Does Religious Faith Make People More Gullible?
TLDR: Research has found a consistent relationship between religious belief and less reflective thinking, along with associations between supernatural beliefs and receptivity to unsupported claims. Religious faith can encourage people to accept propositions without adequate evidence, creating intellectual vulnerabilities that extend beyond theology. The problem isn’t intelligence. It’s the standard of evidence people are willing to accept.
Imagine someone tells you they can communicate with invisible beings, receive messages from a supernatural intelligence, and predict what happens after death. They cannot independently demonstrate these abilities, and their claims contradict those made by other people reporting equally powerful supernatural experiences.
In most circumstances, accepting such assertions without compelling evidence would be considered gullible. Yet when these same claims are presented through established religious traditions, believing them can become a demonstration of wisdom and spiritual maturity.
This raises an uncomfortable question: Does religious faith make people more gullible?
The research suggests there is a meaningful relationship between supernatural belief, intuitive thinking, and susceptibility to certain poorly supported claims. More importantly, the principles underlying religious faith can encourage habits of reasoning that make it harder to distinguish truth from falsehood.
And the problem becomes particularly serious when religious authorities teach people that maintaining belief despite insufficient evidence is itself a virtue.
What Research Says About Religion and Critical Thinking
Psychologists have spent decades studying the relationship between religious belief and cognitive reflection, the tendency to question an immediate intuitive answer and engage in more deliberate reasoning.
One widely used measurement is the Cognitive Reflection Test. It presents problems designed to produce an appealing but incorrect first answer. Solving them requires recognizing that the intuitive response may be mistaken.
A 2016 meta-analysis led by psychologist Gordon Pennycook examined 31 studies involving 15,078 participants. Researchers found a negative correlation of approximately −0.18 between cognitive reflection and religious belief.
The relationship was modest, but statistically meaningful: people who demonstrated stronger reflective-thinking tendencies were generally less religious.
A much larger cross-cultural study published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review in 2025 examined 7,771 university students across 19 countries. It reached a similar conclusion. Reflective thinking was negatively associated with belief in God, while intuitive thinking was positively associated with it.
These findings suggest that religious belief and cognitive style are connected in ways that extend across different cultures.
Another study published in Cognition in 2025 analyzed data involving more than 50,000 people across 16 countries. It found that analytical thinking was associated with changes in religious belief, including movement away from previously held convictions.
These studies examine patterns of reasoning rather than general intelligence. And that distinction matters because the ability to reason and the willingness to consistently apply that ability are not identical.
Someone may possess considerable intellectual ability while treating a particular category of beliefs as exempt from their usual standards of evidence.
Religious faith provides an especially familiar example of that compartmentalization.
The Psychology of Believing Impressive-Sounding Nonsense
One of the more revealing studies in this field examined people’s willingness to find profound meaning in statements that were deliberately constructed to be meaningless.
In 2015, Pennycook and his colleagues published research on what they called pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity.
Participants were shown vague, impressive-sounding statements generated by combining abstract words into grammatically plausible sentences.
One example was:
“Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena.”
The sentence sounds philosophical. It suggests some profound insight into existence. But its meaning is essentially empty.
Participants were asked to rate how profound they considered such statements.
The researchers found that people who attributed greater profundity to these meaningless sentences also tended to score higher on measures of supernatural belief and lower on measures of analytical thinking.
In one study, religious belief correlated positively with receptivity to these pseudo-profound statements.
That is a fascinating result.
The researchers weren’t testing whether participants agreed with a particular religious doctrine. They were examining whether people would recognize that impressive language was not necessarily meaningful language.
People who were more willing to accept supernatural claims were also more receptive to certain statements that created the appearance of wisdom without delivering it.
This identifies a potential vulnerability: confusing the feeling that something is profound with evidence that it actually contains a coherent or accurate insight.
Religious language frequently invokes mysteries, revelations, invisible forces, eternal truths, and divine purposes. These concepts can create powerful emotional impressions.
But emotional significance is not the same as demonstrated truth.
Something can sound profound and still say virtually nothing.
The Connection Between Gullibility and Misinformation
The research becomes even more interesting when we move beyond religious claims.
In 2020, Pennycook and David Rand published a study in the Journal of Personality examining why people believe fake news.
Across three surveys involving 1,606 participants, they investigated analytical thinking, receptivity to meaningless statements, and the ability to distinguish accurate news from fabricated stories.
The results were revealing.
People who found pseudo-profound nonsense meaningful were more likely to consider fake news accurate and were less effective at distinguishing genuine stories from false ones.
