Cross-cultural support for a link between analytic thinking and disbelief in God: Evidence from India and the United Kingdom
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract A substantial body of evidence suggests that favoring reason over intuition (employing an analytic cognitive style) is associated with reduced belief in God. In the current work, we address outstanding issues in this literature with two studies examining the relationship between analytic cognitive style (as measured by performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test) and belief in God. First, prior research focused on Judeo-Christian cultures, and it is uncertain whether the results generalize to other religious systems or beliefs. Study 1 helps to address this question by documenting a negative correlation between CRT performance and belief in God, r = −.18, in a sample of 513 participants from India, a majority Hindu country. Second, among 150 participants from the United Kingdom, Gervais et al. (2018) reported the first and (to date) only evidence for a positive relationship between CRT and belief in God. In Study 2, we assess the robustness of this result by recruiting 547 participants from the United Kingdom. Unlike Gervais et al., using the same items, we find a negative correlation between CRT and belief in God (r = −.19). Our results add further support to the argument that analytic thinking undermines belief in God.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".