Science demands explanation, religion tolerates mystery

Liquin, Emily; Metz, S. Emlen; Lombrozo, Tania

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104398

Cited by 37 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…To start with, creativity and curiosity values were found to be located in the Self-Direction domain in past research (Schwartz, 1992;Schwartz et al, 2003), which represents the need for independence of thought and action. This is consistent with the fact that scientific thinking is fueled by a need for explanation, such that scientific questions are deemed explicable, answerable within the limits of human comprehension, and having a single true answer among many (Liquin, Metz, & Lombrozo, 2020). In addition, scientific thinking involved in the generation of ideas, evaluation of theories, and interpretation of data, both for the scientific work of the self and one's colleagues, require critical thinking skills and freedom.…”

Section: The Present Researchsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Independence of scientific thought might be motivationally incompatible with the importance of respect for traditional and religious modes of thinking and behaving that serve to conserve the historically-inherited status quo (Schwartz, 1992). Recent research revealed that as compared to factual beliefs which pertain to the domain of science, religious beliefs were characterized by the appeal of mystery rather than a need for explanation (Liquin et al, 2020), and were cognitively associated with the concept of believing rather than thinking (Heiphetz, Landers, & Van Leeuwen, 2018). Therefore, it was expected that the scientific values would have the highest negative correlation with Tradition values.…”

Section: Bilimsel Etik / Integritymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Content and Structure of Scientific Values

Demirutku¹,

Güngör²

2021

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The purpose of the present research was to identify values relevant to the context of science and test their location in the motivational value circle proposed by Schwartz (1992). Based on the available scientific values literature, creativity, curiosity, skepticism, open-mindedness, rationality, objectivity, communality, integrity, and consistency values were identified as scientific values. Items were generated by the authors to measure their importance. Two studies were conducted to test five hypotheses. In Study 1, with a student sample (N = 624, M age = 22), results revealed that scientific values were empirically located between Self-Direction and Universalism values, and there was a sinusoidal pattern of correlations between the scientific values and the other value types. In Study 2 (N = 181, M age = 21.5), scientific values were observed to be positively correlated with the attitudes towards science as measured by semantic differential scales and the need for cognition scores, and negatively correlated with intolerance of uncertainty scores. The present research was the first attempt to integrate scientific values into the circular structure of values. Results were discussed as confirming the hypothesized structure of scientific values, and as providing initial support for the convergent and divergent validity of the scientific values measure. Using convenience samples with a potential self-selection bias, collecting data from Turkish university students, over-representation of women in Study 2, and low reliability coefficients for value type measures other than the scientific values were noted as methodological limitations. Attempts to replicate the results of the present research in cross-cultural studies and to investigate the relationships between the scientific values and personality measures other than the ones used in the present study to extend convergent validity are suggested as future research directions.

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Section: The Present Researchsupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Bilimsel Etik / Integritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Content and Structure of Scientific Values

Demirutku¹,

Güngör²

2021

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“…, more effortful (Boyer, 2013;Luhrmann, 2018), in need of regular voluntary practice (Luhrmann, 2012;Norenzayan, 2013), less certain (Clegg et al, 2019;Davoodi et al, 2018;P. L. Harris et al, 2006), less responsive to counterevidence (Liquin et al, 2020;Stanovich & Toplak, 2019;Van Leeuwen, 2017), and experienced as part of one's identity (Durkheim, 1912(Durkheim, /2008. This debate concerns not the contents of religious vs. matter-of-fact belief but the attitude, or the way people relate to contents or ideas.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding

2021

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Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief.

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“…Similar to the anticipated complexity of scientific information, prior beliefs about religious or spiritual texts instigate expectations that the information presented will be obscure. Supernatural explanations often appeal to phenomena that operate outside of the natural world and to experiences deemed ineffable, mysterious and exempt from empirical validation [45][46][47][48][49][50] . Knowing that a statement originates from a religious leader or guru may thus increase the likelihood of opaque messages being interpreted as meaningful and profound.…”

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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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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Science demands explanation, religion tolerates mystery

Cited by 37 publications

References 74 publications

Content and Structure of Scientific Values

Content and Structure of Scientific Values

To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding

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

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