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The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits

Numerous studies have found a negative relationship between religiousness and IQ. It is in the region of − 0.2, according to meta-analyses. The reasons for this relationship are, however, unknown. It has been suggested that higher intelligence leads to greater attraction to science, or that it helps...

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Autores principales: Dutton, Edward, te Nijenhuis, Jan, Metzen, Daniel, van der Linden, Dimitri, Madison, Guy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7239797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31587150
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00926-3
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author Dutton, Edward
te Nijenhuis, Jan
Metzen, Daniel
van der Linden, Dimitri
Madison, Guy
author_facet Dutton, Edward
te Nijenhuis, Jan
Metzen, Daniel
van der Linden, Dimitri
Madison, Guy
author_sort Dutton, Edward
collection PubMed
description Numerous studies have found a negative relationship between religiousness and IQ. It is in the region of − 0.2, according to meta-analyses. The reasons for this relationship are, however, unknown. It has been suggested that higher intelligence leads to greater attraction to science, or that it helps to override evolved cognitive dispositions such as for religiousness. Either way, such explanations assume that the religion–IQ nexus is on general intelligence (g), rather than some subset of specialized cognitive abilities. In other words, they assume it is a Jensen effect. Two large datasets comparing groups with different levels of religiousness show that their IQ differences are not on g and must, therefore, be attributed to specialized abilities. An analysis of the specialized abilities on which the religious and non-religious groups differ reveals no clear pattern. We cautiously suggest that this may be explicable in terms of autism spectrum disorder traits among people with high IQ scores, because such traits are negatively associated with religiousness.
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spelling pubmed-72397972020-05-27 The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits Dutton, Edward te Nijenhuis, Jan Metzen, Daniel van der Linden, Dimitri Madison, Guy J Relig Health Psychological Exploration Numerous studies have found a negative relationship between religiousness and IQ. It is in the region of − 0.2, according to meta-analyses. The reasons for this relationship are, however, unknown. It has been suggested that higher intelligence leads to greater attraction to science, or that it helps to override evolved cognitive dispositions such as for religiousness. Either way, such explanations assume that the religion–IQ nexus is on general intelligence (g), rather than some subset of specialized cognitive abilities. In other words, they assume it is a Jensen effect. Two large datasets comparing groups with different levels of religiousness show that their IQ differences are not on g and must, therefore, be attributed to specialized abilities. An analysis of the specialized abilities on which the religious and non-religious groups differ reveals no clear pattern. We cautiously suggest that this may be explicable in terms of autism spectrum disorder traits among people with high IQ scores, because such traits are negatively associated with religiousness. Springer US 2019-10-05 2020 /pmc/articles/PMC7239797/ /pubmed/31587150 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00926-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Psychological Exploration
Dutton, Edward
te Nijenhuis, Jan
Metzen, Daniel
van der Linden, Dimitri
Madison, Guy
The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits
title The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits
title_full The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits
title_fullStr The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits
title_full_unstemmed The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits
title_short The Myth of the Stupid Believer: The Negative Religiousness–IQ Nexus is Not on General Intelligence (g) and is Likely a Product of the Relations Between IQ and Autism Spectrum Traits
title_sort myth of the stupid believer: the negative religiousness–iq nexus is not on general intelligence (g) and is likely a product of the relations between iq and autism spectrum traits
topic Psychological Exploration
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7239797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31587150
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00926-3
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