Abstract
The negative association between cognitive intelligence (CI) and religiosity has been widely studied and is now well documented. In contrast, the role of emotional intelligence (EI) in this context has been poorly investigated thus far. Some available data indicate that EI, unlike CI, correlates positively with religiosity. To date, however, no study has explored the relationship between religiosity and both intelligences simultaneously. In current studies (Ns = 301 and 200), we examined the interplay between all three constructs. The results showed that CI was positively correlated with ability EI and negatively with some measures of religiosity. EI, on the other hand, revealed no direct, significant relationship with religiosity. However, when combined into a single regression model with CI, EI became a significant positive predictor of religiosity. Moreover, Study 2 revealed that the link between EI and religiosity was mediated by empathy. Interestingly, we also found a reciprocal suppression between CI and EI, since both predictors increased their influence on religiosity when analyzed together. Although the suppression was present in both studies, it was observed for different religiosity measures in each case, indicating that this effect is probably dependent on various factors, such as sample structure or type of religiosity.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2004). A revised religious fundamentalism scale: The short and sweet of it. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14(1), 47–54.
Austin, E. J. (2005). Emotional intelligence and emotional information processing. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 403–414.
Barbey, A. K., Colom, R., & Grafman, J. (2012). Distributed neural system for emotional intelligence revealed by lesion mapping. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 265–272.
Brackett, M. A., Mayer, J. D., & Warner, R. M. (2004). Emotional intelligence and its relation to everyday behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences, 36(6), 1387–1402.
Bradley, C. (2009). The interconnection between religious fundamentalism, spirituality, and the four dimensions of empathy. Review of Religious Research, 51, 201–219.
Bugg, J. M., Zook, N. A., DeLosh, E. L., Davalos, D. B., & Davis, H. P. (2006). Age differences in fluid intelligence: Contributions of general slowing and frontal decline. Brain and Cognition, 62(1), 9–16.
Butt, F. M. (2014). Emotional intelligence, religious orientation, and mental health among university students. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research, 29(1), 1–19.
Cattell, R. B. (1973). Measuring intelligence with the culture fair tests. Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing.
Colom, R., & Garcı́a-López, O. (2002). Sex differences in fluid intelligence among high school graduates. Personality and Individual Differences, 32(3), 445–451.
Colom, R., Juan-Espinosa, M., Abad, F., & Garcı́a, L. F. (2000). Negligible sex differences in general intelligence. Intelligence, 28(1), 57–68.
Conger, A. J. (1974). A revised definition for suppressor variables: A guide to their identification and interpretation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 34(1), 35–46.
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126.
Doane, M. J., Elliott, M., & Dyrenforth, P. S. (2014). Extrinsic religious orientation and well-being: Is their negative association real or spurious? Review of Religious Research, 56(1), 45–60.
Dutton, E., & Van der Linden, D. (2017). Why is intelligence negatively associated with religiousness? Evolutionary Psychological Science, 3(4), 392–403.
Fernández-Berrocal, P., Cabello, R., Castillo, R., & Extremera, N. (2012). Gender differences in emotional intelligence: The mediating effect of age. Psicología Conductual, 20(1), 77–89.
Gervais, W. M. (2013). Perceiving minds and gods: How mind perception enables, constrains, and is triggered by belief in gods. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(4), 380–394.
Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336(6080), 493–496.
Gignac, G. E. (2015). Raven’s is not a pure measure of general intelligence: Implications for g factor theory and the brief measurement of g. Intelligence, 52, 71–79.
Hardy, S. A., Walker, L. J., Rackham, D. D., & Olsen, J. A. (2012). Religiosity and adolescent empathy and aggression: The mediating role of moral identity. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4(3), 237–248.
Hill, E. D., Cohen, A. B., Terrell, H. K., & Nagoshi, C. T. (2010). The role of social cognition in the religious fundamentalism-prejudice relationship. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 49(4), 724–739.
Huber, S. (2003). Zentralität und Inhalt. Ein neues multidimensionales Messmodell der Religiosität [Centrality and its content. The new multidimensional measurement model of religiosity]. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Huber, S., & Huber, O. W. (2012). The centrality of religiosity scale (CRS). Religions, 3(3), 710–724.
Ioannidou, F., & Konstantikaki, V. (2008). Empathy and emotional intelligence: What is it really about? International Journal of Caring Sciences, 1(3), 118–123.
Jack, A. I., Friedman, J. P., Boyatzis, R. E., & Taylor, S. N. (2016). Why do you believe in God? Relationships between religious belief, analytic thinking, mentalizing and moral concern. PLoS ONE, 11(3), e0149989.
Kanazawa, S. (2012). The intelligence paradox: Why the intelligent choice isn’t always the smart one. Hoboken: Wiley.
Lewis, G. J., Ritchie, S. J., & Bates, T. C. (2011). The relationship between intelligence and multiple domains of religious belief: Evidence from a large adult US sample. Intelligence, 39(6), 468–472.
Liu, C. C. (2010). The relationship between personal religious orientation and emotional intelligence. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 38(4), 461–467.
Łowicki, P., Witowska, J., Zajenkowski, M., & Stolarski, M. (2018). Time to believe: Disentangling the complex associations between time perspective and religiosity. Personality and Individual Differences, 134, 97–106.
Łowicki, P., & Zajenkowski, M. (2017a). No empathy for people nor for God: The relationship between the Dark Triad, religiosity and empathy. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 169–173.
