Apple versus Orange: Exaggerated Multiple Religious Belief in East Asia

Recent scholarship proposes that East Asians commonly hold multiple religious beliefs simultaneously, even when they report a single religious identity or none at all. This note argues that this claim is substantially exaggerated due to a measurement mismatch: what GES-based studies operationalize as religious belief is better understood as ambient cultural familiarity. Using probability sample data from the 2023 Pew Research Center Survey of Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies across Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan, I test whether the multiple religious belief pattern holds under more precise operationalization. When replicating the GES approach using cultural attachment items, the familiar pattern reproduces. When instead examining active devotion to specific deities, prevalence drops substantially, most sharply among Christians and religious nones, though the extent varies across societies. Comparing cultural attachment to religious belief is comparing apples to oranges.