Abstract
Cognitive flexibility is operationalized in the neuropsychological literature as the ability to shift between modes of thinking and adapt to novel or changing environments. Religious belief systems consist of strict rules and rituals that offer adherents certainty, consistency, and stability. Consequently, we hypothesized that religious adherence and practice of repetitive religious rituals may be related to the persistence versus flexibility of one’s cognition. The present study investigated the extent to which tendencies towards cognitive flexibility versus persistence are related to three facets of religious life: religious affiliation, religious practice, and religious upbringing. In a large sample (N = 744), we found that religious disbelief was related to cognitive flexibility across three independent behavioural measures: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Remote Associates Test, and Alternative Uses Test. Furthermore, lower frequency of religious service attendance was related to cognitive flexibility. When analysing participants’ religious upbringing in relation to their current religious affiliation, it was manifest that current affiliation was more influential than religious upbringing in all the measured facets of cognitive flexibility. The findings indicate that religious affiliation and engagement may shape and be shaped by cognitive control styles towards flexibility versus persistence, highlighting the tight links between flexibility of thought and religious ideologies.
Highlights
The last decade has seen the birth of a new field, the ‘cognitive science of religion’ (Boyer, 2008; Whitehouse, 2004), which has illustrated that religious beliefs and traditions originate from ordinary psychological functions (Banerjee & Bloom, 2014; Heywood & Bering, 2014; Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013; Norenzayan, 2016)
In terms of the relationship between the cognitive flexibility measures and demographic variables, age was positively correlated with Remote Associates Test (RAT) performance, r = .138 (p < .001), but not with Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), r = −.049 (p = .331), or Alternative Uses Task (AUT) Flexibility, r = −.051 (p = .186)
A Chi-Square test demonstrated an association between gender and religious affiliation, χ2(1) = 12.538, p < .001, such that females tended to be more religious than males
Summary
The last decade has seen the birth of a new field, the ‘cognitive science of religion’ (Boyer, 2008; Whitehouse, 2004), which has illustrated that religious beliefs and traditions originate from ordinary psychological functions (Banerjee & Bloom, 2014; Heywood & Bering, 2014; Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013; Norenzayan, 2016). Given that religious ideologies tend to possess firm and persistent representations of how the world is structured, what is good and true, and how individuals ought to behave, it is valuable to investigate the links between religion and cognitive flexibility, as well as whether growing up with strict rules for behaviour and thought shapes cognitive persistence. Cognitive flexibility is operationalized in the psychological and neuroscientific literature as the ability to shift between modes of thinking and adapt to novel or changing environments (Cools & Robbins, 2004; Kehagia, Murray, & Robbins, 2010). The present study sought to investigate the extent to which tendencies towards cognitive modes of flexibility versus persistence are related to three facets of religious life: (1) religious affiliation (i.e. identifying as religious or nonreligious), (2) religious practice, and (3) religious upbringing, in a sample of diverse religious ideologies
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