Intelligence and Religiosity among Dating Site Users

Emil O W Kirkegaard,Jordan Lasker

doi:10.3390/psych2010003

Abstract

We sought to assess whether previous findings regarding the relationship between cognitive ability and religiosity could be replicated in a large dataset of online daters (maximum n = 67k). We found that self-declared religious people had lower IQs than nonreligious people (atheists and agnostics). Furthermore, within most religious groups, a negative relationship between the strength of religious conviction and IQ was observed. This relationship was absent or reversed in nonreligious groups. A factor of religiousness based on five questions correlated at −0.38 with IQ after adjusting for reliability (−0.30 before). The relationship between IQ and religiousness was not strongly confounded by plausible demographic covariates (β = −0.24 in final model versus −0.30 without covariates).

Highlights

While some studies used binary measures of religiousness (e.g., “do you believe in God?” or “are you an atheist?”), some studies investigated the relationship between the intensity or seriousness of religious belief and cognitive ability, generally finding that more devout believers tended to display lower cognitive ability than more liberal believers, excluding nonbelievers [14]
The analysis by Kirkegaard and Bjerrekær [20] plotted estimated cognitive ability by religious orientation and the relationship between strength of belief and cognitive ability irrespective of religious group. We extended their analysis by including estimates of the relationship between strength of belief and cognitive ability within each group and assessing the impacts of various demographic variables such as sexual orientation, age, race/ethnicity, and country of origin on “latent religiousness,” a factor score based on answers to five questions discussed in greater depth below
We found there were two variables relating to user religious self-representation in the profile and five questions related to religious belief

Summary

Introduction

There has been long-standing interest in the relationship between religious beliefs and the behaviors and traits of the people who hold them, including crime proneness and antisocial behavior [1], personality [2], health [3], happiness, resilience [4], and cognitive ability or intelligence [5,6,7,8,9].With respect to cognitive ability, over sixty studies spanning more than eight decades have consistently found that the nonreligious and nonbelieving tended to be somewhat, perhaps 4–8 IQ points (on a regular mean 100, SD 15 scale), more intelligent than the religious [10,11]. While some studies used binary measures of religiousness (e.g., “do you believe in God?” or “are you an atheist?”), some studies investigated the relationship between the intensity or seriousness of religious belief and cognitive ability, generally finding that more devout believers tended to display lower cognitive ability than more liberal believers, excluding nonbelievers [14]. Those findings primarily concerned the belief in Christianity, because they were mostly conducted on Western populations. Nyborg [15] computed average

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Conclusion