Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan

Abstract

Most humans believe in a god, but many do not. Differences in belief have profound societal impacts. Anthropological accounts implicate bottom-up perceptual processes in shaping religious belief, suggesting that individual differences in these processes may help explain variation in belief. Here, in findings replicated across socio-religiously disparate samples studied in the U.S. and Afghanistan, implicit learning of patterns/order within visuospatial sequences (IL-pat) in a strongly bottom-up paradigm predict 1) stronger belief in an intervening/ordering god, and 2) increased strength-of-belief from childhood to adulthood, controlling for explicit learning and parental belief. Consistent with research implicating IL-pat as a basis of intuition, and intuition as a basis of belief, mediation models support a hypothesized effect pathway whereby IL-pat leads to intuitions of order which, in turn, lead to belief in ordering gods. The universality and variability of human IL-pat may thus contribute to the global presence and variability of religious belief.

Examining the relationship between metacognitive trust in thinking styles and supernatural beliefs

“…More studies including measurements of responses outside of our conscious awareness such as physiological skin conductance may be a way forward (Lufityanto, Donkin, & Pearson, 2016). Other promising research that uses a bottom-up approach focuses on implicit pattern learning (Weinberger et al, 2020).…”

Differentiating personified, supernatural, and abstract views of God across three cognitive domains.

“…The leading theory is that explicit beliefs about God are posthoc elaborations grounded in more basic, implicit intuitions about the world (Baumard & Boyer, 2013; Boyer, 2001). These intuitions are associated with domain-specific cognitive systems that evolved to attend to different types of stimuli in the environment (Atran, 1998; Cosmides & Tooby, 1994; Weinberger et al, 2020). These partially innate cognitive systems continue to develop into implicit “folk-theories,” or intuitions, about the world and how the world works (folk- physics ), the properties of living things (folk- biology ), and the thoughts and intentions of others (folk- psychology ; Sperber et al, 2002).…”

Learning Arabic Pegon for Non-Javanese Santri at Pesantren

“…The basis of Islamic education is divided into three, the first is the religious basis, the second is the philosophical basis, and the third is the scientific basis (As 'ad, 2022;Assa'idi, 2021). The religious literacy as the ability to understand religion's meaning, language, and beliefs required in education religious literacy is a deepening of religion and links religion with political, social, and cultural phenomena (Weinberger et al, 2020).. In line with that, the study of White et al, (2021) shows that cultural diversity can affect the practice of religious learning.…”