Do elderly religious people in South Korea have lower mean IQ than elderly non-religious people?

Meta-analyses have found a negative relationship between religiousness and IQ of around r = -0.2, including in samples of elderly Westerners. However, there have been few attempts to directly test the existence of the religion-IQ nexus in non-Western societies. We administered a cognitive test to a representative sample of elderly South Koreans who were also surveyed about their religion and tested whether elderly nonreligious people had higher mean IQ scores than elderly religious people. Using a broad cognitive test battery, we computed mean IQ scores of n = 589 non-religious, n = 494 Protestants, n = 520 Catholics, n = 347 Buddhists, and n = 17 Confucianists. Elderly South Koreans who claimed to have `no religion' had lower mean IQs than religious Koreans. This finding is not consistent with previous findings from meta-analyses. We argue that it is explicable in terms of differences in how the concept of religion is understood when comparing Western and Northeast Asian societies. Many of the `non-religious' category would be adherents to Korean folk religion, something expected to be associated with lower mean IQ.

Automated summary

The study examines the relationship between religion and IQ among elderly South Koreans, finding that elderly nonreligious individuals have lower IQ scores compared to religious individuals, contrary to findings in Western societies. The discrepancy is attributed to differences in how the concept of religion is understood in different cultural contexts.