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Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics

Overview of attention for article published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, February 2013
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Title
Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics
Published in
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, February 2013
DOI 10.3758/s13423-013-0394-3
Pubmed ID
Authors

Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler, Jonathan A. Fugelsang

Abstract

We provide evidence that religious skeptics, as compared to believers, are both more reflective and effective in logical reasoning tasks. While recent studies have reported a negative association between an analytic cognitive style and religiosity, they focused exclusively on accuracy, making it difficult to specify potential underlying cognitive mechanisms. The present study extends the previous research by assessing both performance and response times on quintessential logical reasoning problems (syllogisms). Those reporting more religious skepticism made fewer reasoning errors than did believers. This finding remained significant after controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Crucial for the purpose of exploring underlying mechanisms, response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This novel finding suggests a possible role of response slowing during analytic problem solving as a component of cognitive style that promotes overriding intuitive first impressions. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed.

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The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 139 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 6 4%
Dominican Republic 1 <1%
Germany 1 <1%
Unknown 131 94%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 29 21%
Student > Master 26 19%
Researcher 16 12%
Student > Bachelor 13 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 10 7%
Other 26 19%
Unknown 19 14%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 70 50%
Social Sciences 13 9%
Business, Management and Accounting 7 5%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 4 3%
Medicine and Dentistry 4 3%
Other 15 11%
Unknown 26 19%