Adults Show Positive Moral Evaluations of Curiosity About Religion

Abstract

Four experiments investigated the perceived virtue of curiosity about religion. Adults from the United States made moral judgments regarding targets who exhibited curiosity, possessed relevant knowledge, or lacked both curiosity and knowledge about religion and comparison topics (e.g., science). Participants attributed greater moral goodness to targets who displayed curiosity compared with targets who were ignorant or knowledgeable about the domain. This preference was consistent across Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and other Christian participants but was absent when atheists evaluated religious curiosity. Perceptions of effort partially mediated judgments: Participants viewed curious characters as exerting more effort and consequently rated them as more moral. To test causality, we manipulated perceptions of effort and showed that participants viewed curious characters who exerted effort as particularly moral. This work fosters novel insights into the perceived virtue of curiosity and further illuminates similarities and differences between religious and scientific cognition.