Łowicki, P., & Zajenkowski, M. (2017b). Divine emotions: On the link between emotional intelligence and religious belief. Journal of Religion and Health, 56(6), 1998–2009.
Łowicki, P., & Zajenkowski, M. (2019). Empathy and exposure to credible religious acts during childhood independently predict religiosity. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2019.1672486.
Matczak, A., & Martowska, K. (2013). CFT 3 Neutralny Kulturowo Test Inteligencji—Wersja 3 Raymonda B. Cattella i Alberty K.S. Cattell [CFT 3. Culture Fair Intelligence Test—Version 3 Raymond B.Cattell, Alberta K.S. Cattell]. Warsaw: Pracownia Testów Psychologicznych PTP.
Mayer, J. D., DiPaolo, M., & Salovey, P. (1990). Perceiving affective content in ambiguous visual stimuli: A component of emotional intelligence. Journal of Personality Assessment, 54(3–4), 772–781.
Mayer, J. D., & Geher, G. (1996). Emotional intelligence and the identification of emotion. Intelligence, 22(2), 89–113.
Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. J. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications (pp. 3–31). New York, NY: Basic Books.
Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2008). Emotional intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits? American Psychologist, 63(6), 503–517.
McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 69–93.
Miller, A. S., & Hoffmann, J. P. (1995). Risk and religion: An explanation of gender differences in religiosity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 63–75.
Norenzayan, A., Gervais, W. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2012). Mentalizing deficits constrain belief in a personal God. PLoS ONE, 7(5), e36880.
Paek, E. (2006). Religiosity and perceived emotional intelligence among Christians. Personality and Individual Differences, 41(3), 479–490.
Parker, J. D., Saklofske, D. H., Wood, L. M., Eastabrook, J. M., & Taylor, R. N. (2005). Stability and change in emotional intelligence: Exploring the transition to young adulthood. Journal of Individual Differences, 26(2), 100–106.
Paulhus, D. L., Robins, R. W., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Tracy, J. L. (2004). Two replicable suppressor situations in personality research. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(2), 303–328.
Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Seli, P., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief. Cognition, 123, 335–346.
Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2000). On the dimensional structure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 29, 313–320.
Pizarro, D., & Salovey, P. (2002). Religious systems as “Emotionally Intelligent” organizations. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 220–222.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9, 185–211.
Saroglou, V. (2012). Adolescents’ social development and the role of religion: Coherence at the detriment of openness. In G. Trommsdorff & X. Chen (Eds.), Values, religion, and culture in adolescent development (pp. 391–423). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262–274.
Shenhav, A., Rand, D. G., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 423–428.
Sherkat, D. E. (2010). Religion and verbal ability. Social Science Research, 39(1), 2–13.
Sherkat, D. E. (2011). Religion and scientific literacy in the United States. Social Science Quarterly, 92(5), 1134–1150.
Śmieja, M., Orzechowski, J., & Stolarski, M. S. (2014). TIE: An ability test of emotional intelligence. PLoS ONE, 9(7), e103484.
Stolarski, M., Bitner, J., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2011). Time perspective, emotional intelligence and discounting of delayed awards. Time & Society, 20(3), 346–363.
Vishkin, A., Bigman, Y., & Tamir, M. (2014). Religion, emotion regulation, and well-being. In C. Kim-Prieto (Ed.), Cross-cultural advancements in positive psychology: Religion and spirituality across cultures (Vol. 9, pp. 247–269). New York, NY: Springer.
Vonk, J., & Pitzen, J. (2017). Believing in other minds: Accurate mentalizing does not predict religiosity. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 70–76.
Webser, G., & Duffy, R. D. (2016). Losing faith in the intelligence–religiosity link: New evidence for a decline effect, spatial dependence, and mediation by education and life quality. Intelligence, 55, 15–27.
Weiß, E. E., & Süß, S. (2017). Protective faith? The role of religiosity in the stressor-strain relationship in helping professions. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 30, 1–27.
Willard, A. K., & Norenzayan, A. (2013). Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose. Cognition, 129(2), 379–391.
Zajenkowski, M., Stolarski, M., Maciantowicz, O., Malesza, M., & Witowska, J. (2016). Time to be smart: Uncovering a complex interplay between intelligence and time perspectives. Intelligence, 58, 1–9.
Zarzycka, B. (2008). Tradition or charisma—Religiosity in Poland. In Religion monitor 2008. EUROPE overview of religious attitudes and practices (pp. 26–29). Gütersloh, Germany: Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung.
Zarzycka, B. (2011). Polska adaptacja Skali Centralności Religijności S. Hubera [Polish adaptation of S. Huber’s Centrality of Religiosity Scale]. In M. Jarosz (Ed.), Psychologiczny Pomiar Religijności (pp. 231–261). Lublin: TN KUL.
Zimmer, Z., Jagger, C., Chiu, C. T., Ofstedal, M. B., Rojo, F., & Saito, Y. (2016). Spirituality, religiosity, aging and health in global perspective: A review. SSM: Population Health, 2, 373–381.
Zuckerman, M., Silberman, J., & Hall, J. A. (2013). The relation between intelligence and religiosity: A meta-analysis and some proposed explanations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17(4), 325–354.
Funding
Funding was provided by The National Science Center in Poland (2016/23/B/HS6/00312).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest for this paper.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Łowicki, P., Zajenkowski, M. & van der Linden, D. The Interplay Between Cognitive Intelligence, Ability Emotional Intelligence, and Religiosity. J Relig Health 59, 2556–2576 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00953-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00953-0