The DOI matches its Crossref record; 47 of the 47 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Atheists and Agnostics Are More Reflective than Religious Believers: Four Empirical Studies and a Meta-Analysis
Open accessAbstract
Individual differences in the mere willingness to think analytically has been shown to predict religious disbelief. Recently, however, it has been argued that analytic thinkers are not actually less religious; rather, the putative association may be a result of religiosity typically being measured after analytic thinking (an order effect). In light of this possibility, we report four studies in which a negative correlation between religious belief and performance on analytic thinking measures is found when religious belief is measured in a separate session. We also performed a meta-analysis on all previously published studies on the topic along with our four new studies (N = 15,078, k = 31), focusing specifically on the association between performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test (the most widely used individual difference measure of analytic thinking) and religious belief. This meta-analysis revealed an overall negative correlation (r) of -.18, 95% CI [-.21, -.16]. Although this correlation is modest, self-identified atheists (N = 133) scored 18.7% higher than religiously affiliated individuals (N = 597) on a composite measure of analytic thinking administered across our four new studies (d = .72). Our results indicate that the association between analytic thinking and religious disbelief is not caused by a simple order effect. There is good evidence that atheists and agnostics are more reflective than religious believers.
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“In summary, there appear to be at least three plausible contributors to religious disbelief: a lack of exposure to CREDs in the community while growing up, living under conditions of low existential threat, and a reliance on an analytic (vs. intuitive) cognitive style should all increase the likelihood of becoming a disbeliever.”
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 [41]
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“The use of more effortful and controlled System 2 processes (i.e., the propensity to engage in analytic thinking rather than relying on intuition) varies between individuals (e.g., Stanovich, 2012;Pennycook et al., 2016).”
From The detection of political deepfakes (2022) · cites this paper as Pennycook et al., 2016
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“Individuals have a general tendency to suspend effortful cognitive processes and to rely on associative processes and intuitions (e.g., Pennycook et al., 2016, reported that 65% gave an incorrect answer to the 'bat and ball' problem).”
From The detection of political deepfakes (2022) · cites this paper as Pennycook et al., 2016
In the citing paper
“Recent research has linked individual differences in analytic thinking with skepticism about various epistemically suspect information, such as fake news (Pennycook & Rand, 2019;2020), religious and paranormal beliefs (Pennycook et al., 2016;Shenhav et al., 2012), conspiracy theories (Swami et al., 2014), and pseudo-profound bullshit (Pennycook et al., 2015;Pennycook & Rand, 2020).”
From The detection of political deepfakes (2022) · cites this paper as Pennycook et al., 2016
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Metadata
- Authors
- Pennycook, G., Ross, R. M., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Waterloo (CA)
- University of London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Pennycook, Gordon
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2016-04-07
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- e0153039
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4824409
- OpenAlex
- W2317198474
- Cited by
- 232
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 58 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 6
- FWCI
- 7.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2017-04-21)
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- 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)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Religion and Society Interactions
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Keywords
- analytical thinking, religious beliefs, atheism, agnosticism, cognitive reflection, Cognitive Reflection Test, individual differences, order effects, reflective thinking, religiosity
- MeSH terms
- Cognition, Female, Humans, Male, Religion, Thinking
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