Browsing by Author "Takkunen, Laura"

Objectives. In Western Countries, like Finland, religiosity has simultaneously changed and declined. Respectively, nonbeliever identities have increased, but they haven’t received much research attention. Comparisons between believers and nonbelievers have been popular in the past research, and they’ve revealed differences in religious attitudes, intuitive and analytical thinking styles and ontological confusions. The aim of this research was to examine if those factors contribute to differences between groups formed based on nonbeliever identities. Believers were included to the study as a reference category. Methods. The data was collected as a part of the Uncovering the Hidden Nature of Unbelief research project. It consisted of 2112 adult Finns (age 18 to 84) who attended a survey. Religious and nonreligious identities were assessed by asking subjects to choose an option they felt most affiliated. Ontological confusions were assessed by the shortened version of the Core Knowledge Confusions scale, and thinking styles with the shortened version of Rational Experimental Inventory (REI). Two other Likert-scales were used to assess Belief to God and religious attitudes. Differences between the identity groups and factors contributing to them were analyzed by multivariate analysis of anova and discriminant analysis. Results and discussion. Most of the participants identified as atheists or agnostics. Differences between identity groups were detected in all of the factors examined: belief to god, religious attitudes, thinking styles and ontological confusions. Based on these differences, the participants were divided into four groups. A combination of belief to god, religious attitudes and intuitive thinking style formed a factor contributing to most differences between these groups. The results indicate that nonbelievers compose perhaps a more heterogenous group than assumed earlier, also when cognitive factors are taken into acknowledge. This is something to be taken into account in further studies.