Religious orientations as a predictor of rational thinking among secondary school students

• We examine the role of religious orientations in explaining variances in rational thinking.
• Students affiliated with Hinduism, Christianity and Islam participated in the study.
• Students’ religious affiliations have significant impacts on their cognitive systems.
• Religious orientations moderately explain variances in rational thinking of Hindu and Muslim students.

Cognitive experiential self-theory (CEST) postulates that past experiences develop implicit beliefs in human cognitive system. These beliefs modify and generate schemas attaching meanings to self, others and relations between self and others. Allport's religious orientations are explanations of people religious beliefs focusing the reasons of their religiousness. We, in the current study investigated the contribution of secondary school students’ religious affiliations (fellowship with Hinduism, Christianity or Islam) as well as religious orientations (intrinsic, extrinsic personal and extrinsic social) in developing their cognitive experiential thinking systems. The Hindu (N = 1050), Christian (N = 1073), and Muslim (N = 1394) secondary school students participated in the study. Age universal I–E (intrinsic–extrinsic religiosity) scale and rational experiential inventory for adolescents (REI-A) were adapted to collect the required information. We conclude that the students’ religious affiliations and orientations have significant impacts on their cognitive systems, specifically on rational thinking rather than on experiential thinking. The religious orientations moderately explain the variances in rational thinking of Hindu and Muslim students, while their impact on the rational choices of the Christian students is very small. In general, both an intrinsic orientation to religion and an external personal orientation are positively associated with rational thinking, while an external social orientation is negatively associated. Religious affiliations and orientations have very little effect on experiential thinking.