Reminders of Secular Authority Reduce Believers’ Distrust of Atheists
PRESS RELEASE
April 18, 2012
For Immediate Release
Contact: Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science
202.293.9300
[email protected]
Reminders of Secular Authority Reduce Believers’ Distrust of Atheists
What’s the group that least agrees with Americans’ vision of their country? It’s not Muslims, gays, feminists, or recent immigrants. It’s atheists, according to many sociological surveys. In one survey conducted in 2006 by sociologist Penny Edgell and her colleagues, nearly half of respondents said they would disapprove if their child wanted to marry an atheist, and a majority would not vote for an atheist president of their preferred political party, the lowest social acceptance rates of any group that Americans are asked about.
It’s a little odd that believers would dislike atheists so much, says Will Gervais, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia who did the new study with his advisor, Ara Norenzayan. Atheists are a small minority in America, they are not a visible or coherent group, and most aren’t particularly noisy about their beliefs. Previous studies by the same authors have found that the dislike mostly comes from distrust. “It seemed like distrust was driven by the belief that people act better if they feel like they’re being watched by God,” Gervais says.
So he and Norenzayan decided to explore the relationship between thoughts about secular authority and trust in atheists. The results of this new series of experiments are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Distrust among believers declined when people were reminded that God isn’t the only authority that keeps people in line—the government is, too.
In one experiment, Canadian believers were assigned to watch one of two videos: a traveler’s story about visiting Vancouver for the first time or the Vancouver police chief’s year-end report. These served as a reminder or a prime, to get half the students thinking about the police, who are a source of secular authority. Then participants responded to questions about how much they distrusted various groups, including atheists.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/reminders-of-secular-authority-reduce-believers-distrust-of-atheists.html
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