Sex and religion: natural enemies?

Loving thoughts might increase religious belief, and sexy thoughts decrease it.

An interesting research study (Förster, Epstude, & Özelsel, 2009) found that asking people to think about sex subsequently improved their performance on analytical tasks requiring attention to detail. Getting them to think about love improved their performance on creative tasks. The underlying theory is that people think about sex in concrete and specific ways involving the present moment which facilitates analytical thinking. On the other hand, people tend to think of love in a more abstract and global way that involves thoughts about the long-term future, which facilitates creativity. Previous studies have found that priming tasks that activate analytical thinking tend to weaken religious beliefs. This raises the intriguing possibility that thinking about sex could weaken religious belief, whereas thoughts about love might strengthen it. If this is true, this might shed some light on why most religions take such a negative view of sex, especially lust without love. 

Is love divine, and lust demonic? (image credit: Scot A Harvest)

This study was based on the theory that there are two main ways that people can process information: attending to broad global features of the big picture or focusing on concrete specific details, that is, “the forest or the trees.” Global, abstract processing may lead to more remote and diverse associations which are beneficial to creativity (thinking “outside the box”) whereas more narrowly focused thinking may help one remember well-earned logical rules that are relevant to analytical thinking. Furthermore, research suggests that thinking about the long-term future tends to activate global and holistic processing because people know few details about the future, and therefore tend to think about it in abstract way. On the other hand, thinking about the present moment tends to activate local and detail oriented processing as people think about the present in a more concrete manner.

The authors argued that thoughts of romantic love tends to activate a global processing style, because love usually involves a desire for a long-lasting attachment (“together forever”) whereas sexual desires are usually more concrete and specific and generally focus on immediate gratification rather than long-term planning. The authors tested this theory by two experiments. In both experiments, participants were primed either with love, sex, or a neutral topic. In the first experiment, participants were asked to either imagine going for a long walk with someone they loved and to think about how much they loved him or her; or to imagine having casual sex with someone they found attractive but did not love. A control group were asked to imagine taking a walk by themselves. The second experiment used subliminal exposure to words related to either love, sex, or neutral topics. This was followed by a task to test creative thinking, and then a task to test analytical thinking. One of the creative tasks, for example, involved solving a series of problems where the solution was not obvious and where the answer typically occurred to a person in a ‘flash of insight’ after prolonged thought. The analytical tasks involved solving logical reasoning problems. Results showed that participants who had thought about love performed better on the creativity tasks compared to those who thought about sex and the control group. Additionally, those who had thought about sex performed better on the analytical task compared to those had thought about love and the control group. Thinking about sex seemed to be actually detrimental to creativity, as this group actually performed worse on this task compared to the control group. Similarly, thinking about love was detrimental to analytical thinking, as this group also performed worse than the control group on the logic task. Perhaps this indicates that when people are thinking about sex they become too single-minded to be creative, whereas those in love are too dreamy to think logically.

The results of the second experiment also found that subliminal exposure to words related to sex induced more local processing in a perception task, whereas subliminal exposure to words related to love induced more global processing. These results suggested that the effect of sex-priming on analytical thinking was actually mediated by increased attention to local processing, whereas the effect of love-priming on creativity was mediated by increased attention to global processing.

These results led me to wonder about possible influences of thinking about love and sex respectively on religious beliefs. As explained in a previous article, activities that increase analytical thinking (even something as simple as looking at a statue of Rodin’s Thinker) can decrease religious belief, such as belief in God (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). Since sex priming can increase analytical thinking, it seems plausible to think that sex-priming could decrease religious belief by increasing analytical thinking. Religious beliefs seem to involve a focus on global ideas such as eternity and infinity. Furthermore, religious traditions emphasise the importance of having a long-term attachment to a higher power, much as one may have a long-term attachment to a loved one. Therefore, it also seems plausible that love-priming could have the opposite effect of sex-priming and strengthen religious beliefs instead. Experimental studies would be needed to confirm that these hypothesised effects really occur. For example, people could be subliminally primed with words relating either to love or to sex and then they could be asked to rate how strongly they believe in God.

