief has grown in recent years. However, to date, little experimental research has focused on the cognitive processes that may promote religious disbelief. The present studies apply a dual-process model of cognitive processing to this problem, testing the hypothesis that analytic processing promotes religious disbelief. Individual differences in the tendency to analytically override initially flawed intuitions in reasoning were associated with increased religious disbelief. Four additional experiments provided evidence of causation, as subtle manipulations known to trigger analytic processing also encouraged religious disbelief. Combined, these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief. Although these findings do not speak directly to conversations about the inherent rationality, value, or truth of religious beliefs, they illuminate one cognitive factor that may influence such discussions.