![CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pope4.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
When it comes to predicting the kind of people most likely to be religious, brainiac scientists used to be everyone’s last guess. The more educated a person was, the thinking went, the more likely they were to question the supernatural.
But the supposed divide between science and religion—in which religion was seen as the less-educated person’s “science” of choice—has ironically been subject to little scientific debate, until recently.
Several years before Pope Francis became pope of the Catholic Church in 2013, psychologists began to debunk the idea that being more educated meant a person was less likely to be religious. Instead, a new social psychology theory—one that had little to do with education level—arose. According to dual process theory, people are either deliberative or intuitive when they make decisions. People who are more deliberative tend to carefully think things through and find a rational reason for their choices, while people who are more intuitive do what appears to feel right.
MORE: Here Are The 5 Controversies Over Pope Francis’ Visit To Washington
David Rand, who leads Yale University’s Human Cooperation Laboratory and studies decision-making, was one of the first to suggest that intuition and deliberation were key to a person’s religiosity in a paper he co-wrote in 2011.
In the paper, Rand and his colleagues used the Cognitive Reflection Test, which measured a person’s levels of intuition or deliberation by how they answered questions. Intuitive answers were compelling but often not correct. (For example, in the riddle of whether a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks is heavier, the intuitive person might see the weight disconnect between bricks and feathers, hone in on it immediately and answer that the bricks are heavier. The deliberative person might step back, consider the question, notice that both options are measured at a pound and deliver the correct answer: neither.)
People who gave more intuitive answer were found to have a stronger belief in God.
See Photos From Pope Francis' Arrival in Cuba
![Cuba Pope Cuba Pope](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/09482246313046779dec0af33a261a8d-0.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![People react after the arrival of Pope Francis outside the airport in Havana People react after the arrival of Pope Francis outside the airport in Havana](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-09-19t235357z_1565807301_gf100002.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Cuba Prepares For Visit Of Pope Francis Pope Francis Cuba visit](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/489163768.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Cuba Pope Cuba Pope](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/8c03d166dca143aab06962be3acf27a8-0.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![People react as Pope Francis arrives at the airport in Havana People react as Pope Francis arrives at the airport in Havana](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-09-19t220051z_325320502_gf1000021.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![APTOPIX Cuba Pope APTOPIX Cuba Pope](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1d3b3af49ef64427aecba5b897d9fe09-0.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Pope Francis arrives for the first mass of his visit to Cuba in Havana's Revolution Square Pope Francis arrives for the first mass of his visit to Cuba in Havana's Revolution Square](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-09-20t133337z_234263653_tb3eb2.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mvd6715299.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mvd67153111.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Pope Francis meets Fidel Castro in Havana Pope Francis Fidel Castro Havana](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/poe-francis-cuba-fidel-castro.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Pope Francis Makes Historic Trip To Cuba Pope Francis Cuba visit](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pope-francis-cuba-visit-4.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Pope Francis is greeted by Cuba's President Raul Castro as he arrives to lead a mass for Catholic faithful in the city of Holguin Pope Francis Cuba visit](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pope-francis-cuba-visit-3.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
“Certain intuitive processes tend to lead one to believe in God,” Rand says. “Some people have an intuitive tendency to attribute intention to the world around them: that somebody intended something to happen to you.” A deliberative person, on the other hand, might interpret something that has happened to them as a result of a series of events, or they may simply believe that there is no explanation.
He wasn’t alone in his findings. Gordon Pennycook, who is completing his PhD at the University of Waterloo, also co-wrote a paper that came to the same conclusion. Pennycook found that while being more educated was correlated to being more atheistic, more important was whether they thought deliberatively or intuitively.
“Education can play a role in that education can train you to think more analytically,” Pennycook says. “But it’s not about knowledge per se. It’s more about what type of critical thinking you’re prone to do.”
Measuring religiosity, however, can be problematic. Both Rand’s and Pennycook’s experiments relied on simple yes or no answers to the question “Are you religious?”—making it nearly impossible for agnostics or culturally religious people to accurately answer that question. And it’s still unclear what makes a person more intuitive or deliberative. Religious upbringing may not tell the entire story, Rand’s findings suggest. “We found that how intuitive versus deliberative you are is not correlated with how religious your family was growing up,” he says.
Regardless of the mechanism behind how we make decisions, we likely use both tactics, Rand says. “People exist on a spectrum,” he says. “There’s no optimum place, per se, on that spectrum, but being on the extremes might not be good. If you’re too intuitive, you get things wrong a lot. If you’re too deliberative, you’re not efficient in using your rules of thumb.”
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Eyewitness Accounts From the Trump Rally Shooting
- Politicians Condemn Trump Rally Shooting: ‘No Place for Political Violence in Our Democracy’
- From 2022: How the Threat of Political Violence Is Transforming America
- ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Remembering Shannen Doherty , the Quintessential Gen X Girl
- How Often Do You Really Need to Wash Your Sheets?
- Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
- Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox
Write to Tanya Basu at tanya.basu@time.com