This possibility that thinking about sex could weaken religious belief also led me to wonder if this has something to do with the fact that so many mainstream religions take such a negative view of sexuality, particularly lust without love. Religions generally teach people that dwelling on lustful sexual thoughts is “impure” and a distraction from one’s spiritual nature. Even non-procreative acts such as masturbation are proscribed as ‘sinful’ in monotheistic religions, so this is not simply a practical concern to prevent pregnancy outside of marriage. Popular images of the Devil in Christianity are actually inspired by earlier images of the ancient Greek god Pan, who was noted for his sensual lustful nature. Love on the other hand is extolled as a cardinal virtue and love of God in particular is considered to be of the utmost importance. The idea that one should “love thy neighbour as oneself” is certainly very admirable as an ideal, but realistically I doubt if there are very many people who could actually put this into practice. There may be many reasons why most religions tend to idealise love and to disavow lust. Perhaps, one of the reasons that most religions so strongly disapprove of any form of sex outside marriage is that lust without love undermines religious belief itself? There are no doubt other factors involved, but these need not be mutually exclusive.

Pan: divinity or devil?

On the other hand, there are some religious and spiritual traditions that have a more positive view of sexuality. In fact, I have read literary descriptions of the moment of orgasm as a transcendental experience in which one is momentarily elevated to a divine level of awareness. Perhaps the possible effect of sex priming on religious beliefs might depend on a person’s belief about whether sex has a transcendental, spiritual component. Additionally, the effects of priming thoughts about sex within a loving relationship have not been examined. This is potentially a fruitful area of investigation that might shed light on the relationships between sexual attitudes, religious beliefs, and the cognitive processes that underpin them.    

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References
Forster, J., Epstude, K., & Ozelsel, A. (2009). Why Love Has Wings and Sex Has Not: How Reminders of Love and Sex Influence Creative and Analytic Thinking Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35 (11), 1479-1491 DOI: 10.1177/0146167209342755

Gervais, W., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief Science, 336 (6080), 493-496 DOI: 10.1126/science.1215647

This post has previously appeared on my Psychology Today blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Turning the mind to the future: clockwise movements increase openness to experience

Research has found that bodily movements are symbolically associated with movement in time. Clockwise movements are associated with progression into the future, whereas counterclockwise movements are associated with the reversal of time, and hence with regression into the past (Topolinski & Sparenberg, 2012). Progression in time is associated with novelty, and conversely, regression into the past is associated with returning to the old and familiar. A recent research study found that performing clockwise movements actually increased a person’s preference for novelty, whilst counterclockwise movements increased the preference for familiar things. An even more intriguing finding was that clockwise movements even increased self-ratings of openness to experience, a normally stable dimension of personality (Topolinski & Sparenberg, 2012).

 In this study, participants performed tasks such as turning cranks, or rotating rolls of paper towels, in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Participants were told the movements were part of a test on multi-tasking, so as far as they knew these actions were simply meaningless body movements. One finding was that when asked to choose different flavours of candy participants who had performed a clockwise movement chose more unusual flavours, whereas those who made a counterclockwise movement preferred more common ones. Thus, the clockwise movers were more willing to try new experiences.

Willingness to try new things is related to the personality trait openness to experience. Generally speaking, there are consistent individual differences in people’s levels of openness to experience and these differences tend to be stable over time. Therefore, I found it particularly fascinating that participants who performed a task involving clockwise movements with their hands subsequently self-reported significantly higher levels of openness to experience compared to those who performed counterclockwise motions. As noted in a previous article, research has found that increases in a person’s state level of openness to experience can be experimentally induced by asking a person to imagine performing actions associated with being very open (Schutte, Malouff, Segrera, Wolf, & Rodgers, 2003). This study was much more subtle in that participants were not consciously aware that the task they were performing had anything to do with their openness.

