Psychology of Religion

Religiosity is associated with lower levels of proneness to boredom, according to new research published in the scientific journal Emotion. "Studies show that boredom propels people to seek for activities that are more fulfilling; acts that offer a sense of...

Scientists are beginning to investigate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and cognitive processes. A new preliminary study published in Frontiers in Psychology hints that religious fundamentalism is associated with more intense processing of error-related stimuli. "My research interests are focused...

Religious individuals with high scientific reasoning ability are not more likely to accept biological evolution as true, according to new research. The study, published in the scientific journal Evolution: Education and Outreach, suggests that disbelief in evolution is not necessarily...

Research has consistently found that religious people are judged as more trustworthy than the nonreligious. A new study published in Psychological Science has found evidence that this is because religious people are viewed as slow life history strategists. According to...

New research suggests that sticking with a religion you have doubts about is associated with depressive symptoms. The findings were recently published in the journal Society and Mental Health. "Social scientists give a lot of attention to the nonreligious because...

Psychologists have long known that people tend to favor their own group over others, a social phenomenon known as ingroup bias. But new research provides evidence that atheists are motivated to buck this trend in an attempt to override the...

Believers' prejudicial attitudes toward atheists is heavily influenced by one moral intuition, according to research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. The study of 630 U.S. Christians was based on the Moral Foundations Theory, which holds there are five...

People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods, a new study suggests – casting doubt on the idea that religious belief is a "default setting" for humans. Despite being written out of large parts of history,...

Are all scientists atheists? Do they believe religion and science can co-exist? These questions and others were addressed in the first worldwide survey of how scientists view religion, released today by researchers at Rice University. "No one today can deny...

American politicians who openly express religious views may be more successful because even voters who think that religion should not play a role in politics view them as more trustworthy compared with non-religious candidates, according to a study published in...

A recent study by researchers at Charles Sturt University suggests that the followers of different religions have different views on climate change, with Buddhists and Christian literalists on opposing ends of the spectrum. In the study, published in PLOS One,...

People are more likely to be influenced by a scientist who believes in harmony between religion and science than a scientist who sees the two in conflict, according to new research published in the journal Public Understanding of Science.  Carl Sagan, Stephen...

More and more people in the United States are casting aside religion and identifying as atheists -- yet polling has found that nearly half of Americans still wouldn't vote for a presidential candidate who didn't believe in God. Most Americans think atheists are...

Media and popular culture might portray religion and science as being at odds, but new research from Rice University suggests just the opposite. Findings from the recently completed study "Religious Understandings of Science (RUS)" reveal that despite many misconceptions regarding...

Do we need religion in order to be moral? George Washington cautioned against “indulg the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion”, and today more than half of Americans believe morality is impossible without a belief in God. The...