New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that atheists in some of the world’s most secular countries show an intuitive preference for religious belief over atheism.
“Belief in gods might be on the decline in many places, but belief in the goodness of belief lives on," commented study leader Dr Will Gervais, from Brunel University of London.
The study, by academics at Brunel and other institutions, tested 3800 people from 8 countries with low levels of religion: Canada, China, Czechia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and Vietnam. It provides compelling cross-cultural experimental evidence that pro-religious intuitions happen even in societies that have become largely secular.
Using a simple task based on the ‘Knobe effect’, the researchers examined how people infer intentionality in circumstances where a person’s actions knowingly caused individuals to either become religious believers or atheists. The Knobe effect is an established psychological phenomenon demonstrating that people are more likely to attribute intentionality to an action with harmful (versus helpful) consequences.
Across all countries, participants were more likely to judge that an action knowingly causing a shift toward atheism was intentional, suggesting people intuitively see atheism as more harmful than belief. Notably, even self-identified atheists exhibited this.
"Even in societies where explicit religious belief has rapidly declined, the idea that belief in itself is good appears to persist at an intuitive level,” said Dr Gervais. “This belief in belief seems hard to shake, even for atheists.”
While religious faith is falling fast in many countries, the study suggests something deeper may linger: “This research suggests that the legacy of religious influence endures in ways we might not expect,” said Professor Ryan McKay, a study author from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.
"Our work suggests that secularisation may be a more complex process than previously thought,” Dr Gervais adds. “While explicit religious belief may be fading, deeper intuitions favouring belief could persist for generations."
‘Belief in belief: Even atheists in secular countries show intuitive preferences favoring religious belief’, by Will Gervais, Ryan McKay, Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi and Jonathan Lanman, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Reported by:
Hayley Jarvis,
Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 268176
hayley.jarvis@brunel.ac.uk