An intervention that could increase or decrease openness, could potentially be used to influence attitudes and behaviour related to this trait. High openness to experience is associated with a wide range of things besides willingness to try new things, such as political liberalism as opposed to conservatism, artistic creativity, intellectual curiosity, less conventional religious belief but also greater acceptance of mystical and paranormal beliefs. Research has not yet examined whether having people perform clockwise or counterclockwise motions would influence any of these things. It would be interesting to examine whether, for example, a person’s liking for a liberal or conservative political candidate could be influenced by such a procedure. 

Similarly, people could be asked to perform a creative task and their degree of creativity could be rated to determine if prior clockwise movements have a beneficial effect compared to counterclockwise ones.

Higher openness is also associated with intellectual abilities and with general knowledge. Therefore, students about to sit a test might be advised to perform clockwise movements and avoid counterclockwise ones, in order to better access their potential! This too could be experimentally tested by determining if test performance is influenced by this kind of intervention.    

As noted in a previous article, research has found that experimental manipulations to increase analytical thinking as opposed to intuitive thinking tend to decrease religious belief, such as belief in God. Because higher openness to experience is associated to a modest extent with less belief in God, it is possible that clockwise movements might reduce belief in God due to an associated increase in openness, whereas counterclockwise would strengthen such belief. Higher openness is also associated to an extent with greater belief in the paranormal, so similar interventions might influence belief in things like telepathy, witchcraft, and “New Age” ideas.

Topolinski and Sparenberg (2012) noted that movement direction orients a person to the past or the future. Therefore, counterclockwise movements might increase nostalgia for the past whereas clockwise movements might increase interest in speculation about future-related concerns, such as advances in technology. Perhaps this could be tested for example, by asking participants to write a story after performing movement tasks and offering them the choice of writing about a historical event or an imagined future society.

Future research could examine whether other major personality traits and their associated behaviours could be influenced by subtle actions with metaphorical connotations.

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided. 

This article also appears on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Further reading

For a sceptical critique of the statistical power of Topolinski & Sparenberg's study, see this paper, pp. 24 -27. 

Other posts discussing the possibilities of priming
Opening the Mind: Where Skepticism and Superstition Meet 
Reason Versus Faith? The Interplay of Intuition and Rationality In Supernatural Belief
Think Like a Man: Effects of Gender Priming on Cognition
Are Sex And Religion Natural Enemies?

References

Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Segrera, E., Wolf, A., & Rodgers, L. (2003). States reflecting the Big Five dimensions. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(4), 591-603. doi: 10.1016/s0191-8869(02)00031-4

Topolinski, S., & Sparenberg, P. (308). Turning the Hands of Time: Clockwise Movements Increase Preference for Novelty. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3 (3) DOI: 10.1177/1948550611419266

Think like a man: could gender priming improve female recall of general knowledge?

 As noted in a previous posting, a number of studies have found that males outperform females on tests of general knowledge. The reasons for this are not yet clear. Women’s poorer test performance could be because they actually have acquired less knowledge than men, or it could be that they are not accessing all the knowledge they have. Studies have found that experimental manipulations can actually improve a person’s performance on general knowledge tests to an extent. Women generally perform more poorly than men on spatial tasks, yet it has also been found that it is possible to experimentally improve women’s performance on these tasks so that they equal the performance of men. Whether or not it would be possible to improve women’s performance on tests of general knowledge relative to men has not yet been examined. Such a study would help illuminate whether gender differences in this area are due to real differences in acquired knowledge or mainly due to the nature of the testing situation.

