Does she still love and feel hungry? Afterlife beliefs, mind-body dualism, and religion across 24 countries

All over the world, people reason dualistically. We consider it more probable that mental states, such as love, continue after biological death than we think bodily states, such as hunger, will continue. However the extent to which culture affects mind-body dualism remains unclear. Here, we draw on a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (24 countries, N = 10195) to systematically quantify cultural variation in tendencies for mind-body dualism. Our findings replicate previous work suggesting that mind-body dualism is culturally universal. Furthermore, our experiment reveals that religion amplifies dualistic tendencies. At the same time, however, the modal response across most countries was the cessation of all states. In addition, explicit afterlife beliefs were more prevalent than implicit afterlife beliefs (i.e., continuity judgments). Overall, these data suggest that intuitive materialism is the cross-cultural norm, with dualism arising from culturally acquired beliefs.