The Science of Discworld IV

concluded that what we believe is closely linked to how we usually think. Intuitive thinkers, who come to conclusions instinctively, tend to have religious beliefs. Analytic thinkers tend not to. Encouraging people to use intuition rather than logical analysis increased their belief in God.
    Gervais and Norenzayan wondered whether the underlying distinction could be understood in a slightly different manner, as a difference between two ways of thinking that are both useful in suitable circumstances. System 1 thinking is ‘quick and dirty’, relying on simple rules of thumb to make decisions rapidly. If an early human on the savannah spots a patch of orange behind a bush, it makes good sense to assume that it might be a lion, and take avoiding action. A more analytical System 2 assessment might subsequently discover that the orange patch was a bunch of dried leaves, but the processes involved would be slower, and involve more work. In this case, System 1 thinking does little harm if it later turns out to be mistaken, but System 2 could kill you if there really is a lion and you waste time trying to decide.
    On the other hand, there are many occasions on which System 2 saves lives, but System 1 does not. Thinking about past forest fires, and deciding not to build your village in an area surrounded by dryvegetation, trumps an intuitive assessment that the location has ample building materials. Avoiding floodplains, even though it is easy to build houses on them and they are currently unoccupied, can prevent complete destruction of your property when the river rises. There is a
reason
why they are currently unoccupied.
    Teasing out the workings of the human brain is tricky, but psychologists have developed techniques that help. In this case, participants were first interviewed to determine the extent of their religious beliefs. Sometime later, the main experiment was carried out, in two different ways. In the first, participants were given a randomly rearranged five-word phrase – such as ‘speak than louder words actions’ – and were asked to rearrange the words to make sense. Some of them were given scrambled phrases containing many words related to analytical thinking; the rest were not. After this exercise, they were asked whether they agreed that God exists. The group whose training period involved words related to analytical thinking were more likely to disagree. Moreover, this tendency remained, even when their prior beliefs were taken into account. The second version of the experiment relied on previous research, showing that asking people to read something printed in a hard-to-read font promoted analytical thinking, perhaps because they have to proceed more slowly and puzzle out the meaning of the letters. Subjects that completed a survey printed in a semi-illegible font were less likely to agree that God exists than those given the same material in a legible one.
    The magazine article summed up the study: ‘It may help to explain why the vast majority of Americans tend to believe in God. Because System 2 thinking requires effort, most of us tend to rely on System 1 thinking processes whenever possible.’
    There is a loose relationship between System 1/System 2 and Benford’s distinction between human-centred or universe-centred thinking. Intuitive thinking mainly takes a human-scale view of the world, and often places emphasis on quick decisions based on little more than hunches. Many people, finding it difficult to weigh upelectoral candidates’ manifestos because political issues are often complicated, rely on instant judgements – System 1. ‘His eyes look too close together.’ ‘I like that smart suit he’s wearing.’ ‘Anyone who’s for/against a free market gets my vote.’ Universe-centred thinking is necessarily analytical, System 2. Humans have to train themselves to think inhuman thoughts. It takes conscious effort, and education, to reject a human-centred view.
    Of course, there is no reason to suppose that these two ways of distinguishing thought processes have to match up, and they probably don’t, not in detail. Moreover, the psychological experiments only scratch the surface of human motivations and beliefs. Even if the conclusions are correct – and it is relatively easy to raise objections – they demonstrate an association, not a cause. But the results correspond to other observations of religious belief, for example that it is much rarer among scientists and