Trivial pursuit questions have been used to experimentally test general knowledge

Sex differences in general knowledge favouring males that were identified in a number of studies have been attributed to differing interests between men and women rather than differences in ability (Lynn & Irwing, 2002; Lynn, Irwing, & Cammock, 2002). Another possibility that has not been explored in the research literature is that stereotype threat could have a detrimental effect on the performance of females in tests. Stereotypes are generally more favourable to men than women in intellectual domains. Men are generally perceived as more intelligent and rate themselves higher on intelligence than women (Ortner & Sieverding, 2008). Stereotypes can have a self-fulfilling effect and have been known to affect performance on achievement tests. For example, women who are reminded of their female identity perform more poorly on maths tests compared to a control group. However, priming of stereotypes can sometimes have a positive effect. Asian women primed with their Asian identity performed better than normally on a maths test.

"Oh no, not a test!!!"

Priming of stereotypes has also been found to affect performance on tests of general knowledge for better or worse (Dijksterhuis & van Knipperburg, 1998). People who were asked to think about a typical soccer hooligan (stereotypically associated with stupidity) and to list behaviours and attributes associated with such a person performed more poorly on a general knowledge test compared to those who took the test with no priming. This experimental procedure was also performed using a prime of a professor (associated with intelligence) rather than a soccer hooligan, and in this case, people actually performed better compared to those who received no priming. Obviously, thinking of professors cannot somehow make a person more knowledgeable than they really are. The authors of this study suggested that a person’s typical performance on such a test is less than optimal, meaning there is usually room for improvement. Priming of the professor stereotype might improve performance by leading to specific behavioural changes, such as increased concentration or more analytical and systematic thinking. The hooligan prime might worsen performance by inducing sloppier thinking or reduced concentration (Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998).

Gender differences in spatial tasks are considered to be well-established, having been extensively investigated by researchers. However, there is evidence that priming of stereotypes can improve women’s performance on such tasks to a level equivalent to that of men (Ortner & Sieverding, 2008). The stereotype prime used was that of gender itself. Participants were asked to read a text that was described as “a task to test ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person.” The text consisted of a description of a day in the life of either a “typical woman” or a “typical man”. For example, the typical woman text described a woman who looked after children, spent time chatting with her friends, and who liked to daydream. The typical man text, described a man who drove a motorbike to work, was outgoing and tough-minded, bossed people around at work, and lifted weights in his spare time. Participants were then asked to describe what they would be like if they were that person, to develop a sense of identification with the person in the story. Subsequently, they performed a mental rotation task. After being primed with the story about a typical woman, female participants performed much worse than males. Males who received this prime performed only slightly worse than males who received the typical man prime. What was very striking though was that after receiving the typical man prime, females performed nearly as well as males on this task. The authors argued that these results imply that “normal” testing situations involve subtle stereotype threats, even when stereotypes are not explicitly mentioned. Gender differences in performance can therefore be reduced by changing the way the task is presented.

Experimental tests of general knowledge have so far not examined the effects of stereotypes on gender differences in performance. It is possible that asking people to perform a knowledge test activates a subtle stereotype threat that adversely affects women. Using an experimental priming procedure such as the one described above could enhance the performance of women relative to men on such tests. If this proved to be the case it would imply that women actually know more than they are letting on when they typically perform such tests. On the other hand, if a substantial gender difference remained after such a procedure it would provide evidence that males do tend to acquire more knowledge than females. Perhaps this might be due to a greater interest in understanding how things work, as opposed to a greater interest in interpersonal concerns, which is stereotypically more feminine. Additionally, it is also possible that gender differences in general knowledge are the result of a combination of reduced female performance due to stereotype threat and greater actual knowledge by males. Even if priming stereotypes had a modest effect on female performance compared to that of males, it could provide some guidance on how to assist people of both sexes in using their knowledge more effectively.  

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided. 

This article also appears on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Other posts discussing the possibilities of priming
Opening the Mind: Where Skepticism and Superstition Meet 
Reason Versus Faith? The Interplay of Intuition and Rationality In Supernatural Belief
Turning the Wheels of the MInd - Clockwise movements increase openness to experience

Are Sex And Religion Natural Enemies?

