Belief in belief: Even atheists in secular countries show intuitive preferences favoring religious belief
Edited by Larisa Heiphetz Solomon, Columbia University, New York, NY; received March 12, 2024; accepted February 3, 2025 by Editorial Board Member Mary C. Waters
Significance
Religion is a cross-cultural human universal, and religions may have been instrumental in the cultural evolution of widespread cooperation and prosociality. Nonetheless, religiosity has rapidly declined in some parts of the world over just a handful of decades. We tested whether long-standing religious influence intuitively lingers, even in overtly secular and nonreligious societies. Using a classic experimental philosophy task, we found that even atheists in nonreligious societies show evidence of intuitive preferences for religious belief over atheism. This is compelling cross-cultural experimental evidence for intuitive preferences for religion among nonbelievers—a hypothesized phenomenon that philosopher Daniel Dennett dubbed belief in belief.
Abstract
We find evidence of belief in belief—intuitive preferences for religious belief over atheism, even among atheist participants—across eight comparatively secular countries. Religion is a cross-cultural human universal, yet explicit markers of religiosity have rapidly waned in large parts of the world in recent decades. We explored whether intuitive religious influence lingers, even among nonbelievers in largely secular societies. We adapted a classic experimental philosophy task to test for this intuitive belief in belief among people in eight comparatively nonreligious countries: Canada, China, Czechia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam (total N = 3,804). Our analyses revealed strong evidence that 1) people intuitively favor religious belief over atheism and that 2) this pattern was not moderated by participants’ own self-reported atheism. Indeed, 3) even atheists in relatively secular societies intuitively prefer belief to atheism. These inferences were robust across different analytic strategies and across other measures of individual differences in religiosity and religious instruction. Although explicit religious belief has rapidly declined in these countries, it is possible that belief in belief may still persist. These results speak to the complex psychological and cultural dynamics of secularization.
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Data, Materials, and Software Availability
Anonymized raw anonymized data have been deposited in OSF (https://osf.io/gxft8/) (59).
Acknowledgments
This paper arose as part of a larger collaboration among all authors. W.M.G. and R.T.M. wrote the initial draft, based on analyses by W.M.G. All authors contributed to study design and paper revision. We acknowledge the following financial support: John Templeton Foundation (#60624 and #61928 to all; #62631 to R.M.R.), the NOMIS Foundation (“Collective Delusions: Social Identity and Scientific Misbeliefs” to R.T.M.), and a Leverhulme International Professorship Grant (LIP-2022-001 to R.T.M.).
Author contributions
W.M.G., R.T.M., J.L.B.-I., R.M.R., G.P., J.J., and J.A.L. designed research; W.M.G. performed research; W.M.G. and R.T.M. analyzed data; and W.M.G., R.T.M., J.L.B.-I., R.M.R., G.P., J.J., and J.A.L. wrote the paper.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interest.
Supporting Information
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Copyright © 2025 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
Data, Materials, and Software Availability
Anonymized raw anonymized data have been deposited in OSF (https://osf.io/gxft8/) (59).
Submission history
Received: March 12, 2024
Accepted: February 3, 2025
Published online: March 27, 2025
Published in issue: April 1, 2025
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Acknowledgments
This paper arose as part of a larger collaboration among all authors. W.M.G. and R.T.M. wrote the initial draft, based on analyses by W.M.G. All authors contributed to study design and paper revision. We acknowledge the following financial support: John Templeton Foundation (#60624 and #61928 to all; #62631 to R.M.R.), the NOMIS Foundation (“Collective Delusions: Social Identity and Scientific Misbeliefs” to R.T.M.), and a Leverhulme International Professorship Grant (LIP-2022-001 to R.T.M.).
Author contributions
W.M.G., R.T.M., J.L.B.-I., R.M.R., G.P., J.J., and J.A.L. designed research; W.M.G. performed research; W.M.G. and R.T.M. analyzed data; and W.M.G., R.T.M., J.L.B.-I., R.M.R., G.P., J.J., and J.A.L. wrote the paper.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interest.
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. L.H. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.
*
see, though, ref. 60.
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Belief in belief: Even atheists in secular countries show intuitive preferences favoring religious belief, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
122 (13) e2404720122,
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2404720122
(2025).
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