ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that there are major commonalities among the world’s major religions with respect to the psychological factors leading individuals to adhere to them. It shows that religious believers are far more likely than religious non-believers to hold various paranormal beliefs. The chapter considers some of the reasons motivating religious belief and suggests that religious believers on average have slightly lower analytic thinking ability and intelligence than non-believers. The key findings were that those with religious beliefs and those with paranormal beliefs were much more likely than those without such beliefs to attribute what happened to fate or an underlying sense of purpose. In wealthy countries, in contrast, possessing religious beliefs had a rather modest beneficial effect on subjective well-being. The association between religious belief and measures of analytic thinking was recently assessed across a total sample of over 15,000 individuals. Numerous suggestions have been put forward as to the nature of the cognitive processes leading to religious beliefs.
