Abstract
According to the Intuitive Belief Hypothesis, supernatural belief relies heavily on intuitive thinking—and decreases when analytic thinking is engaged. After pointing out various limitations in prior attempts to support this Intuitive Belief Hypothesis, we test it across three new studies using a variety of paradigms, ranging from a pilgrimage field study to a neurostimulation experiment. In all three studies, we found no relationship between intuitive or analytical thinking and supernatural belief. We conclude that it is premature to explain belief in gods as ‘intuitive’, and that other factors, such as socio-cultural upbringing, are likely to play a greater role in the emergence and maintenance of supernatural belief than cognitive style.
Highlights
Intuitive thinking involves rapid processing of information with little explicit deliberation
In our first two studies, we investigated whether there was a relationship between supernatural beliefs and intuitive thinking in a way that adds to past approaches by broadening the population and methods used
We found no association between an intuitive thinking style and self-reported religiosity (r = −0.07, p = 0.67) or supernatural practices (r = −0.06, p = 0.72)
Summary
Intuitive thinking (associated with ‘System 1’ processing) involves rapid processing of information with little explicit deliberation. It has been shown that highly analytical thinkers have lower rates of supernatural beliefs than ‘intuitive’ individuals[13] These and other studies, where experimentally increasing analytical thinking was associated with lower supernatural belief[14], have been taken to support the view that to believe in gods and spirits is the natural outcome of the working of our intuitive system, and that this disposition can be overridden or corrected through analytical thinking. Previous studies have relied primarily on undergraduate populations and supernatural primes that are far removed from everyday spiritual experiences To overcome these limitations, we conducted a field study on the pilgrimage route to Santiago of Compostela that crosses most of northern Spain, a walk that takes around 30 days starting at the French Pyrenees. We expected pilgrims who identified more strongly as religious or spiritual to have higher intuitive thinking scores in the probability task
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