[2] Religiosity is also complex, in that it involves wide variations of interactions of religious beliefs, practices, behaviors, and affiliations, across a diverse array of cultures.
[23]From "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" (1995), a report published by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association: Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.
Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent.
[1]Intelligence is a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn.
The meta-analysis discussed three possible explanations: First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma, although this theory was contradicted in mostly atheist societies such as the Scandinavian populations, where the religiosity-IQ relationship still existed.
Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs.
[12] A 2016 re-analysis of the Zuckerman et al study, found that the negative intelligence-religiosity associations were weaker and less generalizable across time, space, samples, measures, and levels of analysis, but still robust.
For example, the negative intelligence–religiosity association was insignificant with samples using men, pre-college participants, and taking into account grade point average.
When other variables like education and quality of human conditions were taken into account, positive relation between IQ and disbelief in God was reduced.
[8] According to Dutton and Van der Linden, the re-analysis had controls that were too strict (life quality index and proximity of countries) and also some of the samples used problematic proxies of religiosity, which took away from the variance in the correlations.
[33] Zuckerman et al. published an updated metanalysis in 2019 with 83 studies finding "strong evidence" of a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence of -.20 to -.23.
[34] Zuckerman cautioned that the results are not generalizable beyond the Western world and that predicting religiosity from intelligence for individuals is fallible.
The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which was determined to be "highly statistically significant".
Other researchers found Nyborg and Lynn's findings questionable since sporadic and inconsistent estimates were the basis for atheism rates, multiple factors better explain the fluctuations, including reversals, in both religion and IQ by nations through time; data that contradicted their hypothesis was minimized, and secularization debates among scholars were ignored, all of which rendered any predictability as unreliable.
[7] The Lynn et al. paper findings were discussed by Professor Gordon Lynch, from London's Birkbeck College, who expressed concern that the study failed to take into account a complex range of social, economic and historical factors, each of which has been shown to interact with religion and IQ in different ways.
[13] Gallup surveys, for example, have found that the world's poorest countries are consistently the most religious, perhaps because religion plays a more functional role (helping people cope) in poorer nations.
Dr. David Hardman of London Metropolitan University says: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief."
[9] In non-western countries like Korea, where religion is seen differently than in the West, non-religious people had lower mean IQs than religious persons.
[36] A 2022 metanalysis of 89 studies found a small and weak negative correlation of -.14 and noted that the findings were not generalizable beyond a Western contexts.
They also added a causative element, finding that subtly triggering analytic thinking can increase religious disbelief.
[18] Harvard researchers found evidence suggesting that all religious beliefs become more confident when participants are thinking intuitively (atheists and theists each become more convinced).
[17] Furthermore, he notes that atheists are indistinguishable from New Age individuals or Gnostics since there are commonalities such as being individualistic, non-conformist, liberal, and valuing hedonism and sensation.
[17] Concerning the cognitive science studies on atheists, Johnathan Lanman notes that there are implicit and explicit beliefs which vary among individuals.
The study examined the extent to which religious orientation and behavior were related to self-reported EI in 148 church-attending adult Christians.
The study found that the individuals' self-reported religious orientation was positively correlated with their perceiving themselves to have greater EI.
They found that both EI and spirituality appear to lead to similar attitudes, behaviors and skills, and that there often seems to be confusion, intersection and linking between the two constructs.
[50] Recently, Łowicki and Zajenkowski investigated the potential associations between various aspects of religious belief and ability and trait EI.
In their first study they found that ability EI was positively correlated with general level of belief in God or a higher power.