« Co-occurrence of religious, superstitious, and delusional-like beliefs »
Empirical data supporting a relationship between religious beliefs, superstitious beliefs and delusion-like beliefs remain sparse, even though these 3 types of beliefs have a common point: the fact that they rest on little or no proof. This suggests that these beliefs could be underlain by a common cognitive mechanism and thus, should be observed in the same individuals. To test this last hypothesis, we asked 95 participants without any psychiatric history to complete questionnaires of delusion-like, religious, and superstitious beliefs. Superstitious beliefs positively correlated with religious and delusion-like beliefs and thus tended to appear in the same individuals. However, delusion-like beliefs were only partially linked to religious beliefs. Therefore, their relation to religious beliefs remains ambiguous.