Cognitive bias
From Religions Wiki
A cognitive bias is a tendency for a mind to misinterpret information in particular situations. There are may types of cognitive biases. Religious belief may be largely explained in terms of human psychology, evolution and cognitive biases.
- "Atheism will always be a harder sell than religion [...] because a slew of cognitive traits predispose us to faith. [1]"
An intuitive style of thinking has been found to predict more belief in God [2], as well as less skepticism. [3] Inducing people to think analytically temporarily reduces their religiosity. [4] Acceptance of dualism and, to a lesser extent, teleological thinking were found to predispose people to religious belief. [5]
- "The data were most consistent with a path model suggesting that mentalizing comes first, which leads to dualism and teleology, which in turn lead to religious, paranormal, and life’s-purpose beliefs. [5]"
Cognitive biases relevant to religious belief[edit]
- Confirmation bias
- Conformity Bias
- Agent detection bias
- Anthropomorphism
- What you see is all there is
- Apophenia
- Overconfidence effect
- Dunning–Kruger effect
- Teleological thinking
- Mentalization
- Dualism bias
- Humans are predisposed to believe in gods
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ Boyer, P (2008) Religion: Bound to Believe?] Nature vol 455: 1038-39.
- ↑ Shenhav, Rand, and Greene (2012)
- ↑ Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, and Fugelsang (2012)
- ↑ Gervais and Norenzayan (2012), Shenhav et al. (2012)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Aiyana K. Willard, Ara Norenzayan, Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose, Cognition, Volume 129, Issue 2, November 2013, Pages 379–391
