University of Fribourg, Psychology Department, Route de Faucigny 2, 1700 Fribourg.
Univ Rennes, LP3C (Laboratoire de Psychologie: Cognition, Comportement, Communication) - EA 1285, F-35000 Rennes.
Curr Biol. 2018 Aug 20;28(16):R867-R868. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.072.
Teleological thinking - the attribution of purpose and a final cause to natural events and entities - has long been identified as a cognitive hindrance to the acceptance of evolution, yet its association to beliefs other than creationism has not been investigated. Here, we show that conspiracism - the proneness to explain socio-historical events in terms of secret and malevolent conspiracies - is also associated to a teleological bias. Across three correlational studies (N > 2000), we found robust evidence of a teleological link between conspiracism and creationism, which was partly independent from religion, politics, age, education, agency detection, analytical thinking and perception of randomness. As a resilient 'default' component of early cognition, teleological thinking is thus associated with creationist as well as conspiracist beliefs, which both entail the distant and hidden involvement of a purposeful and final cause to explain complex worldly events.
目的论思维——将目的和最终因归因于自然事件和实体——长期以来一直被认为是接受进化的认知障碍，但它与除创世论以外的信仰的联系尚未得到调查。在这里，我们表明阴谋论——倾向于用秘密和恶意的阴谋来解释社会历史事件——也与目的论偏见有关。在三项相关性研究（N>2000）中，我们发现阴谋论和创世论之间存在强有力的目的论联系，这与宗教、政治、年龄、教育、机构检测、分析思维和对随机性的感知部分独立。作为早期认知的一种有弹性的“默认”组成部分，目的论思维与创世论和阴谋论信仰有关，这两者都需要遥远和隐藏的目的论和最终因来解释复杂的世界事件。