Other posts discussing intelligence related topics

Emotional intelligence is not relevant to understanding psychopaths

Why there are sex differences in general knowledge

The Knowledgeable Personality

Personality, Intelligence and “Race Realism”

Intelligence and Political Orientation have a complex relationship

Cold Winters and the Evolution of Intelligence: A critique of Richard Lynn’s Theory

The Illusory Theory of Multiple Intelligences – a critique of Howard Gardner’s theory

References

Dijksterhuis, A., & van Knippenberg, A. (1998). The relation between perception and behavior, or how to win a game of trivial pursuit.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74 (4), 865-877 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.74.4.865

Lynn, R., & Irwing, P. (2002). Sex differences in general knowledge, semantic memory and reasoning ability. British Journal of Psychology, 93(4), 545-556. doi: 10.1348/000712602761381394

Lynn, R., Irwing, P., & Cammock, T. (2002). Sex differences in general knowledge. Intelligence, 30(1), 27-39. doi: 10.1016/s0160-2896(01)00064-2

Ortner, T. M., & Sieverding, M. (2008). Where are the Gender Differences? Male Priming Boosts Spatial Skills in Women Sex Roles, 59 (3-4), 274-281 DOI: 10.1007/s11199-008-9448-9

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Further reading

General knowledge and personality

Opening the mind: where scepticism and superstition meet

As noted in a previous posting, a number of recent papers have found that religious and paranormal beliefs were positively associated with “intuitive” thinking and negatively associated with “analytical” thinking. One of these studies (Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2011) investigated personality traits and found that openness to experience had a moderate negative correlation with belief in God, suggesting that the more open to experience people are, the less likely they are to believe. Interestingly this correlation (r = -.32) was larger than the correlation between analytical thinking and God belief (r = -.18), indicating that openness to experience may have a stronger impact on belief than thinking style. Shenhav et al. found that priming intuitive thinking could increase reported belief in God, whereas priming analytical thinking could decrease it. Subsequent studies confirmed that priming analytical thinking reduced both religious and paranormal beliefs (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler,& Fugelsang, 2012). This raises an intriguing possibility that priming openness to experience could have an influence on supernatural belief, although due to the ambiguous nature of openness to experience the results could encompass both increased scepticism or increased superstition.

Openness to experience is a broad feature of personality associated with intellectual curiosity, artistic interests, questioning of traditional values and authority, and willingness to explore new experiences and activities. Openness to experience is positively related to a construct called need for cognition, which is associated with analytical thinking. A survey conducted by the Center for Inquiry found that openness to experience was the personality trait that most strongly distinguished between those who considered themselves religious and those who did not, with the latter scoring higher on this trait (Galen, 2009). However, openness to experience is also positively correlated with paranormal beliefs (Smith, Johnson, & Hathaway, 2009), magical thinking (DeYoung, Grazioplene, & Peterson, 2012) and mystical experience (MacDonald, 2000). Paradoxically perhaps, openness to experience thus encompasses a rather diverse set of characteristics, some of which would seem to support disbelief in religion, whereas others seem to support mystical and spiritual ideas. 

 Sceptical scientists and believers in the occult alike tend to be high in openness to experience

It has been argued that these diverse aspects of openness to experience all share an underlying theme of cognitive exploration of both inner and outer experience (DeYoung, et al., 2012). People who are high in openness to experience are interested in unconventional ideas and have a willingness to question traditional values and beliefs. This might help to explain why both paranormal believers and atheists (who generally tend to be sceptical of all supernatural beliefs) tend to be high in openness to experience. Atheists are willing to question traditional religious beliefs and form their own opinions. People who believe in the paranormal may be attracted to paranormal phenomena because they are outside mainstream experience. Where atheists and paranormal believers may differ is in narrower aspects of personality encompassed by openness to experience. De Young et al. proposed that the traits encompassed by openness to experience fall along a spectrum with the more intellectual aspects, such as need for cognition at one end, and the more unusual experiential traits, such as fantasy-proneness and magical thinking at the other end. People who endorse paranormal beliefs may be more open to fantasy (Smith, et al., 2009) and more prone to unusual perceptual experiences (DeYoung, et al., 2012). Atheists on the other hand tend to self-identify as intellectuals and tend to attribute their lack of belief to their interest in logic and rationality (Caldwell-Harris, Wilson, LoTempio, & Beit-Hallahmi, 2011). Interestingly, although openness to experience and intelligence are moderately positively correlated, in the Shenhav et al. study measures of intelligence had almost no relationship with belief in God. This suggests that belief is more closely related to personality preferences than actual intellectual ability. 

