Study: Atheists face bias – The Register

If you’re an atheist, you might want to keep that to yourself — if you want people to trust you — a new study suggests.

The study, co-authored by a University of Oregon psychology professor, found that atheists are less trusted than people with many other beliefs or values.

“You have to say this is a prejudice, because there is no empirical basis that atheists are any less trustworthy,” said Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology at the UO.

The study’s lead author, Will Gervais, a psychology doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, said the study shows that “where there are religious majorities — that is, in most of the world — atheists are among the least trusted people.” The number of atheists in the world stands at more than half a billion, so “this prejudice has the potential to affect a substantial number of people,” Gervais said.

Atheism and bias against atheists have emerged as growing fields of interest to researchers and the public, Shariff said. But, he added, in many western societies, tolerance of atheists is increasing.

The new research — published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — provides a glimpse of the social psychological processes underlying anti-atheist sentiments.

The researchers conducted a series of six studies with 350 American adults and 420 university students in Canada, posing hypothetical questions and scenarios and gauging participants’ reactions in order to tease out their feelings toward atheists. In one study, participants found a description of an untrustworthy person to be more representative of atheists than of Christians, Muslims, gay men, feminists or Jewish people, the researchers said. Only rapists were distrusted to a comparable degree, they said.

At the heart of the issue is the feeling of many people that religious peoples’ belief in a watchful and punishing God makes them more trustworthy, the researchers said.

“Nonbelievers do not end up trusting their own kind more,” Shariff said. “While the degree to which someone’s belief in God — particularly the belief that being watched by this God makes people act better — did affect the strength of people’s distrust of atheists, those people who did not identify with a religion still tended to find believers to be more trustworthy.”

Still, in many western societies, including the United States, many people are more accepting than ever of atheists, Shariff said.

That trend goes along with the decrease among many people of some other prejudices, such as against homosexuality, he said. “There has been an amazing increase in tolerance for homo­sexuality in the last 10 years,” Shariff said.

One impetus for the new study was a Gallup poll that found that 45 percent of American respondents would vote for a qualified atheist president, said Ara Norenzayan, professor of psychology at UBC, and a co-author of the study. That rating was the lowest among several hypothetical minority candidates. Still, it’s up from about 20 percent in 1958, Shariff said.

Worldwide, atheists comprise perhaps 750 million people, or about the same as the number of Hindus, Shariff said.

“In general, atheism and the level of non­religiousness is growing,” Shariff said. That’s likely a result of increased freedom of belief and a growing understanding of science, he said.

In the United States, there’s been a “polarizing trend,” with more people being either nonreligious or very religious, and with the “mushy middle” thinning out, Shariff said.

In north and western Europe and in many former communist countries, atheism is more accepted, while in Muslim countries, much less so, he said.

“That makes sense, because if a society is relying on a high level of religion in order to function, they have to have high barriers” to discourage people from becoming doubters, he said.

Given the possibility that they may face mistrust, many U.S. atheists may not be particularly open about their views, Shariff suggested.

In the U.S. Congress there is only one member among the 535 who openly professes to be an atheist — California Rep. Pete Stark.

Shariff said it’s statistically unlikely that only one member of Congress is an atheist.

“Where there are religious majorities ... atheists are among the least trusted.”

— Will Gervais, psychology doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, LEAD AUTHOR on a STUDY OF PREJUDICE AND ATHEISM


web pages

Will Gervais: www2.psych.ubc.ca/~will/

Ara Norenzayan: www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/

Azim Shariff: psychweb.uoregon.edu/people/shariff-azim

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