Religious people use a more social part of their brain, a study claims (Picture: Getty Images)

It sounds like the perfect follow-up to Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus and is bound to be just as controversial.

We imagine there are countless exceptions, but a study from the Cape Western Reserve University in Ohio really does argue what the headline suggests.

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In a nutshell, it surmises that atheists access the same cold part of the brain as psychopaths, while the religious are more caring, but stupid.

The goal of the study was to investigate how atheists and believers brains operated and what the differences were.


It led them to the theory that the brain is split in to two networks. One being the more social, moral thinking and the other cold and analytical.

Atheists are prone to more analytical behaviour (Picture Getty Images)

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The religious tend to be far less analytical in their behaviour but, if you look at previous studies this comes at a cost in terms of intelligence.

On the flip side, atheists ‘push aside’ a more social outlook but and instead display the self-centred, impulsive behaviour, typical of psychopaths.

Dr Tony Jack, told Yahoo: ‘Pushing aside a naturalistic world view enables you to delve deeper into the social or emotional side.

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‘And that may be the key to why beliefs in the supernatural exist throughout the history of cultures.

‘But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical or analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight.’

Professor Richard Boyatzis of Case Western Reserve University added: ‘A stream of research in cognitive psychology has shown that people who have faith (who are religious or spiritual) are not as smart as others.

‘Our studies confirmed that statistical relationship, but at the same time showed that people with faith are more prosocial and empathic.’

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