---
title: "Religiosity and intelligence"
chunk: 4/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:52.059404+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Studies examining theistic and atheistic cognitive style ===
The idea that analytical thinking makes one less likely to be religious is an idea supported by Gervais and Noernzayan's 2012 study They observed that intuitive thinking tended to increase intrinsic religiosity, intuitive religious belief and belief in supernatural entities. They also added a causative element, finding that subtly triggering analytic thinking can increase religious disbelief. They concluded that "Combined, these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief." While these studies linked religious disbelief to analytical rather than intuitive thinking, they urged caution in the interpretation of these results, noting that they were not judging the relative merits of analytic and intuitive thinking in promoting optimal decision making, or the merits or validity of religiosity as a whole.
In 2017, Calin-Jageman replicated the Gervais 2012 experiment and found no link between analytic thinking and decrease in religious belief. In another replication attempt, another team failed to get the same results as Gervais and Noernzayan . For which, Gervais and Noernzayan acknowledged that they no longer felt confident in their original 2012 findings. 
In 2018, Gervais et al did a follow up study to assess if analytic thinking correlated with atheism in 13 countries and found that cross-culturally, the relation is very weak and fickle and that culture plays a bigger role than analytic thinking on core beliefs.
Harvard researchers found evidence suggesting that all religious beliefs become more confident when participants are thinking intuitively (atheists and theists each become more convinced). Thus reflective thinking generally tends to create more qualified, doubted belief. Reflective thinking was further correlated with greater changes in beliefs since childhood: these changes were towards atheism for the most reflective participants, and towards greater belief in a god for the most intuitive thinkers — a 2025 article in Religious Studies conceptually replicated the former analytic apostasy across most regions of the globe. The studies controlled for personality differences and cognitive ability, suggesting the differences were due to thinking styles – not simply IQ or raw cognitive ability. An experiment in the study found that participants moved towards greater belief in a god after writing essays about how intuition yielded a right answer or reflection yielded a wrong answer (and conversely, towards atheism if primed to think about either a failure of intuition or success of reflection). The authors say it is all evidence that a relevant factor in religious belief is thinking style. The authors add that, even if intuitive thinking tends to increase belief in a god, "it does not follow that reliance on intuition is always irrational or unjustified."
A 2017 study re-analyzed the relationship between intuitive and analytical thinking and its correlation with supernatural belief among three measurements (Pilgrimage setting, supernatural attribution, brain stimulation) and found no significant correlation.
Reviewing psychological studies on atheists, Miguel Farias noted that studies concluding that analytical thinking leads to lower religious belief "do not imply that atheists are more conscious or reflective of their own beliefs, or that atheism is the outcome of a conscious refutation of previously held religious beliefs" since they too have variant beliefs such as in conspiracy theories of the naturalistic variety. He notes that studies on deconversion indicate that a greater proportion of people who leave religion do so for motivational rather than rational reasons, and the majority of deconversions occur in adolescence and young adulthood when one is emotionally volatile. Furthermore, he notes that atheists are indistinguishable from New Age individuals or Gnostics since there are commonalities such as being individualistic, non-conformist, liberal, and valuing hedonism and sensation.
Concerning the cognitive science studies on atheists, Johnathan Lanman notes that there are implicit and explicit beliefs which vary among individuals. An individual's atheism and theism may be related to the amount of "credibility enhancing displays" (CRED) one experiences in that those who are exposed more to theistic CRED will likely be theist and those who have less exposure to theistic CRED will likely be atheists.
Neurological research on mechanisms of belief and non-belief, using Christians and atheists as subjects, by Harris et al. have shown that the brain networks involved in evaluating the truthfulness of both religious and non religious statements are generally the same regardless of religiosity. However, the activity within these networks differed across the religiosity of statements, with the religious statements activating the insula and anterior cingulate cortex to a greater degree, and the non religious statements activating hippocampal and superior frontal regions to a greater degree.  The areas associated with religious statements are generally associated with salient emotional processing, while areas associated with non religious statements are generally associated with memory.  The association between the salience network and religious statements is congruent with the cognitive theory proposed by Boyer that the implausibility of religious propositions are offset by their salience.  The same neural networks were active in both Christians and atheists even when dealing with "blasphemous statements" to each other's worldviews. Furthermore, it supports the idea that "intuition" and "reason" are not two separate and segregated activities but are intertwined in both theists and atheists.
A 2024 review of the literature on cognitive style noted that cognitive scientists understand there to be two systems of the mind: intuition and rationality, which intersect and overlap. Though some studies initially found some correlations between rationality and cognitive style, some studies failed to replicate. Some research has replicated correlations between disbelief/apostasy and rationality or reflection, but these correlations are small and are compatible with cases of reflective believers and converts indicating that reflective thinking does not guarantee or even characterize areligiosity or apostasy. A general review of the literature states that there are no correlations between rationality and belief/disbelief and instead other factors such as upbringing, whether religious or not, better explains why people end up religious or not and that rationality is compatible with the entire sprectrum of belief and disbelief.
In an international study, very few scientists stated that scientific training or knowledge played a role in any declines in personal religiosity. Cross-national research on atheist scientists from the US and UK indicates that the majority came from a nonreligious upbringing and never had a religious affiliation. Also, fewer than half of the atheist scientists who were exposed to religion in their youth said science played a role in them becoming an atheist.