Due to the heterogeneity of the construct, priming openness to experience could have ambiguous effects on supernatural beliefs. The idea of priming openness to experience might seem implausible because personality traits such as openness to experience are usually thought of as enduring characteristics of a person that remain stable over time. Stable traits may be contrasted with more transient states that reflect changes in a person’s mood. For example, some people may be generally sociable (a trait) yet at any given moment how sociable they feel (their state) may vary with their mood. Research has found that stable personality traits have corresponding states and that it is possible to experimentally induce temporary changes in these states (Schutte, Malouff, Segrera, Wolf, & Rodgers, 2003). This was done by asking people to concentrate on imagining themselves in a number of situations where they were acting as if they were in a particular state. For example, state extraversion was induced by asking them to imagine they were the centre of attention at a party. State openness to experience was induced by asking a person to imagine they were having an intellectual discussion. The experimenters found that the inductions did produce significant increases in personality states associated with openness to experience.

As far as I know, no experiments have been done to test whether priming state openness to experience would affect supernatural beliefs. For example a person might be asked to imagine what it would be like to have a very unconventional lifestyle. One reasonable prediction would be that priming openness to experience could reduce more conventional forms of religious belief, but could also increase receptivity to paranormal or mystical ideas. Priming manipulations focusing on narrower aspects of openness might produce more specific results. Thus, asking someone to imagine they were having an intellectual discussion might produce more general scepticism, whereas asking someone to imagine what it would be like to have a rich fantasy life might produce receptivity to more mystical types of thought and experience. Studies that primed analytical thinking did not assess how durable the effects on religious beliefs were. Priming states of openness might have only a transitory effect on a person's beliefs. Nevertheless, research into this area would help shed light on the processes underlying both rational and non-rational beliefs.

Follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

This article also appears on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Other posts discussing the possibilities of priming
Reason Versus Faith? The Interplay of Intuition and Rationality In Supernatural Belief

Think Like a Man: Effects of Gender Priming on Cognition
Turning the Wheels of the MInd - Clockwise movements increase openness to experience

Are Sex And Religion Natural Enemies?

References

 Caldwell-Harris, C. L., Wilson, A. L., LoTempio, E., & Beit-Hallahmi, B. (2011). Exploring the atheist personality: well-being, awe, and magical thinking in atheists, Buddhists, and Christians. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 14 (7), 659-672 DOI: 10.1080/13674676.2010.509847

DeYoung, C. G., Grazioplene, R. G., & Peterson, J. B. (2012). From madness to genius: The Openness/Intellect trait domain as a paradoxical simplex.  Journal of Research in Personality, 46 (1), 63-78 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2011.12.003

Galen, L. W. (2009). Profiles of the godless: Results from a survey of the nonreligious. Free Inquiry, 41-45.

Gervais WM, & Norenzayan A (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336 (6080), 493-6 PMID: 22539725

MacDonald, D. A. (2000). Spirituality: Description, Measurement, and Relation to the Five Factor Model of Personality. Journal of Personality, 68(1), 153-197. doi: 10.1111/1467-6494.t01-1-00094

 Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Seli, P., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief  Cognition, 123 (3), 335-346 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.03.003

Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Segrera, E., Wolf, A., & Rodgers, L. (2003). States reflecting the Big Five dimensions. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(4), 591-603. doi: 10.1016/s0191-8869(02)00031-4

Shenhav, A., Rand, D., & Greene, J. (2011). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God Journal of Experimental Psychology: General DOI: 10.1037/a0025391

Smith, C. L., Johnson, J. L., & Hathaway, W. (2009). Personality Contributions to Belief in Paranormal Phenomena. Individual Differences Research, 7(2), 85-96.

