Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists

Gervais, Will M.; Xygalatas, Dimitris; McKay, Ryan; Elk, Michiel van; Buchtel, Emma Ellen Kathrina; Aveyard, Mark; Schiavone, Sarah R.; Dar‐Nimrod, Ilan; Svedholm-Häkkinen, Annika M.; Riekki, Tapani; Klocová, Eva Kundtová; Ramsay, Jonathan E.; Bulbulia, Joseph

doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0151

Cited by 192 publications

(165 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…As this study was conducted as part of the 'testing week' for freshmen psychology students, this study was part of a bigger package of online studies that participants were required to complete. Beyond the measures reported above, we also included an unrelated task consisting of the representativeness heuristic, which is reported elsewhere (Gervais et al, 2017). Table 5).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Manipulations of Personal Control do Not Increase Illusory Pattern Perception

Elk

Lodder

2018

Collabra: Psychology

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We report seven experiments to investigate the effects of control threat manipulations on different measures of illusory pattern perception: magical thinking (Study 1-3), conspiracy beliefs (Study 4), paranormal beliefs (Study 5) and agent detection (Study 6 and 7). Overall we did not find evidence for an effect of control threat on any of our relevant dependent measures. By using Bayesian analyses we obtained positive evidence for the null-hypothesis that an experimentally induced loss of control does not affect illusory pattern perception. Finally, by re-conducting a recent meta-analysis we found strong evidence for publication bias and a relatively small effect size for control-threat manipulations. Together, these results cast doubt on the potential efficacy of experimental autobiographical recall manipulations to manipulate feelings of control.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Manipulations of Personal Control do Not Increase Illusory Pattern Perception

Elk

Lodder

2018

Collabra: Psychology

Self Cite

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“…We selected atheists as a target as a part of a separate, broader program of research on inter-religious bias. We chose atheists because prejudice towards atheists is common and associated with belief in God (Gervais et al, 2011(Gervais et al, , 2017. We constructed an atheist/trust Protestant; 4% Other; 1% Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey-Software Implicit Association Tests: A Methodological and Empirical Analysis

Carpenter

Pogacar

Pullig

et al. 2018

Preprint

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The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is widely used in psychology. Unfortunately, the IAT cannot be run within online surveys, requiring researchers who conduct online surveys to rely on third-party tools. We introduce a novel method for constructing IATs using online survey software (Qualtrics); we then empirically assess its validity. Study 1 (student n = 239) found good psychometric properties, expected IAT effects, and expected correlations with explicit measures for survey-software IATs. Study 2 (MTurk n = 818) found predicted IAT effects across four survey-software IATs (d’s = 0.82 [Black-White IAT] to 2.13 [insect-flower IAT]). Study 3 (MTurk n = 270) compared survey-software IATs and IATs run via Inquisit, yielding nearly identical results and intercorrelations expected for identical IATs. Survey-software IATs appear reliable and valid, offer numerous advantages, and make IATs accessible for researchers who use survey software to conduct online research. We present all materials, links to tutorials, and an open-source tool that rapidly automates survey-software IAT construction and analysis.

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“…When presented with a target who behaved immorally, participants were likely to commit the conjunction fallacy (selecting the second option) only when the secondary category was "atheist" and not any of 11 other social categories. In short, therefore, atheism may be implicitly associated with perceived immorality among religious believers (for extensive cross-cultural replication of this effect, see Gervais et al, 2017). Yet other research (Cook et al, 2015) has found that participants exposed to threats to their moral values (from reading text about societal moral decline) expressed more discriminatory views toward atheists than the control group.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, this finding suggests that our results and interpretations may not be constrained by concerns of statistical power and that, in fact, the effect of concern (specific types of morality dominate in the link between prejudice and perceived atheist morality) is quite strong among the U.S. majority (approximately 76% of Americans identify as mono-racial White [U.S. Census Bureau, 2017], and Whites constitute the majority of U.S. Christians [Pew Research Center, n.d.]). Future research should further investigate how members of different races/ethnicities process and respond to information about atheists and atheist (im)morality-something that has received little attention in existing research on attitudes toward atheists (but see Gervais et al, 2017, for cross-national analyses).…”

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confidence: 99%

Correction

2019

The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion

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Recent evidence suggests that, although moral distrust drives antiatheist prejudice, certain types of morality are central: Perceived atheist moral capacity for caring and compassion appears to be central, whereas perceived atheist moral capacity for fairness, in-group loyalty, deferential respect, or purity/decency is not (Simpson & Rios, 2017). Here, we extend this research. First, we conceptually replicated experimental effects: Manipulating the perception that atheists strongly versus weakly value morality affects antiatheist prejudice much more strongly if the type of morality relates to caring/compassion rather than purity/ sanctity (N = 162; U.S. Christian theists recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk). This finding was particularly strong among White participants. Second, we provide evidence for cross-national replication of correlational findings among Australian undergraduate theists (N = 85; recruited from the University of Melbourne) as well as evidence to suggest that the type of perceived morality that predicts prejudice differs according to the social group in question. Specifically, only perceived atheist concern for caring/compassion reliably predicted antiatheist prejudice, whereas perceived Jewish concern caring/compassion and in-group loyalty predicted anti-Jewish prejudice. Results reinforce existing evidence that increasing perceptions of atheist benevolence will help reduce antiatheist prejudice and provide novel support for social-functionalist theories of prejudice.

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Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists

Cited by 192 publications

References 31 publications

Experimental Manipulations of Personal Control do Not Increase Illusory Pattern Perception

Experimental Manipulations of Personal Control do Not Increase Illusory Pattern Perception

Survey-Software Implicit Association Tests: A Methodological and Empirical Analysis

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