Abstract: We sought to assess whether previous findings regarding the relationship between cognitive ability and religiosity could be replicated in a large dataset of online daters (maximum n = 67k). We found that self-declared religious people had lower IQs than nonreligious people (atheists and agnostics). Furthermore, within most religious groups, a negative relationship between the strength of religious conviction and IQ was observed. This relationship was absent or reversed in nonreligious groups. A factor of religiousness based on five questions correlated at −0.38 with IQ after adjusting for reliability (−0.30 before). The relationship between IQ and religiousness was not strongly confounded by plausible demographic covariates (β = −0.24 in final model versus −0.30 without covariates).
Keywords: intelligence; religion; religious belief; atheism; agnosticism; Christianity; Catholicism; Hinduism; Judaism; Islam; OKCupid; cognitive ability
5. Discussion
Previous research has documented a negative relationship between cognitive ability and religious belief [10,11,14]. Among the religious, the strength of religiosity has also been found to be negatively associated with cognitive ability [15].
Our results replicated both of these findings. On the other hand, the
relationship between cognitive ability and the strength of religious
convictions was absent or reversed in nonreligious groups like atheists
and agnostics. Generally speaking, these results supported the general
thrust of Nyborg’s and many others’ findings with regards to
religiousness and cognitive ability [10,15].
The strength of the relationship in our dataset was stronger than in
the meta-analysis we cited, which found an overall mean correlation of
−0.16 [11],
whereas ours was −0.30. The meta-analysis did not utilize adjustments
for measurement error, so the values may not be comparable. However, we
suspected that the difference was mostly due to differences in the
measures used and the sampled population. Many of the studies in the
meta-analysis relied on cognitive ability measures such as SAT scores
among college students, which are likelier to have had restricted range
and which frequently feature erroneous score reporting. Consistent with
this, the mean correlation found among adult noncollege samples was
−0.23, which is somewhat closer to our own. A recent large, multisample
study that utilized measures of science knowledge and religiousness also
found correlations around −0.30, though these were reduced to about
−0.20 when the questions did not include contested information (e.g.,
questions about global warming, and evolution) [13].
Item bias still has the potential to explain part or all of these
relationships, as it did recently for the results of an actively
open-minded thinking questionnaire [28].
It remains possible—though we were unable to test this—that these
results may be explained by other mediators such as death salience,
moral concern, conformism, attachment style, executive control, or
analytical thinking style [29,30,31,32].
Limitations
There
were a number of limitations to this study. First, data came from an
online dating site where people answer questions in order to be better
matched with potential partners. In this way, subjects had an incentive
to answer truthfully insofar as this would enable them to be matched
with similar people. However, the medium may also result in social
desirability bias in responding; this response bias is probably more
likely to be reflected in the answers to questions about one’s religion
than in answers to the cognitive ability-related questions unless
cheating on these questions reflects social desirability bias. A
previous study using this dataset for criminal and antisocial behavior
did not indicate that social desirability bias was strong enough to
remove expected criterion relationships [22].
Second, as an extension of the first limitation, the data were not
particularly representative of the national populations they were drawn
from but instead reflected mainly younger persons looking for love
online. The regressions did not indicate notable biases from this sample
selection. Third, the measure of intelligence was of somewhat
questionable validity since it has not been tested against a
well-validated test and is quite brief (14 items total and subjects did
not usually respond to all 14). Future studies should test this battery
against well-known cognitive ability tests in order to ascertain its
psychometric qualities and potential demographic biases. Fourth, our
sample is drawn mostly from Anglophone (about 85%) and nearly entirely
from Western (about 95%) countries, so it is unclear to what degree
these findings should generalize to populations not covered at all or
which were only inadequately covered by our study. We suggest that
future studies examine the relationship between cognitive ability and
religiosity in countries with markedly different cultures than Western
ones such as Brazil or China. Fifth, previous reviews on the topic
highlighted the possible mediating role of education [11],
but we were unable to test this mediation because our sample consisted
mostly of people who had not yet finished formal education and, as a
result, the education data available to us were not suitable for this
analysis.
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