More Than Dilution: Religiosity and Conflict Perceptions Predict Perceived Utility of Religious, but not Scientific Explanations

People often turn to scientific and/or religious explanations to satisfy their need to explain and make sense of what happens in the world. Previous research has suggested that having access to multiple (scientific and religious) explanations may reduce the perceived utility of each single one of those explanations (the “dilution effect”). In the present study, 719 participants received different numbers of scientific and religious explanations for three incidents. We also measured participants’ religiosity and their perceptions of the relationship between science and religion. Contrary to the dilution effect hypothesis, our data showed that receiving multiple explanations did not reduce the perceived utility of a single explanation. Our analyses further revealed that the utility of religious explanations depended on participants’ religiosity and their perception of the science-religion relationship, but the utility of scientific explanations did not depend on any of these factors. Based on this result, we suggest that scientific and religious explanations are processed differently.