Why is Intelligence Negatively Associated with Religiousness?

Edward Dutton; Dimitri Van der Linden

doi:10.1007/s40806-017-0101-0

Evolutionary Psychological Science

pp 1–12

Why is Intelligence Negatively Associated with Religiousness?

Authors
Authors and affiliations

Edward DuttonEmail author
Dimitri Van der Linden

Theoretical Article

First Online:: 16 May 2017

DOI: 10.1007/s40806-017-0101-0

Cite this article as:: Dutton, E. & Van der Linden, D. Evolutionary Psychological Science (2017). doi:10.1007/s40806-017-0101-0

58 Shares
265 Downloads

Abstract

We present three models which attempt to explain the robust negative association between religion and intelligence: the Irrationality of Religion Model, the Cultural Mediation Hypothesis, and the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. We highlight problems with each of them and propose that the negative religion-IQ nexus can be understood through substantially revising the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. We argue that religion should be regarded as an evolved domain or instinct. Intelligence, by contrast, involves rising above our instincts. It follows that an inclination toward the non-instinctive will thus be an aspect of intelligence because it will help us to solve problems. Thus, intelligence will involve being attracted to evolutionary mismatch, to that which we would not be instinctively evolved to be attracted to. It is this, we argue, that is behind the negative religion-intelligence nexus. We respond to potential criticisms of our model and we examine how this model can be further tested.

Keywords

Religion Cultural Mediation Hypothesis Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis Evolutionary mismatch Intelligence

