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[Jacob/Lee]

People who are intuitive thinkers are more likely to be religious, but getting them to think analytically even in subtle ways decreases the strength of their belief, according to a new study in Science.

The research, conducted by University of British Columbia psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, does not take sides in the debate between religion and atheism, but aims instead to illuminate one of the origins of belief and disbelief. "To understand religion in humans," Gervais says, "you need to accommodate for the fact that there are many millions of believers and nonbelievers."

One of their studies correlated measures of religious belief with people's scores on a popular test of analytic thinking. The test poses three deceptively simple math problems. One asks: "If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?" The first answer that comes to mind—100 minutes—turns out to be wrong. People who take the time to reason out the correct answer (five minutes) are, by definition, more analytical—and these analytical types tend to score lower on the researchers' tests of religious belief.

But the researchers went beyond this interesting link, running four experiments showing that analytic thinking actually causes disbelief. In one experiment, they randomly assigned participants to either the analytic or control condition. They then showed them photos of either Rodin's The Thinker or, in the control condition, of the ancient Greek sculpture Discobolus, which depicts an athlete poised to throw a discus. (The Thinker was used because it is such an iconic image of deep reflection that, in a separate test with different participants, seeing the statue improved how well subjects reasoned through logical syllogisms.) After seeing the images, participants took a test measuring their belief in God on a scale of 0 to 100. Their scores on the test varied widely, with a standard deviation of about 35 in the control group. But it is the difference in the averages that tells the real story: In the control group, the average score for belief in God was 61.55, or somewhat above the scale's midpoint. On the other hand, for the group who had just seen The Thinker, the resulting average was only 41.42. Such a gap is large enough to indicate a mild believer is responding as a mild nonbeliever—all from being visually reminded of the human capacity to think.

Another experiment used a different method to show a similar effect. It exploited the tendency, previously identified by psychologists, of people to override their intuition when faced with the demands of reading a text in a hard-to-read typeface. Gervais and Norenzayan did this by giving two groups a test of participants' belief in supernatural agents like God and angels, varying only the font in which the test was printed. People who took the belief test in the unclear font (a typewriterlike font set in italics) expressed less belief than those who took it in a more common, easy-to-read typeface. "It's such a subtle manipulation," Norenzayan says. "Yet something that seemingly trivial can lead to a change that people consider important in their religious belief system." On a belief scale of 3 to 21, participants in the analytic condition scored an average of almost two points lower than those in the control group.

Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition. And we know from past research that religious beliefs—such as the idea that objects and events don't simply exist but have a purpose—are rooted in intuition. "Analytic processing inhibits these intuitions, which in turn discourages religious belief," Norenzayan explains.

Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene, who last year published a paper on the same subject with colleagues Amitai Shenhav and David Rand, praises this work for its rigorous methodology. "Any one of their experiments can be reinterpreted, but when you've got [multiple] different kinds of evidence pointing in the same direction, it's very impressive."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=losing-your-religion-analytic-thinking-can-undermine-belief

[Flying Dice]

Shitstorm incoming?

[IronyOwl]

Interesting. Nothing we didn't already know, but that text trick is absolutely fascinating.

[Frumple]

Quibble: thread title should probably be renamed to specify religious belief. Just belief is a fair bit more generalized and doesn't seem to be being measured by the tests in question. There's... actually some annoying conflation of that terminology in the quoted text General belief is a much larger topic, though, so some focus is understandable.

Wouldn't be terribly surprised if a more generalized test held out about the same response though; a strong component of analytic thought is specifically about challenging and breaking apart beliefs (regardless of the belief's metaphysical burdens).

Echoing that the text trick is a nice one, though. Wonder if that's why a fair amount of philosophy texts are a bit poorly formatted, heh.

[Leafsnail]

People who took the belief test in the unclear font (a typewriterlike font set in italics) expressed less belief than those who took it in a more common, easy-to-read typeface.

"What kind of god would allow this horrible typeface?"

...But uh, yeah, it's pretty interesting.  I guess you could try it for political beliefs or scientific theories too.

[Heron TSG]

COMIC SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS!

Time to start adjusting fonts when I write things, hehehe.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Didn't we already know this? Oh well, one more study confirming it won't hurt.

[EveryZig]

The results make sense, but I am still slightly annoyed they did not put the sample sizes in the article.

[Zrk2]

I think the fact that analytic thinking undermines belief should be self-evident because those who analyze ideas are less likely to simply accept what they are told and will be more likely to try and find their own answers.

[Fenrir]

Another experiment used a different method to show a similar effect. It exploited the tendency, previously identified by psychologists, of people to override their intuition when faced with the demands of reading a text in a hard-to-read typeface. Gervais and Norenzayan did this by giving two groups a test of participants' belief in supernatural agents like God and angels, varying only the font in which the test was printed. People who took the belief test in the unclear font (a typewriterlike font set in italics) expressed less belief than those who took it in a more common, easy-to-read typeface. "It's such a subtle manipulation," Norenzayan says. "Yet something that seemingly trivial can lead to a change that people consider important in their religious belief system." On a belief scale of 3 to 21, participants in the analytic condition scored an average of almost two points lower than those in the control group.

This was my favorite part. I now feel like my neuroses about proper grammar and typography are justified. I never really needed them to be justified, but, when psychologists give me a good reason to hate Verdana’s quotation marks, it pleases me.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, if you want to keep your religion don't think too hard about it.  You start making concessions, giving ground, all kinds of cognitive dissonance starts popping up as parts of your brain start wanting to give it up entirely, and pretty soon you're not religious anymore.

See here.  I've seen quite a few people somewhere along that path.

[EveryZig]

See here.  I've seen quite a few people somewhere along that path.

    "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing".
    "But," says man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves you exist and so therefore you don't. QED."
    "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

(On a semi-related note, I never really got why some people say unevidenced faith is a good thing.)

[alway]

That text trick is an interesting one. So I guess if we want people to really think more deeply about what we say, it should be printed in a lesser-used font which is a little hard on the eyes.

While normal fonts are better suited for flippant remarks and jokes meant not to be taken seriously!

[Alastar]

Not surprising at all.

On the other hand, western culture has over-idealised analytic thinking for some time. Humans are quite perceptive and naturals at spotting correlations, even if they lack analytical rigor: lots of useful observation can be passed on via faith/superstition/tradition. It just pays to check those against new evidence from time to time.

[ChairmanPoo]

Is there info on the confidence intervals of those results? While the base concept is kind of obvious, I find the particular experiments dubious (particularily the one with the statues), and it wouldn't surprise me if the differences were due more to randomness than the dramatic effects of changing the print font or showing pics of a statue.