Do religiosity and spirituality differ in their relationship with crystallized intelligence? Evidence from the General Social Survey

Autor(en)
Florian Dürlinger, Thomas Götz, Jakob Pietschnig
Abstrakt

Negative associations of religiosity and intelligence are well established in psychological research. However, past studies have shown a substantial heterogeneity in reported effect strengths. Causes that may be able to explain the identified inconsistencies pertain to differing religiosity measurement modalities, participant ages, or possibly cohort effects due to changing societal values in terms of being religious. Moreover, little is known about intelligence associations with the religiosity-related yet distinct construct of spirituality. Here, we provide evidence for religiosity and crystallized intelligence, as well as spirituality and crystallized intelligence associations, in 14 cohorts from 1988 to 2022 (N = 35,093) in the General Social Survey data by means of primary data analyses and meta-analytical approaches. As expected, religiosity was non-trivially negatively associated (r = −0.13, p <.001), but spirituality showed no meaningful association with crystallized intelligence (r = 0.03, p <.001). Our results broadly generalized across age groups, cohorts, and analytical approaches, thus suggesting that religiosity and intelligence may possibly be functionally equivalent to a certain extent whilst spirituality represents a distinct construct that is not functionally equivalent.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Psychologie der Entwicklung und Bildung
Journal
Journal of Intelligence
Band
12
ISSN
2079-3200
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence12070065
Publikationsdatum
07-2024
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
501018 Psychologische Diagnostik, 501004 Differentielle Psychologie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Education, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/714e7075-51f0-4d9c-985c-e73b43a2242c