Examination of the relationship between religiously motivated reasoning and cognitive sophistication.

Hiroko NAKAMURA, Research fellow (RPD), Tokyo Denki University, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan

Motivated reasoning is commonly defined as reasoning influenced by the motivation to draw a conclusion congenial to the reasoner. It has been debated whether cognitive sophistication magnifies politically motivated reasoning to reach conclusions congenial to political identity. On the one hand, there is the finding that partisans who scored the highest on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT: Frederick, 2015) more strongly engaged in reasoning that is congenial to political identity (Kahan, 2016). On the other hand, there is the finding that the CRT score moderates the influence of individuals' prior beliefs, but not political identity, on reasoning (Tappin et al., 2021). Because religious beliefs are closely related to personal identity, it is possible that motivated reasoning by religious beliefs may occur. In this study, we examine whether motivated reasoning is caused by religious belief and whether it is magnified by cognitive sophistication.