Do Religiosity and Spirituality Differ in Their Relationship with Crystallized Intelligence? Evidence from the General Social Survey

Abstract

Negative associations of religiosity and intelligence are well established in psychological research. However, past studies have shown a substantial heterogeneity in reported effect strengths. Causes that may be able to explain the identified inconsistencies pertain to differing religiosity measurement modalities, participant ages, or possibly cohort effects due to changing societal values in terms of being religious. Moreover, little is known about intelligence associations with the religiosity-related yet distinct construct of spirituality. Here, we provide evidence for religiosity and crystallized intelligence, as well as spirituality and crystallized intelligence associations, in 14 cohorts from 1988 to 2022 (N = 35,093) in the General Social Survey data by means of primary data analyses and meta-analytical approaches. As expected, religiosity was non-trivially negatively associated (r = −0.13, p < .001), but spirituality showed no meaningful association with crystallized intelligence (r = 0.03, p < .001). Our results broadly generalized across age groups, cohorts, and analytical approaches, thus suggesting that religiosity and intelligence may possibly be functionally equivalent to a certain extent whilst spirituality represents a distinct construct that is not functionally equivalent.