The researchers described a tendency toward accepting weak claims too readily, which they called reflexive open-mindedness.
That phrase captures an important distinction.
Being genuinely open-minded means considering possibilities while evaluating the evidence. Reflexive open-mindedness means being excessively receptive to claims without adequately scrutinizing them.
The first encourages discovery. The second invites error.
A 2021 review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences further examined the psychology of fake news. It found that poor truth discernment was associated with insufficient careful reasoning, inadequate relevant knowledge, and reliance on shortcuts such as familiarity.
These findings help explain why critical-thinking habits matter.
A person who routinely asks whether a claim is supported by independent evidence has a stronger method for filtering misinformation than someone who relies on intuition, emotional resonance, or confidence in the speaker.
The same general principle applies to religious assertions.
If someone accepts extraordinary supernatural propositions because they feel true, that method offers little protection against other unsupported claims that produce similarly compelling feelings.
Faith Encourages a Dangerous Exception to Normal Reasoning
Consider the standards someone might apply to an unfamiliar investment opportunity.
They would want financial statements, independent verification, credible explanations, and evidence supporting the promised returns.
Now imagine the same person evaluating whether an ancient religious text contains the literal words of God.
They might accept personal spiritual experiences, religious authority, or an internal feeling of certainty as sufficient justification.
The standard has changed dramatically.
Why should supernatural claims receive less scrutiny than financial claims?
If anything, propositions involving eternal consequences, divine commandments, and the ultimate nature of reality should demand especially careful examination.
Yet religious faith can encourage the opposite.
A believer may be taught that spiritual truth is established through prayer, personal revelation, or trust in religious authority. The resulting conviction is then treated as confirmation.
The problem is that these methods produce competing conclusions across incompatible religious traditions.
A Catholic may experience spiritual certainty about Catholicism. A Mormon may experience the same certainty about Mormonism. A Muslim may report equally profound confirmation of Islam.
Their conflicting conclusions demonstrate the limitations of the method.
And once someone accepts that personal conviction is sufficient justification for one supernatural claim, a difficult question emerges.
What prevents the same reasoning from validating additional unsupported claims?
If a powerful feeling establishes that a prophet speaks for God, why couldn’t a similar feeling establish that a faith healer possesses supernatural abilities or that a charismatic religious leader has received some extraordinary revelation?
The original belief does not guarantee those additional conclusions. But the evidentiary standard used to accept it offers limited protection against them.
That is the intellectual vulnerability worth examining.
Religious Authority Can Make Credulity Worse
A belief becomes particularly resistant to examination when a trusted authority declares it beyond question.
Many religious institutions claim privileged access to divine truth. Their leaders interpret sacred texts, prescribe moral rules, and explain the supernatural consequences of obedience or disobedience.
Members may learn to associate questioning that authority with spiritual failure.
That creates conditions in which loyalty to an institution can take precedence over independent evaluation.
Consider how easily this structure could be exploited.
A respected religious figure claims to have received divine guidance about a financial opportunity, medical treatment, or charitable project. Followers already regard the figure as spiritually authoritative.
Their confidence in the person’s religious status can influence how critically they examine unrelated claims.
This is the danger of authority substituting for verification.
The fact that someone is trusted within a religious community does not establish expertise in medicine, finance, history, or any other factual discipline.
Nor does claiming divine inspiration provide reliable evidence of possessing special knowledge.
An institution that encourages people to accept its supernatural authority without adequate justification is teaching an unreliable standard for deciding whom to believe.
That standard can create opportunities for exploitation when authority is abused.
The Connection Between Religion and Conspiracy Beliefs
Research has also examined whether religious attitudes are associated with conspiracy thinking.
A 2024 study published in Politics and Religion investigated religious belief, spirituality, analytical thinking, and conspiratorial attitudes among German adults.
Researchers found that literal interpretations of religious information and holistic spiritual beliefs were associated with certain conspiracy beliefs.
Importantly, the relationship involved how people processed information, not simply whether they belonged to a religion. Literal interpretations were associated with conspiracy beliefs among some respondents who affirmed supernatural claims and some who rejected them.
That finding points toward a broader problem: rigid ways of interpreting information can create vulnerabilities across different worldviews.
Religious supernaturalism is one setting in which these habits can develop.
When a person accepts that invisible agents shape world events, that hidden supernatural purposes explain human experiences, or that religious authorities possess privileged knowledge, they are already working with assumptions that are difficult to independently verify.
Conspiracy narratives can exploit similar habits of interpretation.
