Deliberation, mood response, and the confirmation bias in the religious belief domain

Abstract

A novel task was developed to examine the confirmation bias in religious beliefs, which compares to a classic political confirmation bias task. In Study 1, a balanced number of Christian versus non-religious (liberals and conservative) participants were recruited (n = 402). The data showed strong confirmation bias evidence in both the religious and political beliefs domains, and this bias appears to be enhanced by deliberation. In Study 2, a distinct set of n = 402 Christians and non-religious participants were administered the same religious beliefs task with added mood elicitation. The hypothesis tested was whether dissonant arguments promote negative mood, and whether this negative mood moderates the confirmation bias. The data from Study 2 supported these hypotheses. Data collection, hypotheses, and analysis plans for both studies were preregistered on the Open Science Framework. This paper documents the confirmation bias in the domain of religious beliefs, and results suggest the biological foundation of the confirmation bias includes both deliberative and emotional input, which may imply that comprehensive neural inputs from multiple brain regions promote this behavioral bias. This has implications not only regarding religious beliefs, but it also furthers our understanding of the brain-to-behavior pathway of the confirmation bias.