Teleology involves an appeal to function to explain why things are the way they are. Among scientists and philosophers, teleological explanations are widely accepted for human-made artifacts and biological traits, yet controversial for biological and nonbiological natural entities. Prior research shows a positive relationship between religiosity and acceptance of such controversial teleological explanations. Across three large online studies, we show that the relationship between religiosity and teleological acceptance cannot be explained by acceptance of objectively false explanations. Furthermore, we show that anthropomorphism and a belief in supernatural agents each independently predict teleological acceptance. In contrast, the tendency to inhibit intuitively appealing, yet incorrect responses to simple reasoning problems was associated with lower teleological acceptance. These results provide strong support for an intention-based account of teleology, and further contribute to the existing literature which situates teleological reasoning within a dual-process framework. Several avenues of future research are discussed, including the need to dissociate implicit and explicit measures of teleological belief, and the need for a greater focus on cross-cultural variation in teleological beliefs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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关于生物和非生物自然实体的设计立场、有意立场和目的论信念。

目的论涉及诉诸功能以解释事物为何如此。在科学家和哲学家中，目的论解释被广泛接受为人造制品和生物特征，但对生物和非生物自然实体存在争议。先前的研究表明，宗教信仰与接受这种有争议的目的论解释之间存在正相关关系。在三项大型在线研究中，我们表明宗教信仰和目的论接受之间的关系不能通过接受客观错误的解释来解释。此外，我们表明拟人论和对超自然代理人的信仰各自独立地预测了目的论的接受度。相比之下，抑制直觉吸引力的倾向，然而，对简单推理问题的错误反应与较低的目的论接受度有关。这些结果为基于意图的目的论解释提供了强有力的支持，并进一步有助于将目的论推理置于双过程框架内的现有文献。讨论了未来研究的几个途径，包括需要分离目的论信念的隐性和显性措施，以及需要更多地关注目的论信念的跨文化变异。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。讨论了未来研究的几个途径，包括需要分离目的论信念的隐性和显性措施，以及需要更多地关注目的论信念的跨文化变异。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。讨论了未来研究的几个途径，包括需要分离目的论信念的隐性和显性措施，以及需要更多地关注目的论信念的跨文化变异。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。