Dopamine levels and belief systems: Recent research has found a correlation in the levels of dopamine in the brain to pattern matching. People with high dopamine levels tend to find patterns that are not there and people with low levels tend to miss patterns that are there. One might suspect that those who overachieve in pattern matching may also be those who depend on intuition to a greater degree.

It seems to me that overacting pattern matching and intuition dependence must play a role in personal belief systems. High-dopamine folks should tend to be less skeptical about the objective evidence to support a given belief system and the reverse would hold true for the low-dopamine folks. To me this explains the effectiveness of mass missionary efforts of some sects. If one targets enough people one will find enough high-dopamine, non-skeptical individuals to reap a respectable harvest. The counter-reasoning of the skeptic will have little avail since the belief system is not based on reason but on an apparent pattern. To whatever degree innate dopamine levels are genetic one would expect that belief-system-susceptibility runs in families.