The intellectual defense is consistent skepticism: demanding evidence that genuinely distinguishes a credible explanation from an imaginative one.
Why Scientists Are Less Religious
There is another relevant pattern.
A 2009 Pew Research Center survey found that 51% of surveyed members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science believed in God or some higher power.
A comparison survey of the general American public conducted in 2006 found that 95% held such beliefs.
The surveys were conducted in different years, and the participating scientists were not necessarily representative of every scientist. Still, the contrast was substantial.
Scientific training emphasizes evaluating competing explanations, questioning assumptions, and testing claims against observable evidence.
Those habits are particularly relevant to supernatural propositions because religious claims often depend on accepting explanations that cannot be independently demonstrated.
Scientific expertise does not automatically produce a universally skeptical person. But the broader research on cognitive reflection supports the value of consistently questioning intuitive conclusions.
The point is that skepticism works best when it is applied across all subjects, including the beliefs we find most emotionally appealing.
Religious faith becomes intellectually problematic when it demands an exception.
The Real Problem Is the Method of Believing
Ultimately, the most important question isn’t whether religious believers are statistically more likely to fall for a particular scam.
It’s whether religious faith encourages a reliable way of determining what is true.
Accepting supernatural claims without sufficient evidence is not a reliable method. Its conclusions can be influenced by upbringing, emotion, authority, social pressure, and cultural tradition.
And the resulting beliefs may become extraordinarily resistant to correction.
This is where the intellectual criticism of faith stands independently of its observable consequences.
A person might accept an unjustified religious claim and experience no obvious harm. That does not make the belief justified.
A person might even reach a correct conclusion through faith. That does not establish that faith was a reliable method of reaching it.
The standard is the same one we should apply to any form of reasoning: does it help us distinguish accurate propositions from inaccurate ones?
A method that can generate certainty in contradictory religions has failed that fundamental test.
Conclusion: Skepticism Is a Better Defense Against Gullibility
Research provides meaningful evidence connecting stronger analytical thinking with lower religious belief, and linking supernatural belief with receptivity to certain poorly supported claims.
The larger intellectual problem is clear.
Faith encourages people to grant acceptance to propositions that have not earned it through sufficient evidence. When that becomes a habit, it can weaken the standards used to evaluate other claims.
Critical thinking offers a more dependable alternative.
Question the source. Examine the evidence. Look for competing explanations. Recognize the influence of emotion and familiarity. Withhold acceptance when the justification is inadequate.
And apply those standards consistently, particularly to beliefs that feel deeply personal or sacred.
A belief does not deserve protection from scrutiny because someone calls it faith. It deserves scrutiny precisely because someone is asking us to accept it as true.
Gullibility begins when confidence outruns justification. Skepticism is how we keep the two aligned.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does research show that religious people are more gullible?
Studies have found associations between religious belief, lower cognitive reflection, and greater receptivity to certain unsupported or meaningless claims. These findings support concern about the reasoning habits associated with faith, although they do not establish a universal difference in susceptibility to every kind of deception.
Does religious belief correlate with intelligence?
The more relevant research examined here concerns analytical thinking and cognitive reflection rather than intelligence alone. Cognitive reflection measures the tendency to question an intuitive answer and engage in deliberate reasoning.
Can critical thinking reduce susceptibility to misinformation?
Research generally associates analytical thinking with better discrimination between accurate and inaccurate information. Consistently checking evidence, examining alternative explanations, and questioning initial impressions are valuable defenses against misinformation.
References
- Pennycook, G., Ross, R. M., Koehler, D. J., and Fugelsang, J. A. (2016). Atheists and Agnostics Are More Reflective than Religious Believers: Four Empirical Studies and a Meta-Analysis. PLOS ONE.
- Ghasemi, O., et al. (2025). Reflective Thinking Predicts Disbelief in God Across 19 Countries. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
- Stagnaro, M. N., and Pennycook, G. (2025). On the Role of Analytic Thinking in Religious Belief Change: Evidence From Over 50,000 Participants in 16 Countries. Cognition.
- Pennycook, G., et al. (2015). On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit. Judgment and Decision Making.
- Pennycook, G., and Rand, D. G. (2020). Who Falls for Fake News? The Roles of Bullshit Receptivity, Overclaiming, Familiarity, and Analytic Thinking. Journal of Personality.
- Pennycook, G., and Rand, D. G. (2021). The Psychology of Fake News. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
- Jedinger, A., and Siegers, P. (2024). Religion, Spirituality, and Susceptibility to Conspiracy Theories. Politics and Religion.
- Pew Research Center (2009). Scientists and Belief.
