From Georgetown University Medical Center
Washington, D.C. – September 9, 2020 -- Individuals
who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit
pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who
creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at
Georgetown University.
Their research, reported in the journal
Nature Communications, is the first to use implicit pattern learning to
investigate religious belief. The study spanned two very different cultural and
religious groups, one in the U.S. and one in Afghanistan.
The goal was to test whether implicit
pattern learning is a basis of belief and, if so, whether that connection holds
across different faiths and cultures. The researchers indeed found that
implicit pattern learning appears to offer a key to understanding a variety of
religions.
“Belief in a god or gods who intervene
in the world to create order is a core element of global religions,” says the
study’s senior investigator, Adam Green, an associate professor in the
Department of Psychology and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at
Georgetown, and director of the Georgetown Laboratory for Relational Cognition.
“This is not a study about whether God
exists, this is a study about why and how brains come to believe in gods. Our
hypothesis is that people whose brains are good at subconsciously discerning
patterns in their environment may ascribe those patterns to the hand of a
higher power,” he adds.
“A really interesting observation was
what happened between childhood and adulthood,” explains Green. The data
suggest that if children are unconsciously picking up on patterns in the
environment, their belief is more likely to increase as they grow up, even if
they are in a nonreligious household. Likewise, if they are not unconsciously
picking up on patterns around them, their belief is more likely to decrease as
they grow up, even in a religious household.
The study used a well-established
cognitive test to measure implicit pattern learning. Participants watched as a
sequence of dots appeared and disappeared on a computer screen. They pressed a
button for each dot. The dots moved quickly, but some participants — the ones
with the strongest implicit learning ability — began to subconsciously learn
patterns hidden in the sequence, and even press the correct button for the next
dot before that dot actually appeared. However, even the best implicit learners
did not know that the dots formed patterns, showing that the learning was
happening at an unconscious level.
The U.S. section of the study enrolled a
predominantly Christian group of 199 participants from Washington, DC. The
Afghanistan section of the study enrolled a group of 149 Muslim participants in
Kabul. The study’s lead author was Adam Weinberger, a postdoctoral researcher
in Green’s lab at Georgetown and at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-authors
Zachery Warren and Fathali Moghaddam led a team of local Afghan researchers who
collected data in Kabul.
“The most interesting aspect of this
study, for me, and also for the Afghan research team, was seeing patterns in
cognitive processes and beliefs replicated across these two cultures,” says
Warren. “Afghans and Americans may be more alike than different, at least in
certain cognitive processes involved in religious belief and making meaning of
the world around us. Irrespective of one’s faith, the findings suggest exciting
insights into the nature of belief.”
“A brain that is more predisposed to
implicit pattern learning may be more inclined to believe in a god no matter
where in the world that brain happens to find itself, or in which religious
context,” Green adds, though he cautions that further research is necessary.
“Optimistically,” Green concludes, “this
evidence might provide some neuro-cognitive common ground at a basic human
level between believers of disparate faiths.”
A scholar of the Middle East, Moghaddam
is a professor in Georgetown’s Department of Psychology. Warren, who received
his doctorate in psychology at Georgetown and also holds a master’s of
divinity, directs the Asia Foundation’s Survey of Afghan People. Additional
authors include Natalie Gallagher and Gwendolyn English.
The authors report no personal financial
interests related to the study.
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