Religiosity Predicts Evidentiary Standards

Lobato, Emilio J. C.; Tabatabaeian, Shadab; Fleming, Morgan; Sulzmann, Sven; Holbrook, Colin

doi:10.1177/1948550619869613

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The endorsement of supernatural beliefs has, for instance, been associated with higher profundity and truth ratings for nonsense resembling New Age wisdom 54 . In a religious context, Christians were found to be more affected by an intercessory prayer when supposedly performed by a (charismatic) Christian than a non-Christian 55 and to require less evidence for religious claims (e.g., efficacy of prayer to cure illness) than for scientific claims (e.g., efficacy of medication 56,57 ). These differences were not present among secular individuals.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

Hoogeveen¹,

Haaf²,

Bulbulia³

et al. 2020

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People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. Here, we present data from a cross-cultural study in which individuals (N = 10,195) from a religiously and culturally diverse sample of 24 countries were presented with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. The data indicate a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub "the Einstein effect": across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, nonsense from a scientist was considered more credible than nonsense attributed to a spiritual guru. Additionally, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist vs. the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgments for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust ratings across 143 countries mirrored the experimental patterns. These findings suggest that irrespective of religious worldview, science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

Hoogeveen¹,

Haaf²,

Bulbulia³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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show abstract

“…In this process, similarities between one's own worldview and that of the source's group may serve as a proxy for being a benevolent and reliable source 23,55 . In a religious context, Christians were found to be more affected by an intercessory prayer when supposedly performed by a (charismatic) Christian than a non-Christian 56 and to require less evidence for religious claims (for example, efficacy of prayer to cure illness) than for scientific claims (for example, efficacy of medication 57,58 ). These differences were not present among secular individuals.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

et al. 2022

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In a heated debate about the proximity of COVID-19 herd immunity, White House health advisor Dr Scott Atlas proclaimed 'You're supposed to believe the science, and I'm telling you the science' 1 . A group of infectious disease experts and former colleagues from Stanford, however, publicly criticized Dr Atlas, who is a radiologist, for spreading 'falsehoods and misrepresentation of science' through his statements about face masks, social distancing and the safety of community transmission 2 . In the 2020 pandemic crisis, all eyes turned to scientific experts to provide advice, guidelines and remedies; from COVID-19 alarmists to sceptics, appeal to scientific authority appeared a prevalent strategy on both sides of the political spectrum. Please see the Supplementary Information for a short commentary on how the current work might relate to the COVID-19 situation.A large body of research has shown that the credibility of a statement is heavily influenced by the perceived credibility of its source [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] . Children and adults are sensitive to the past track record of informants [11][12][13][14][15][16] , evidence of their benevolence toward the recipient of testimony [17][18][19] , as well as how credible the information is at face value 20,21 . From an evolutionary perspective, deference to credible authorities such as teachers, doctors and scientists is an adaptive strategy that enables effective cultural learning and knowledge transmission [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] . Indeed, if the source is considered a trusted expert, people are willing to believe claims from that source without fully understanding them. We dub this 'the Einstein effect'; people simply accept that E = mc 2 and that antibiotics can help cure pneumonia because credible authorities such as Einstein and their doctor say so, without actually understanding what these statements truly entail.Knowing that a statement originates from an epistemic authority may thus increase the likelihood of opaque messages being interpreted as meaningful and profound. According to Sperber 29 , in some cases, incomprehensible statements from credible sources may be appreciated not just in spite of, but by virtue of their incomprehensibility, as exemplified by the speech of spiritual or intellectual gurus (the 'Guru effect'). Here, we investigate to what extent different epistemic authorities affect the perceived value of nonsensical information. To this end, we contrasted judgements of gobbledegook spoken by a spiritual leader with gobbledegook spoken

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“…By contrast, lower scores in analytical thinking tasks (i.e., implying an intuitive thinking style) are associated with stronger religious convictions (Lindeman & Svedholm-Häkkinen, 2016;Pennycook, 2014;Saribay & Yilmaz, 2017;Shenhav et al, 2012) and a higher susceptibility to teleological biases (i.e., explaining random natural phenomena in terms of its purposes) (Heywood & Bering, 2014). Also, those who do not perform well in analytical reasoning tasks tend to have inconsistent standards of evidence when evaluating religious and scientific information (Lobato et al, 2020;McPhetres & Zuckerman, 2017).…”

Section: Cognitive Abilities and Stylesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longtime Nemeses or Cordial Allies? How Individuals Mentally Relate Science and Religion

Zein,

Altenmüller,

Gollwitzer

2024

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Science and religion are influential social forces, and their interplay has been subject to many public and scholarly debates. The present article addresses how people mentally conceptualize the relationship between science and religion and how these conceptualizations can be systematized. To that end, we provide a comprehensive, integrative review of the pertinent literature. Moreover, we discuss how cognitive (in particular, epistemic beliefs) and motivational factors (in particular, epistemic needs, identity, and moral beliefs), as well as personality and contextual factors (e.g., rearing practices and cross-cultural exposure), are related to these mental conceptualizations. And finally, we provide a flowchart detailing the psychological processes leading to these mental conceptualizations. A comprehensive understanding of how individuals perceive the science-religion relationship is interesting in and of itself and practically relevant for managing societal challenges, such as science denial

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Religiosity Predicts Evidentiary Standards

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

Longtime Nemeses or Cordial Allies? How Individuals Mentally Relate Science and Religion

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