Analytic Thinking, Religion, and Prejudice: An Experimental Test of the Dual-Process Model of Mind

ABSTRACT

Dual-process models of the mind, as well as the relation between analytic thinking and religious belief, have aroused interest in recent years. However, few studies have examined this relation experimentally. We predicted that religious belief might be one of the causes of prejudice, while analytic thinking reduces both. The first experiment replicated, in a mostly Muslim sample, past research showing that analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. The second experiment investigated the effect of Muslim religious priming and analytic priming on prejudice and showed that, although the former significantly increased the total prejudice score, the latter had an effect only on antigay prejudice. Thus, the findings partially support our proposed pattern of relationships in that analytic thinking might be one of the cognitive factors that prevents prejudice, whereas religious belief might be the one that increases it.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Ali İ. Tekcan for his wise advice, support, and feedback on every stage of this work. We also thank Hasan G. Bahçekapili, Adil Saribay, Will Gervais, and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a version of the manuscript.

Notes

¹ A chi-square test of independence was performed to examine whether the percentage of atheist and Muslim participants are equal across conditions. The results revealed no significant effects, χ²(2, N = 74) = 0.89, p = .641, indicating that religious affiliations were equally distributed across conditions.

² We conducted five different 2 (prime: analytic, neutral) × 3 (religiosity: low, moderate, high) between-subjects ANOVAs to understand whether the prime had different effects on each of the five items of IRS. The results revealed a significant effect for only “When I am troubled, I feel the need to seek help from God” item (p = .010), and marginally significant effects for “People think they talk to God when they are praying but in fact they just talk to themselves” (p = .058) and “Religion plays no role in my daily life” items (p = .083).

³ When we statistically control RWA scores of the participants, the main effects of our priming manipulation, F(2, 117) = 16.86, p < .001, ηp² = .224; and baseline religiosity, F(2, 117) = 4.11, p = .019, ηp² = .066, are still significant.

⁴ Using RWA as a covariate in these analyses yielded the same pattern of results: main effect of manipulation, F(2, 117) = 9.71, p < .001, ηp² = .142, and main effect of baseline religiosity, F(2, 117) = 9.23, p < .001, ηp² = .136.

⁵ Because there were four different comparisons, we performed a Bonferroni correction and divided the critical p value by four, obtaining a new critical p value of .013.