Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God
Open accessAbstract
Religious believers intuitively conceptualize deities as intentional agents with mental states who anticipate and respond to human beliefs, desires and concerns. It follows that mentalizing deficits, associated with the autistic spectrum and also commonly found in men more than in women, may undermine this intuitive support and reduce belief in a personal God. Autistic adolescents expressed less belief in God than did matched neuro-typical controls (Study 1). In a Canadian student sample (Study 2), and two American national samples that controlled for demographic characteristics and other correlates of autism and religiosity (Study 3 and 4), the autism spectrum predicted reduced belief in God, and mentalizing mediated this relationship. Systemizing (Studies 2 and 3) and two personality dimensions related to religious belief, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness (Study 3), failed as mediators. Mentalizing also explained the robust and well-known, but theoretically debated, gender gap in religious belief wherein men show reduced religious belief (Studies 2-4).
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Mentalizing deficits do not serve as a reliable antecedent of religious disbelief.
“Thus, it seems implausible that mentalizing deficits serve as a reliable antecedent of religious disbelief.”
From The amoral atheist? A cross-national examination of cultural, motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, and their implications for morality (2021) · cites this paper as [44]
The General Discussion says mentalizing deficits are “one pathway among several to disbelief” and describes the findings as robust across methodological checks. It cautions that the correlational studies cannot establish causation, but does not conclude that mentalizing deficits are an unreliable antecedent. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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“Although some studies have found a link between mentalizing abilities and belief in a personal God [44], a recent set of very large cross-national studies (N > 67,000) failed to find any relationships between religious belief and several validated measures of mentalizing abilities [29].”
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- Authors
- Norenzayan, A., Gervais, W. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H.
- Affiliations
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2012-05-30
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- e36880
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3364254
- OpenAlex
- W2028486210
- Cited by
- 297
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 51 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 17.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (410‐2010‐0297)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Keywords
- belief in God, autism spectrum disorder, religious beliefs, systemizing, conscientiousness, agreeableness
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Autistic Disorder, Child, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Processes, Middle Aged, Religion, Sex Factors, Logistic Models, Young Adult
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