Reason versus faith? The interplay of intuition and rationality in supernatural belief

Recent papers (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2012; Shenhav,Rand, & Greene, 2011) have suggested that religious and paranormal beliefs are supported by “intuitive” thought processes and that engaging in “analytical” thought processes can weaken these beliefs, at least temporarily. These studies have fascinating implications for the development of non-rational beliefs and suggest possibilities for challenging such beliefs. These studies consider intuition and analytical thought as opposed systems, and while this is frequently applicable, previous research has found that in some people these two modes of thought co-exist to a high degree and their combination supports supernatural beliefs.

These studies are based on a “dual process” model of thought that proposes the existence of two parallel information processing modes. The first mode, sometimes called the experiential system, is intuitive, emotional and immediate. The second mode, sometimes called the rational system, is reflective, logical, and deliberative, and hence takes more time to process information than the intuitive system. There are individual differences in the degree to which people prefer to use either of these systems. Recent studies have found that people who show a greater inclination towards the use of intuitive thinking were more likely to endorse belief in God and the afterlife (Shenhav, et al., 2011) as well as in paranormal phenomena, including psychic powers, witchcraft, astrology and so on (Pennycook, et al., 2012). Pennycook et al. even classified belief in God along a spectrum from most conventional (a personal God exists), through the less conventional (belief in an impersonal higher power or an inactive God), and through into degrees of disbelief (agnosticism and atheism). They found that more conventional God beliefs were associated with more intuitive responses, whereas less conventional beliefs and disbelief were associated with more analytical responses.

Even more intriguing were the results of experimental interventions to manipulate intuitive versus analytical thinking. Belief in God was strengthened by a writing intervention designed to either increase confidence in one’s intuition or reduce confidence in one’s rationality (Shenhav, et al., 2011). Conversely, belief in God was weakened by decreasing confidence in intuition or increasing confidence in rationality. A series of experiments in which rationality was primed were also found to decrease belief in God (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). The primes used included viewing a picture of Rodin’s “Thinker”, reading words associated with analytical thinking (think, reason, analyze, ponder, rational), and, remarkably, reading a questionnaire in a difficult to read font. Previous research has found that information presented in a difficult to read font improves subsequent performance on tests of analytical thinking. Notably, none of these interventions involved any form of argumentation against religious belief or any mention of belief at all. People were simply asked to perform these tasks and then they answered questions about their beliefs.  

These findings have interesting implications for attempts at persuasion for or against religious beliefs. Encouraging people to trust their intuitions or gut feelings in matters unrelated to religion could increase a person’s subsequent receptivity to religious or supernatural ideas. Conversely, encouraging intellectual discussion or even having people read unrelated material in a hard-to-read font could elicit scepticism about such things. The studies cited could not address how durable these effects are likely to be, so it is possible that such interventions might have only transient effects.

The quote is attributed to Martin Luther, 1569.

 The findings of the studies do provide evidence that religious and supernatural beliefs are associated with intuitive thinking and that scepticism about religion is associated with analytical thinking. However, it would be premature to conclude that such beliefs are best viewed in terms of a dichotomy in which intuitive and analytical thinking are by nature opposed to each other. Such a dichotomy seems to be implied by statements by Pennycook et al. that: “initial intuitions during problem-solving often pre-empt further analysis” (p. 336) and “An analytic cognitive style will typically involve a broader assessment of problem elements as well as an examination and critical evaluation of intuitions.” The task used to assess preference for intuitive or analytical thinking actually involves asking people to solve problems where there is an intuitively appealing but incorrect answer, so that to reach the correct answer the person must reject their initial intuition. The nature of the task itself therefore sets up a dichotomy in which intuition and reflection are incompatible. This may well be applicable much of the time but there is some intriguing evidence that the two modes of thought sometimes operate in a parallel rather than a conflicting manner. This parallel operation has been found to have implications of its own for supernatural beliefs.

