Why are some people more religious than others? According to one hypothesis, people who strongly seek definitive explanations for situations with incomplete information are more likely to be religious. According to a different hypothesis, individuals with smaller "prediction error" responses to unexpected stimuli are more likely to discount evidence contradicting religious beliefs, predisposing them to maintain such beliefs. We sought neurophysiological evidence for these hypotheses using the N400 event-related potential (ERP), which is smaller to more contextually expected stimuli, reflecting prediction of probable completions for meaningful situations. We recorded ERPs from participants viewing category definitions followed by high-typicality category exemplar (HTE), low-typicality exemplar (LTE), or non-exemplar (NE) words. As expected, N400 s were largest for NEs, intermediate for LTEs, and smallest for HTEs. Religiosity correlated with smaller N400 amplitude differences between HTEs and both LTEs and NEs. Less strong prediction of probable stimuli based on prior information may predispose to religiosity.

中文翻译：

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宗教信仰与对典型事物的较少预测有关：与事件相关的大脑潜力研究

为什么有些人比其他人更虔诚？根据一种假设，对信息不完整的情况强烈寻求明确解释的人更有可能信奉宗教。根据不同的假设，对意外刺激的“预测误差”反应较小的个体更有可能忽视与宗教信仰相矛盾的证据，从而使他们倾向于保持这种信仰。我们使用 N400 事件相关电位 (ERP) 为这些假设寻找神经生理学证据，该电位更小到更符合情境预期的刺激，反映了对有意义情况可能完成的预测。我们记录了参与者查看类别定义后的 ERP，然后是高典型性类别示例 (HTE)、低典型性示例 (LTE) 或非示例 (NE) 词。正如预期的那样，N400 对于 NE 是最大的，对于 LTE 是中等的，对于 HTE 是最小的。宗教信仰与 HTE 与 LTE 和 NE 之间较小的 N400 幅度差异相关。基于先验信息对可能的刺激的不太强的预测可能会导致宗教信仰。