Reasoning about nature’s agency and design in the cultural context of China

ABSTRACT

Research has found that non-religious adults have an automatic tendency to construe natural phenomena as intentionally created. Related work has focused on whether Western and non-Western adults spontaneously assign functions to natural phenomena but, to date, no studies have explored whether an assumption of intentional origins extends to a non-Western culture without an Abrahamic cultural tradition and associated design discourse. We therefore explored whether adults in China display an intentional design bias. Participants performed a speeded judgment task in which they evaluated whether depicted items were intentionally created or not. Chinese adults favored a design-based construal of natural phenomena under processing constraints. We also created a novel culturally sensitive survey to more fully document supernatural beliefs and practices. The survey confirmed participants’ primarily atheistic self-identification while also revealing various supernatural practices and animistic beliefs. Aspects of these folk beliefs positively predicted design intuitions about nature. Cumulatively, these results demonstrate that intuitions about intentional origins are present independent of any Western creationist discourse or Abrahamic God belief. They provide first evidence of a potentially universal intentional design bias in adults. They also point to the need for more nuanced, culturally sensitive, survey approaches to explicit supernatural belief and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• design
• intention
• nature
• China
• dual process

Acknowledgments

We thank Chen Shen, Arthur Fu, Denise Chau, and Fang Hong for their help with the translations. Many thanks also to Flavio Esposito for his work on programming the online study, and to Richard Laskey for programming the Chinese version of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by awards from the Emil Aaltosen Säätiö [Emil Aaltonen Foundation] to Elisa Järnefelt, Templeton World Charity Foundation TWCF0020-WP3 to Liqi Zhu, Templeton World Charity Foundation TWCF0020-WP1 and National Science Foundation (NSF) REC-0529599 to Deb Kelemen.