Core Intuitions About Persons Coexist and Interfere With Acquired Christian Beliefs About God

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult religious adherents, acquired beliefs about the extraordinary characteristics of God coexist with, rather than replace, an initial representation of God formed by co-option of the evolved person concept. In three experiments, Christian religious adherents were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions about persons and acquired Christian beliefs about God were consistent (i.e., true according to both [e.g., "God has beliefs that are true"] or false according to both [e.g., "All beliefs God has are false"]) or inconsistent (i.e., true on intuition but false theologically [e.g., "God has beliefs that are false"] or false on intuition but true theologically [e.g., "All beliefs God has are true"]). Participants were less accurate and slower to respond to inconsistent versus consistent statements, suggesting that the core intuitions both coexisted alongside and interfered with the acquired beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 2 when responding under time pressure participants were disproportionately more likely to make errors on inconsistent versus consistent statements than when responding with no time pressure, suggesting that the resolution of interference requires cognitive resources the functioning of which decreases under cognitive load. In Experiment 3 a plausible alternative interpretation of these findings was ruled out by demonstrating that the response accuracy and time differences on consistent versus inconsistent statements occur for God-a supernatural religious entity-but not for a natural religious entity (a priest).

The Embodied God: Core Intuitions About Person Physicality Coexist and Interfere With Acquired Christian Beliefs About God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus

“…2), we found support for the suggestion by M. Barlev and A. Shtulman (under review) that it is unintuitive to conceptualize God as disembodied: Christian religious adherents showed evidence of representational coexistence and interference (lower accuracy and slower RT) on statements where core knowledge intuitions about person physicality and acquired Christian theological doctrines about God's physicality (e.g., omnipresence and incorporeality) were inconsistent versus consistent. The same was also found for statements where core knowledge intuitions about person psychology and acquired Christian theological doctrines about God's psychology (e.g., infallibility) were inconsistent versus consistent (thereby replicating Barlev et al, , ).…”

“…A priori power analyses for this and all other experiments reported here were computed using G*Power 3.1 (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, ). The RT effects in past experiments using the same sentence verification task (Barlev, Mermelstien, & German, , ) were significantly smaller than the accuracy effects, so the power analyses were computed on the basis of the RT effects. The expected RT effect sizes were in the range of d = 0.30–0.40.…”

“… Consistent statements are true on both intuition and theology; inconsistent statements are true on one and false on the other. Psychology statements are modified from Barlev et al (). …”

“…At the crux of these contrasting hypotheses then is whether it is natural or not to represent persons or extraordinary beings such as the Christian God as disembodied. This study aims to explore this question using a task modified from Barlev, Mermelstein, and German (, ). Previously, Barlev et al tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult Christian religious adherents, representations of God based on core person psychology coexist and interfere with acquired theology about God.…”

“…The representational interference or conflict on inconsistent items needs to be resolved, and it was predicted that failures to do so will yield more incorrect responses on inconsistent items as compared to consistent items; it was additionally predicted that this process will yield slower responding on inconsistent items (including on correct responses, i.e., when this representational conflict was successfully resolved). Barlev et al found behavioral evidence compatible with just such conflict: worse performance—lower accuracy and slower response time (RT)—on inconsistent versus consistent statements (Barlev et al, , ), including in Christian religious believers with a lifetime of religious adherence (Barlev et al, ).…”