Recent polls (e.g., Edgell, Gerteis & Hartmann, 2006) have consistently found
that atheists are the least liked group in America today, a type of prejudice that has barely been researched. This anti-atheist prejudice is surprising because atheists do not constitute a cohesive, recognizable, or powerful group. To the degree that people feel that religion provides a unique and necessary source of morality, they may dislike atheists primarily because of moral distrust towards them. This suggests a distinct origin for anti-atheist prejudice that sets it apart from ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice. We explored this broad hypothesis in a series of three experiments. First, we find that on an implicit level anti-atheist prejudice is driven by distrust rather than a feeling of generalized unpleasantness towards atheists. Second, we find that discrimination against atheists is
limited to contexts requiring a high degree of trust. Finally, we find that anti-atheist
prejudice is malleable. These findings are discussed in terms of prominent evolutionary
theories of religion. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/1549 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Gervais, Will Martin |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 319852 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds