Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Gary Kose
Committee Chair and Members
Gary Kose, Chair
Tristan Adams
Keywords
Atheism, Belief, Cognitive, Judgment, Paranormal, Personality
Abstract
The present study compares religious skeptics to believers, assessing both performance and response times on logical reasoning problems (syllogisms). Skepticism make fewer reasoning errors than did believers, while controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Comparison of response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This suggests that slower processing is an important component of analytic problem solving. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Contreras Ochoa, Erica Daniela, "Reasoning about religion and the effects of belief bias" (2023). Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-. 12.
https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/brooklyn_fulltext_master_theses/12