IGA UP – AI visionaries: Innovative testing methodology for examining religious beliefs

This project presents a novel methodology combining artificial intelligence (AI) with eye-tracking to gain deeper insights into religious imagination. The approach examines how participants visualize spiritual ideas through AI-generated images, aiming to identify the religious concepts that significantly influence individuals. Such concepts include anthropomorphism—the tendency to envision the supernatural in human-like forms, holism—the view of the divine as an interconnected essence pervading the universe, and others. Participants answer questions such as "How do you imagine God?" by choosing from AI-generated images in randomized order. Images are weighted for each concept by experts in religious studies. Using eye-tracking technology, we analyze participants' choices, deliberation, interest, and return patterns to images through AOI-based metrics. Statistical analysis reveals the influence of each concept on the imagination of different ideas between specific demographic and religious groups.