Mentalizing Domains and Belief in God
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.31063Keywords:
mentalizing, theory of mind, religion, cognitive science, godsAbstract
Mentalizing, otherwise termed theory of mind or mindreading, is a cognitive ability that enables reasoning about the mental states of others and is theorized to be important for belief in supernatural agents. Further research is needed to investigate the nature of mentalizing itself and its relationship to belief in supernatural agents. The present study includes multiple measures of mentalizing enabling better examination of the relationships among these measures and their relationship to belief in supernatural agents. Two research questions are asked. First, is mentalizing a single construct, or do multiple domains of mentalizing exist? Second, are various measures of mentalizing related to belief in supernatural agents? Results reveal that some measures of mentalizing are interrelated, though not all are, and some measures are related to belief in supernatural agents. These findings suggest that arguments for the existence of a single mentalizing construct that is related to belief in supernatural beings may be insufficient.
References
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Banerjee, Robin, Dawn Watling, and Marcella Caputi. 2011. “Peer Relations and the Understanding of Faux Pas: Longitudinal Evidence for Bidirectional Associations.” Child Development 82: 1887–1905. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01669.x
Baron-Cohen, Simon, and Sally Wheelwright. 2004. “The Empathy Quotient: An Investigation of Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and Normal Sex Differences.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 34: 163–175. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JADD.0000022607.19833.00
Baron-Cohen, Simon, Sally Wheelwright, Jacqueline Hill, Yogini Raste, and Ian Plumb. 2001. “The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test Revised Version: A Study with Normal Adults, and Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42: 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-7610.00715
Barrett, Justin L. 2012. Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief. New York: Free Press.
Barrett, Justin L., Rebekah A. Richert, and Amanda Driesenga. 2001. “God’s Beliefs Versus Mother’s: The Development of Nonhuman Agent Concepts.” Child Development 72: 50–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00265
Boyer, Pascal. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.
Buhrmester, Michael, Tracy Kwang, and Samuel D. Gosling. 2011. “Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A New Source of Inexpensive, yet High-Quality, Data?” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6: 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393980
Dumontheil, Iroise, Olivia Küster, Ian A. Apperly, and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. 2010. “Taking Perspective into Account in a Communicative Task.” NeuroImage 52: 1574–1583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.056
Goldstein, Thalia R., Katherine Wu, and Ellen Winner. 2009. “Actors are Skilled in Theory of Mind but not Empathy.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 29: 115–133. https://doi.org/10.2190/IC.29.2.c
Guthrie, Stewart. 1995. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Happé, Francesca G. E. 1994. “An Advanced Test of Theory of Mind: Understanding of Story Characters’ Thoughts and Feelings by Able Autistic, Mentally Handicapped, and Normal Children and Adults.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 24: 129–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02172093
Horton, John J., David G. Rand, and Richard J. Zeckhauser. 2011. “The Online Laboratory: Conducting Experiments in a Real Labor Market.” Experimental Economics 14: 399–425. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-011-9273-9
Jack, Anthony I., Jared P. Friedman, Richard E. Boyatzis, and Scott N. Taylor. 2016. “Why Do You Believe in God? Relationships between Religious Belief, Analytic Thinking, Mentalizing and Moral Concern.” PLoS ONE 11: 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149989
Kinderman, Peter, Robin Dunbar, and Richard P. Bentall. 1998. “Theory-of-Mind Deficits and Causal Attributions.” British Journal of Psychology 89: 191–204. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1998.tb02680.x
Lewis, Andrew R., Paul A. Djupe, Stephen T. Mockabee, and Joshua Su-Ya Wu. 2015. “The (Non) Religion of Mechanical Turk Workers.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54: 419–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12184
McCauley, Richard N., and E. Thomas Lawson. 2002. Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606410
Norenzayan, Ara, Will M. Gervais, and Kali H. Trzesniewski. 2012. “Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God.” PLoS ONE 7: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036880
Rosenkranz, Patrick, and Bruce G. Charlton. 2013. “Individual Differences in Existential Orientation: Empathizing and Systemizing Explain the Sex Difference in Religious Orientation and Science Acceptance.” Archive for the Psychology of Religions 35: 119–146. https://doi.org/10.1163/15736121-12341255
Rosseel, Yves. 2012. “Lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling.” Journal of Statistical Software 48: 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02
Vellante, Marcello, Simon Baron-Cohen, Mariangela Melis, Matteo Marrone, Donatella R. Petretto, Carmelo Masala and Antonio Preti. 2013. “The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test: Systematic Review of Psychometric Properties and a Validation Study in Italy.” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 18: 326–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546805.2012.721728
Wakabayashi, Akio, Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright, Nigel Goldenfeld, Joe Delaney, Debra Fine, Richard Smith, and Leonora Weil. 2006. “Development of Short Forms of the Empathy Quotient (EQ-Short) and the Systemizing Quotient (SQ-Short).” Personality and Individual Differences 41: 929–940. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2006.03.017
Willard, Aiyana K., and Ara Norenzayan. 2013. “Cognitive Biases Explain Religious Belief, Paranormal Belief, and Belief in Life’s Purpose.” Cognition 129: 379–391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.07.016
Published
2018-05-15
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Greenway, T. S. (2018). Mentalizing Domains and Belief in God. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 4(1), 91-110. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.31063
