--- title: Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others description: Psychologists now believe that whether or not you're religious is linked to how you solve problems: with intuition or with deliberation canonical: https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/ author: Tanya Basu article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-09-22T10:00:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:37.540Z article:section: Science og:title: Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others og:description: It might have more to do with how you solve problems than how educated you are. og:url: https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5aaed0851845811c/698864d1e20a8732d8a8d62b/pope4.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others twitter:description: It might have more to do with how you solve problems than how educated you are. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5aaed0851845811c/698864d1e20a8732d8a8d62b/pope4.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others ## Video: 2013 Person of the Year: Pope Francis Reimagines the Papacy [Watch (HLS stream): 2013 Person of the Year: Pope Francis Reimagines the Papacy](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/aYRnrfUV.m3u8) (3:30)  _Published 2013-12-11. From his comments on gays to his penchant for Twitter, Pope Francis's every move has garnered strong reactions from the world media._  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Sep 22, 2015 10:00 AM UTC  Pope Francis passes in front of Cuban President Raul Castro (L) as he arrives at Revolution Square in Havana to give mass on September 20, 2015\. Pope Francis greeted massive crowds of fans and Catholic faithful Sunday as he arrived in his popemobile to give mass on Havana's iconic Revolution Square, the highlight of his trip to Cuba. The pontiff's eight-day tour will also take him to the United States. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images) Pope Francis passes in front of Cuban President Raul Castro (L) as he arrives at Revolution Square in Havana to give mass on September 20, 2015\. Pope Francis greeted massive crowds of fans and Catholic faithful Sunday as he arrived in his popemobile to give mass on Havana's iconic Revolution Square, the highlight of his trip to Cuba. The pontiff's eight-day tour will also take him to the United States. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)Getty Images  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Sep 22, 2015 10:00 AM UTC 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](http://time.com/4042597/pope-francis-us-visit-controversy/) 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](http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-141-3-423.pdf) 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's President Raul Castro escorts Pope Francis during the pope's arrival ceremony at the airport in Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 19, 2015. Ramon Espinosa—AP  People react after the arrival of Pope Francis outside the airport in Havana, on Sept. 19, 2015. Claudia Daut—Reuters  People watch as Pope Francis is shown on television as he arrives in Havana, Cuba on Sept. 19, 2015 in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Joe Raedle—Getty Images  People disperse after Pope Francis' motorcade passed by in Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 19, 2015. Desmond Boylan—AP  People react as Pope Francis arrives at the airport in Havana, Sept. 19, 2015. Alexandre Meneghini—Reuters  People wave to Pope Francis in his popemobile on his way from the airport to Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 19, 2015. Ismael Francisco—AP  Pope Francis arrives for the first mass of his visit to Cuba in Havana's Revolution Square, Sept. 20, 2015. Tony Gentile—Reuters  People attend Pope Francis' mass at Revolution Square in Havana, on September 20, 2015. Adalberto Roque—AFP/Getty Images  Pope Francis gives mass at Revolution Square in Havana, on Sept. 20, 2015. Rodrigo Arangua—AFP/Getty Images  Pope Francis and former President of Cuba Fidel Castro during their meeting at Castro's residence in Havana, on Sept. 20, 2015. Alex Castro—Cuba Debate/EPA  Pope Francis flashes a thumbs up to the choir after holding a Mass in the Plaza de la Revolution in Holguin, Cuba, on Sept. 21, 2015. Joe Raedle—Getty Images  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, Cuba, on Sept. 21, 2015. Tony Gentile—Reuters “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.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/"},"headline":"Here's Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others","datePublished":"2015-09-22T10:00:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:41:37.540Z","description":"It may have little to do with education; psychologists now believe that religiosity is linked to whether you solve problems intuitively or deliberatively","url":"https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/","keywords":["Research","Education","Religion","faith","human behavior","Mental Health/Psychology","atheism"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5aaed0851845811c/698864d1e20a8732d8a8d62b/pope4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tanya Basu","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5aaed0851845811c/698864d1e20a8732d8a8d62b/pope4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS","caption":"CUBA-POPE-VISIT-MASS","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/research/","name":"Research"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/","name":"Here's Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"2013 Person of the Year: Pope Francis Reimagines the Papacy","description":"From his comments on gays to his penchant for Twitter, Pope Francis's every move has garnered strong reactions from the world media.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/aYRnrfUV/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-12-11T12:42:10.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/aYRnrfUV.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/","duration":"PT3M30S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```