Mentalizing, but not autistic traits, predicts religious belief in a sample of healthy Japanese youth

Abstract

The present research examined the hypothesis that religious belief is derived from humans’ mentalizing ability in the context of East Asia where polytheistic religion is the mainstream. Two studies were conducted with a Japanese healthy sample, and both revealed that contrary to the hypothesis, autistic traits did not predict religious belief, whereas mentalizing predicted increased religious belief as expected. These findings suggest that further practical and theoretical investigations on the origin of religious belief are needed.