The dual-process model originally proposed that the two modes are independent of each other and as a result although some people habitually prefer one mode over the other, some people actually prefer to use both, while some people have little preference for either. One study sorted people into four clusters based on their respective preferences for the two modes of thought and examined their patterns of belief (Wolfradt, Oubaid, Straube, Bischoff, & Mischo, 1999). The cluster who had high preferences for both intuitive and analytical thought (“complementary thinkers”) actually had the highest rates of paranormal belief of all four clusters and also scored higher on measures of magical thinking compared to the cluster with high analytical and low intuitive thinking (“rational thinkers”). Wolfradt et al. suggested that: “A simultaneous processing style leads potentially to a disinhibition of associations which fosters irrational thinking” (p. 828).

 The potentially complementary relationship between intuitive and analytical modes of thought seems to shed some light on religious beliefs among scientists. Scientists are vocationally committed to empiricism and therefore would be expected to be naturally high on analytical thinking. Scientists are generally expected to reject beliefs that are not based on evidence and surveys have found that the majority of scientists are not religious. However, there are a substantial minority of scientists who are religious (one study found as many as 40%) and this poses a question about why people who are committed to evidence-based propositions in their work would simultaneously accept faith-based beliefs in their private lives (MacPherson & Kelly, 2011). The MacPherson and Kelly study found that although scientists as a group were generally less religious than non-scientists, they also scored higher in creativity and magical thinking. Additionally, among these scientists, religious belief, creativity, and magical thinking were all positively correlated. This suggests that among scientists there is a subgroup that is religious, creative and accepting of unconventional views of reality. The authors suggested that religious and paranormal beliefs may be linked to creativity and that these may form part of a broader psychological dimension known as transliminality. Transliminality involves the crossing of psychological material into and out of awareness. People who are high in transliminality may feel more able to accommodate the apparent tension between rational and non-rational ideas. This notion seems similar to that of Wolfradt et al. who proposed that the “complementary” thinking style fosters loose associations that support magical thinking associated with paranormal beliefs.

Future research could examine what effects experimental manipulations of analytical thinking might have on complementary thinkers, such as religious scientists. It seems possible that in order to decrease the religious beliefs of a complementary thinker it would be necessary not only to strengthen their analytical thinking but to weaken their reliance on intuition. Such research might be of particular interest for example to those who are concerned about the increasing prominence of non-evidence based treatments such as alternative medicine in educational institutions.  

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided. 

This article also appears on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Other posts discussing the possibilities of priming
Opening the Mind: Where Skepticism and Superstition Meet 
Think Like a Man: Effects of Gender Priming on Cognition

Turning the Wheels of the MInd - Clockwise movements increase openness to experience

Are Sex And Religion Natural Enemies?

  

References

          Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief Science, 336 (6080), 493-496 DOI: 10.1126/science.1215647

MacPherson, J. S., & Kelly, S. W. (2011). Creativity and positive schizotypy influence the conflict between science and religion. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(4), 446-450. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.11.002

           Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Seli, P., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief  Cognition, 123 (3), 335-346 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.03.003

Shenhav, A., Rand, D., & Greene, J. (2011). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God Journal of Experimental Psychology: General DOI: 10.1037/a0025391

Wolfradt, U., Oubaid, V., Straube, E. R., Bischoff, N., & Mischo, J. (1999). Thinking styles, schizotypal traits and anomalous experiences. Personality and Individual Differences, 27(5), 821-830. doi: 10.1016/s0191-8869(99)00031-8