Religious Cognition and Behaviour in Autism: The Role of Mentalizing

ABSTRACT

Mentalizing, or theory of mind, has been argued to be critical for supporting religious beliefs and practices involving supernatural agents. As individuals with autism spectrum conditions have been found to have deficits in mentalizing, this raises the question as to how they may conceive of gods and behave in relation to gods. To examine this, we compared high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum conditions (HFA) to typically developing individuals across seven key aspects of religious cognition and behaviour: (a) strength of belief, (b) anthropomorphism of god concepts, (c) felt closeness toward the god, (d) prayer habits, (e) attraction to prayer, (f) efficacy of prayer, and (g) a sense of agency while praying. A battery of mentalizing tasks was administered to measure mentalizing ability, along with the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. As expected, typically developing subjects performed better than HFA subjects in the advanced mentalizing task. However, no statistically significant differences were found with first-order and second-order false belief tasks. In contrast to our predictions and previous research on the religiosity of HFA, we found very little differences between the groups in their religious cognition and behaviour. Moreover, the relationship between mentalizing ability and most of our measures of religious cognition and behaviour was weak and negative. Our data suggest that HFA's deficits in mentalizing appear to have only minimal impact on the way they interact and think about gods. We end the article by reevaluating the role mentalizing may have in religious cognition and behaviour.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Celine Kim and Vivian Tang for help with data collection and Veronika Hanáčková for assistance in data coding. Many thanks also to Dimitris Xygalatas for advice, support, and comments on the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion (LEVYNA) at Masaryk University (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.048, co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic); the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University; and the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Notes

¹ We use the terms theory of mind and mentalizing interchangeably.

² Following Baron-Cohen et al. (2009), we prefer the term autism spectrum conditions rather than autism spectrum disorders as autism often involves a number of strengths as well as deficits, especially in high-functioning individuals. However, we have used the term autism spectrum disorders when referring specifically to the diagnosis used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Note that we also include Asperger Syndrome under the umbrella term of autism spectrum disorders following the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.).

³ All psychometric data reported in the Method section is calculated on all participants to give the most reliable assessment of the scales used.

⁴ With all participants, this difference was not statistically significance: F(1, 41) = 3.03, p = .089, d = .49.

⁵ All analyses were repeated without religious upbringing as a covariate, and any major differences are footnoted.

⁶ When religious upbringing was removed as a covariate this main effect became highly significant (p < .001) but produced minimal change to the group main effect and interaction.

⁷ With all participants, the main effect of group became marginally significant: F(1, 43) = 3.39, p = .072, d = .57 (with religious upbringing as a covariate); F(1, 44) = 3.66, p = .062, d = .59 (without covariate).

⁸ Both anthropomorphic and nonanthropomorphic god concepts were significant negatively related to mentalizing when all participants included: r(46) = −.31, p = .039, r(46) = −.30, p = .043.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion (LEVYNA) at Masaryk University (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.048, co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic); the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University; and the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).