References

BaHammam, A. (2011). Sleep from an Islamic perspective. Annals of Thoracic Medicine, 6, 187–192.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
Barrett, J. (2004). Why would anyone believe in god? Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Bender, I. (1968). A longitudinal study of church attenders and non-attenders. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 7, 230–237. doi:10.2307/1384630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blume, M. (2009). The reproductive benefits of religious affiliation. In E. Voland & W. Schiefenhövel (Eds.), The biological evolution of religious mind and behavior. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: the human instincts that fashion gods, spirits and ancestors. London: William Heinemann.Google Scholar
Brierley, P. (2010). UK Christianity: 2005–2015. London: Christian Research Association.Google Scholar
Browne, T. (1672). Pseudoxia epidemica: or enquiries into the very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths. London: Printed for Edward Dod and are to be Sould (sic.) by Andrew Crook.
Cofnas, N. (2012). Reptiles with a conscience: the co-evolution of religious and moral doctrine. London: Ulster Institute for Social Research.Google Scholar
Cofnas, N. (2016). A teleofunctional account of everyday evolutionary mismatch. Biology and Philosophy, 31, 507–525.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
Cornelis, I., Van Heil, A., Roets, A., & Kassowska, M. (2008). Age differences in conservatism: evidence on the mediating effects of personality and cognitive style. Journal of Personality, 77, 51–88.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
DeYoung, C., Peterson, J., & Higgins, D. (2005). Sources of openness/intellect: cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the fifth factor of personality. Journal of Personality, 73, 825–858.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
Dunkel, C., Reeve, C., Woodley of Menie, M. A., & Van der Linden, D. (2015). A comparative study of the general factor of personality in Jewish and non-Jewish populations. Personality and Individual Differences, 78, 63–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrant, R., & Ellis, B. (2003). Evolutionary psychology. In M. Gallagher & R. Nelson (Eds.), Handbook of psychology: volume I: biological psychology. Hoboken: Wiley.Google Scholar
Dutton, E. (2013a). The cultural mediation hypotheses: a critical examination. Intelligence, 41, 321–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, E. (2013b). The Savanna-IQ Interaction hypothesis: a critical examination of the comprehensive case presented in Kanazawa’s The Intelligence Paradox. Intelligence, 41, 607–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, E. (2014). Religion and intelligence: an evolutionary analysis. London: Ulster Institute for Social Research.Google Scholar
Dutton, E., & Charlton, B. (2015). The genius famine: why we need geniuses, why they are dying out and why we must rescue them. Buckingham: Buckingham University Press.Google Scholar
Dutton, E., & Lynn, R. (2014). Intelligence and religious and political differences among the US academic elite. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 10, 1.Google Scholar
Dutton, E., & Van der Linden, D. (2015). Who are the “clever sillies”? The intelligence, personality, and motives of clever silly originators and those who follow them. Intelligence, 49, 57–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, E., Van der Linden, D., & Lynn, R. (2016a). The negative Flynn effect: a systematic literature review. Intelligence, 59, 163–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, E., Madison, G., & Lynn, R. (2016b). Demographic, economic, and genetic factors related to national differences in ethnocentric attitudes. Personality and Individual Differences, 101, 137–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, N. (2012). Temperamental effortful control (self-regulation). Encyclopedia on early childhood development, http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/temperament/according-experts/temperamental-effortful-control-self-regulation.
Ellis, L., Hoskin, A., Dutton, E., & Nyborg, H. (2017). The future of secularism: a biologically informed theory supplemented with cross-cultural evidence. Evolutionary Psychological Science. doi:10.1007/s40806-017-0090-z.Google Scholar
Farias, M. (2013). The psychology of atheism. In S. Bullivant & M. Ruse (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of atheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feather, N. T. (1967). Evaluation of religious and neutral arguments in religious and atheist student groups. Australian Journal of Psychology, 19, 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Figueredo, A., Vasquez, G., Brumbach, B., et al. (2006). Consilience and life history theory: from genes to brain to reproductive strategy. Developmental Review, 26, 243–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flynn, J. (2012). Are we getting smarter? Rising IQ in the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaskill, M. (2003). Crime and mentalities in early modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gilkey, C. K. (1924). Religion among American students. Journal of Religion, 1, 4.Google Scholar
Goodey, C. F. (2011). A history of intelligence and “intellectual disability”: the shaping of psychology in early modern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Gordon, B., & Marshall, P. (Eds.). (2000). The place of the dead: death and remembrance in late medieval and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, R., & Axelrod, R. (2006). The evolution of ethnocentric behaviour. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauschild, T. (2011). Power and Magic in Italy. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Howells, T. (1928). A comparative study of those who accept as against those who reject religious authority. University of Iowa Studies in Character, 2, 3.Google Scholar
Hudson, W. (2015). The English deists: studies in early in Enlightenment. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
James, W. (1896/1956). The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York: Dover Publications.
James, W. (1907). Pragmatism: a new name for some old ways of thinking. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, T. (2009). Faith and the scientific mind/faith in the scientific mind: the implicit religion of science in contemporary Britain. Implicit Religion, 12, 3.Google Scholar
Jensen, A. (1998). The g factor: the science of mental ability. Westport: Praeger.Google Scholar
Jordan, J. (2013). Pragmatic arguments and belief in God. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatic-belief-god/#PraArg.
Kanazawa, S. (2012). The intelligence paradox: why the intelligent choice isn’t always the smart one. Hoboken: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., et al. (2010). For god (or) country: the hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 725–739.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
King, C. (2008). Faustus and the Promise of the New Science, c. 1580-1730: From the Chapbooks to Harlequin Faustus. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Koenig, L., McGue, M., Krueger, R., & Bouchard, T. (2005). Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness: findings for retrospective and current religiousness ratings. Journal of Personality, 73, 471–478.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
