The ability to mentalize has been marked as an important cognitive mechanism enabling belief in supernatural agents. In five studies we cross-culturally investigated the relationship between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents with large sample sizes (over 67,000 participants in total) and different operationalizations of mentalizing. The relative importance of mentalizing for endorsing supernatural beliefs was directly compared with credibility enhancing displays–the extent to which people observed credible religious acts during their upbringing. We also compared autistic with neurotypical adolescents. The empathy quotient and the autism-spectrum quotient were not predictive of belief in supernatural agents in all countries (i.e., The Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States), although we did observe a curvilinear effect in the United States. We further observed a strong influence of credibility enhancing displays on belief in supernatural agents. These findings highlight the importance of cultural learning for acquiring supernatural beliefs and ask for reconsiderations of the importance of mentalizing.

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Contemporary models of substance use disorders emphasize the role of cognitive control, which has been linked to difficulties in resisting the use of substances. In the present study, we measured two aspects of cognitive control, response inhibition (operationalized by a Go/NoGo Task) and performance monitoring (operationalized by an Eriksen Flanker Task), in a group of young cannabis-use disorder (CUD) patients and compared these functions with two control groups (i.e. a group of cigarette smokers and a group of non-smokers). We employed both behavioural and electrophysiological measures. The results indicate that CUD patients displayed reduced NoGo-P3 event-related potentials compared with non-smoking controls, but not compared with smoking controls. In addition, CUD patients were slower on Go trials than both control groups. No other between-group electrophysiological or behavioural differences were observed. These results seem to suggest that CUD patients have problems related to response inhibition, but performance monitoring seems relatively unaffected.

We explored the effects of alcohol on expectancy-driven mystical and quasi-mystical experiences by manipulating participants' expectations. By using the so-called God Helmet suggestion, participants were led to believe that a placebo brain stimulation could elicit mystical experiences. In this pre-registered field study, we set out to test whether alcohol could increase participants' susceptibility to the God Helmet suggestion in a large sample (N = 193) at a Dutch festival. Participants reported a wide range of extraordinary experiences associated with mysticism, including out-of-body experiences, involuntary movements, and the felt presence of invisible beings. Regression analyses revealed that self-identified spiritualism predicted extraordinary experiences, but neither objective nor subjective measures of alcohol intoxication increased participants' susceptibility to the God Helmet. Methodological limitations that may explain the lack of an effect for alcohol are discussed, while we explore the usefulness of the God Helmet in the study of extraordinary experiences.

It has been hypothesized that humans have evolved a hypersensitivity to detect intentional agents at a perceptual level, as failing to detect these agents may potentially be more harmful than incorrectly assuming that agents are absent. Following this logic, ambiguous threatening situations should lead people to falsely detect the presence of agents. In six threat-inducing experiments (N = 233) we have investigated whether threat induction increases agent detection. We operationalized human agent detection by means of a Biological Motion Detection Task (Experiments 1 and 2) and an Auditory Agent Detection Task (Experiment 4). Intentionality detection was operationalized by means of a Geometrical Figures Task (Experiment 3). Threat manipulations that were either weak (threatening pictures, classical horror music) or moderate (virtual reality) did not increase false human agent or intentionality detection. Moreover, participants generally had a response bias towards assuming that agents were absent (Experiments 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, and 4). Further, agent and intentionality detection measures were unrelated to individual differences in supernatural beliefs, although they were related to the negativity bias. This study reveals the boundary conditions under which the agent and intentionality detection is not intensified and provides recommendations for future research.