The relation between different types of religiosity and analytic cognitive style

Abstract

Analytic cognitive style (ACS) has usually been found to be negatively correlated with religiosity. Several recent studies, however, challenged this finding claiming, for example, that the presumed association is an artifact of the order of presentation of the ACS and religiosity measures or that ACS might be differently related to different types of religiosity. Furthermore, almost all data in this field of research come from Western Christian samples. We, therefore, investigated whether ACS is related to four types of religiosity (intrinsic, extrinsic, quest, and general religious belief) and whether this relation stems from an order effect in three different studies with four different non-western samples (total n=1329). The results reveal that there is no order effect and that ACS is negatively correlated to intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity and general religious belief, corroborating initial findings. Additionally, we found a positive correlation between ACS and quest religiosity. The results point to the importance of distinguishing different types of religiosity in religiosity-cognitive style studies.