Kosa, J., & Schommer, C. (1961). Religious participation, religious knowledge, and scholastic aptitude: an empirical study. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1, 88–97. doi:10.2307/1385179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, R., & Witham, L. (1998). Leading scientists still reject god. Nature, 394, 313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, G., Ritchie, S., & Bates, C. (2011). The relationship between intelligence and multiple domains of religious belief: evidence from a large US adult sample. Intelligence, 39, 468–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynn, R. (2011). Dysgenics: genetic deterioration in modern populations. London: Ulster Institute for Social Research.Google Scholar
Lynn, R., & Vanhanen, T. (2012). Intelligence: a unifying construct for the social sciences. London: Ulster Institute for Social Research.Google Scholar
MacDonald, K. (2010). Evolution as a dual processing theory of culture: applications to moral idealism and political philosophy. Politics and Culture, 1: http://politicsandculture.org/2010/04/29/evolution-and-a-dual-processing-theory-of-culture-applications-to-moral-idealism-and-political-philosophy/.
Maroney, E. (2006). Religious syncretism. London: SCM Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, J. (2006). John Locke, toleration and early Enlightenment culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meisenberg, G. (2007). In God’s image: the natural history of intelligence and ethics. Kibworth: Book Guild Publishing.Google Scholar
Meisenberg, G., Rindermann, H., Patel, H., & Woodley, M. (2012). Is it smart to believe in god? The relationship of religiosity with education and intelligence. Temas em Psicologia, 20, 101–120.Google Scholar
Mill, J. S. (1909). Autobiography. London: P. F. Collier and Son.Google Scholar
Murashko, A. (2013). Air Force Republishes Chaplain’s ‘No Atheists in Foxholes’ Article to Base Website. Christian Post, http://www.christianpost.com/news/air-force-republishes-chaplains-no-atheists-in-foxholes-article-to-base-website-102226/.
Newberg, A., D’Aquili, E., & Rause, V. (2002). Why god won’t go away: brain science and the biology of belief. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious pro-sociality. Science, 322, 58–62.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
Nyborg, H. (2009). The intelligence-religiosity nexus: a representative study of white adolescent Americans. Intelligence, 37, 81–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, S., Gow, A., & Deary, I. (2014). Religiosity is negatively associated with later-life intelligence, but not with age-related cognitive decline. Intelligence, 46, 9–17.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
Rushton, J. P. (2000). Race, evolution and behavior: a life history perspective, 3rd special edition. Port Huron: Charles Darwin Institute.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1952). Is there a God? In: The collected papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 11: last philosophical testament, 1943–68. London: Routledge.
Saroglou, V. (2002). Religion and the five factors of personality: a meta-analytic review. Personality and Individual Differences, 32, 15–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scruton, R. (2000). Modern culture. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, M. (2009). Against the modern world: traditionalism and the secret intellectual history of the twentieth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Snobelen, S. (1999). Isaac Newton, heretic: the strategies of a Nicodemite. British Journal for the History of Science, 32, 381–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K., & West, R. (2008). On the failure of intelligence to predict myside bias and one-sided bias. Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 129–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steimer, T. (2002). The biology of fear- and anxiety-related behaviors. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 4, 231–249.PubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
Swenson, D. (2008). Religion and family links: Neofunctionalist reflections. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Symonds, J. (1902). Studies of the Greek poets. London: A. & C. Black.Google Scholar
Szobot, C. M., Rohde, L. A., Bukstein, O., Molina, B. S. G., Martins, C., Ruaro, P., & Pechansky, F. (2007). Is attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder associated with illicit substance use disorders in male adolescents? A community-based case-control study. Addiction, 102, 1122–1130.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
Turchin, P. (2007). War and peace and war: the rise and fall of empires. New York: Plume.Google Scholar
Turner, E. (1980). General cognitive ability and religious attitudes in two school systems. British Journal of Religious Education, 2, 136–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Linden, D., Pekaar, K., Bakker, A., Schermer, J., Vernon, P., Dunkel, C., & Petrides, K. (2016). Overlap between the general factor of personality and emotional intelligence: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. doi:10.1037/bul0000078.PubMedGoogle Scholar
Verhage, F. (1964). Intelligence and religious persuasion. Nederlands tijdschift voor de psychologie en haar grensgebieden, 19, 247–254.Google Scholar
Watson, R. (1994). The rest is silence: death as annihilation in the English renaissance. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Webster, G., & Duffy, R. (2016). Losing faith in the intelligence-religiosity link: new evidence for a decline effect, spatial dependence, and mediation by education and life quality. Intelligence, 55, 15–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, R., Meserve, R., & Stanovich, K. (2012). Cognitive sophistication does not attenuate the bias blind spot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 506–519.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
Whitmarsh, T. (2016). Battling the gods: atheism in the ancient world. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: the unity of knowledge. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Woodley, M. A. (2010). Are high-IQ individuals deficient in common sense? A critical examination of the ‘clever sillies’ hypothesis. Intelligence, 38, 471–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodley of Menie, M. A., & Dunkel, C. (2015). Beyond the cultural mediation hypothesis: a reply to Dutton (2013). Intelligence, 49, 186–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodley of Menie, M. A., & Fernandes, H. (2015). Do opposing secular trends on backwards and forwards digit span evidence the co-occurrence model? A comment on Gignac (2015). Intelligence, 50, 125–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodley, M. A., te Nijenhuis, J., & Murphy, R. (2013). Were the Victorians cleverer than us?: The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time. Intelligence, 41, 843–850.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, L. (Ed.). (2016). Rational choice theory and religion: a summary and assessment. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, M., Silverman, J., & Hall, J. A. (2013). The relation between intelligence and religiosity: a meta-analysis and some proposed explanations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 325–354.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

Authors and Affiliations

Edward Dutton
- 1
Email author
Dimitri Van der Linden
- 2

1.Ulster Institute for Social ResearchLondonUK
2.Department of Psychology, Education and Child StudiesErasmus University RotterdamRotterdamthe Netherlands

Personalised recommendations

Actions

Unlimited access to the full article
Instant download
Include local sales tax if applicable

Subscribe to Journal

Get Access to

Evolutionary Psychological Science

for the whole of 2017

Why is Intelligence Negatively Associated with Religiousness?

Abstract

Keywords

Copyright information

Authors and Affiliations

Personalised recommendations

Cookies