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IPFS News Link • Religion: Believers

What believing in God does to your brain

• http://www.independent.co.uk, Samuel Osborne

Humans suppress areas of the brain used for analytical thinking and engage the parts responsible for empathy in order to believe in god, research suggests.

They do the opposite when thinking about the physical world, according to the study.

"When there's a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd," said Professor Tony Jack, who led the research.

"But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight."

In an analysis of eight experiments, published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers also found people with faith were more empathetic than those without.

The researchers examined the relationship between the belief in god and measures of analytic thinking and moral concern in eight experiments, each using between 159 and 527 adult participants.


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