The differences in dogmatic thinking in theists and atheists

Two studies examine the personality characteristics that drive dogmatism in the religious and nonreligious. They show there are both similarities and important differences in what drives dogmatism in these two groups. In both groups, higher critical reasoning skills were associated with lower levels of dogmatism. But these two groups diverge in how moral concern influences their dogmatic thinking.

"It suggests that religious individuals may cling to certain beliefs, especially those which seem at odds with analytic reasoning, because those beliefs resonate with their moral sentiments"; " Emotional resonance helps religious people to feel more certain—the more moral correctness they see in something, the more it affirms their thinking. In contrast, moral concerns make nonreligious people feel less certain."

Appealing to a religious dogmatist's sense of moral concern and to an anti-religious dogmatist's unemotional logic may increase the chances of getting a message through—or at least some consideration from them.

While more empathy may sound desirable, untempered empathy can be dangerous... "Terrorists, within their bubble, believe it's a highly moral thing they're doing. They believe they are righting wrongs and protecting something sacred."* At the other extreme, despite organizing their life around critical thinking, militant atheists, "may lack the insight to see anything positive about religion; they can only see that it contradicts their scientific, analytical thinking.".

* I'm not sure how this relates to "empathy", it seems if anything to require the exact opposite of empathy.

It would be interesting to do a proper psychological study of militant atheists and the devoutly religious. Personally, I'm dogmatically convinced that they're basically the same. At least, there's a particular subset of militant atheism that defines itself by its non-belief. It's simply a belief that no deity exists rather than a deity exists, but the core of it is the same.

The studies, based on surveys of more than 900 people, also found some similarities between religious and non-religious people. In both groups the most dogmatic are less adept at analytical thinking, and also less likely to look at issues from other's perspectives... Decreasing empathy among the nonreligious corresponded to increasing dogmatism.

The more rigid the individual, whether religious or not, the less likely he or she would consider the perspective of others. Religious fundamentalism was highly correlated with empathetic concern among the religious.

Perhaps they're using a more specialised definition of "empathy" then, like that recent paper which defined "intelligence" and "critical thinking" as two different things (quite properly, I thought). Otherwise I'd say that "considering the perspectives of others" is a very good definition of "empathy".

The researchers say the results of the surveys lend further support to their earlier work showing people have two brain networks—one for empathy and one for analytic thinking – that are in tension with each other. In healthy people, their thought process cycles between the two, choosing the appropriate network for different issues they consider. But in the religious dogmatist's mind, the empathetic network appears to dominate while in the nonreligious dogmatist's mind, the analytic network appears to rule.

And why has phys.org started doing this ultra-annoying thing of magically incorporating "read more at www..." when copying and pasting text ? Who in deity-of-choice's name thought this would be a good idea ? I certainly don't feel any empathy toward that arsehole, that's for darn sure...

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-people-theyre.html