Friday, December 2, 2011
Better Angels
Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice
Will Gervais, Azim Shariff & Ara Norenzayan
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2011, Pages 1189-1206
Abstract:
Recent polls indicate that atheists are among the least liked people in areas with religious majorities (i.e., in most of the world). The sociofunctional approach to prejudice, combined with a cultural evolutionary theory of religion's effects on cooperation, suggest that anti-atheist prejudice is particularly motivated by distrust. Consistent with this theoretical framework, a broad sample of American adults revealed that distrust characterized anti-atheist prejudice but not anti-gay prejudice (Study 1). In subsequent studies, distrust of atheists generalized even to participants from more liberal, secular populations. A description of a criminally untrustworthy individual was seen as comparably representative of atheists and rapists but not representative of Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, feminists, or homosexuals (Studies 2-4). In addition, results were consistent with the hypothesis that the relationship between belief in God and atheist distrust was fully mediated by the belief that people behave better if they feel that God is watching them (Study 4). In implicit measures, participants strongly associated atheists with distrust, and belief in God was more strongly associated with implicit distrust of atheists than with implicit dislike of atheists (Study 5). Finally, atheists were systematically socially excluded only in high-trust domains; belief in God, but not authoritarianism, predicted this discriminatory decision-making against atheists in high trust domains (Study 6). These 6 studies are the first to systematically explore the social psychological underpinnings of anti-atheist prejudice, and converge to indicate the centrality of distrust in this phenomenon.
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Substitution and Stigma: Evidence on Religious Competition from the Catholic Sex-Abuse Scandal
Daniel Hungerman
NBER Working Paper, November 2011
Abstract:
This paper considers substituting one charitable activity for another in the context of religious practice. I examine the impact of the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal on both Catholic and non-Catholic religiosity. I find that the scandal led to a 2-million-member fall in the Catholic population that was compensated by an increase in non-Catholic participation and by an increase in non-affiliation. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the scandal generated over 3 billion dollars in donations to non-Catholic faiths. Those substituting out of Catholicism frequently chose highly dissimilar alternatives; for example, Baptist churches gained significantly from the scandal while the Episcopal Church did not. These results challenge several theories of religious participation and suggest that regulatory policies or other shocks specific to one religious group could have important spillover effects on other religious groups.
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Practicing What They Preach? Lynching and Religion in the American South, 1890-1929
Amy Kate Bailey & Karen Snedker
American Journal of Sociology, November 2011, Pages 844-887
Abstract:
This project employs a moral solidarity framework to explore the relationship between organized religion and lynching in the American South. The authors ask whether a county's religious composition affected its rate of lynching, net of demographic and economic controls. The authors find evidence for the solidarity thesis, using three religious metrics. First, their findings show that counties with greater religious diversity experienced more lynching, supporting the notion that a pluralistic religious marketplace with competing religious denominations weakened the bonds of a cohesive moral community and might have enhanced white racial solidarity. Second, counties in which a larger share of the black population worshipped in churches controlled by blacks experienced higher levels of racial violence, indicating a threat to intergroup racially based solidarity. Finally, the authors find a lower incidence of lynching in counties where a larger share of church members belonged to racially mixed denominations, suggesting that cross-racial solidarity served to reduce racial violence.
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Epistemological and Moral Conflict Between Religion and Science
John Evans
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2011, Pages 707-727
Abstract:
Debates about religion and educational attainment often assume that members of certain religious groups do not seek out knowledge of science because they are opposed to the use of the scientific method. Using the science module of the 2006 General Social Survey, the analysis indicates that no religious group differs from the nonreligious comparison group in its propensity to seek out scientific knowledge. A more subtle epistemological conflict may arise when scientists make claims that explicitly contradict theological accounts. Findings indicate that Protestants and Catholics differ from the comparison group only on the very few issues where religion and science make competing claims. A third possible source of conflict may not be epistemological, but rather derives from opposition to what is understood as the public moral agenda of scientists. Findings indicate that conservative Protestants are opposed to scientific influence in public affairs due to opposition to the scientists' moral agenda.
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Fundamental(ist) attribution error: Protestants are dispositionally focused
Yexin Jessica Li et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attribution theory has long enjoyed a prominent role in social psychological research, yet religious influences on attribution have not been well studied. We theorized and tested the hypothesis that Protestants would endorse internal attributions to a greater extent than would Catholics, because Protestantism focuses on the inward condition of the soul. In Study 1, Protestants made more internal, but not external, attributions than did Catholics. This effect survived controlling for Protestant work ethic, need for structure, and intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. Study 2 showed that the Protestant-Catholic difference in internal attributions was significantly mediated by Protestants' greater belief in a soul. In Study 3, priming religion increased belief in a soul for Protestants but not for Catholics. Finally, Study 4 found that experimentally strengthening belief in a soul increased dispositional attributions among Protestants but did not change situational attributions. These studies expand the understanding of cultural differences in attributions by demonstrating a distinct effect of religion on dispositional attributions.
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Paul Bloom
Annual Review of Psychology, 2012, Pages 179-199
Abstract:
How did religion evolve? What effect does religion have on our moral beliefs and moral actions? These questions are related, as some scholars propose that religion has evolved to enhance altruistic behavior toward members of one's group. I review here data from survey studies (both within and across countries), priming experiments, and correlational studies of the effects of religion on racial prejudice. I conclude that religion has powerfully good moral effects and powerfully bad moral effects, but these are due to aspects of religion that are shared by other human practices. There is surprisingly little evidence for a moral effect of specifically religious beliefs.
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Protestant Clergy and the Culture Wars: An Empirical Test of Hunter's Thesis
Jeremy Uecker & Glenn Lucke
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2011, Pages 692-706
Abstract:
Examinations of culture wars typically assess the attitudes of the American public. This study instead focuses on culture wars among religious elites-clergy-and tests three aspects of the culture wars thesis: (1) whether religious elites are engaged in culture wars, (2) whether clergy attitudes are polarized on these issues, and (3) whether religious authority or religious affiliation is more salient in creating culture wars cleavages. Using data from a large random sample of Protestant clergy, we find a substantial amount of engagement in culture wars by all types of Protestant clergy. The amount of polarization is more attributable to views of religious authority (i.e., biblical inerrancy) than to religious tradition. Moreover, polarization among clergy is somewhat more evident on culture wars issues than on other social and political issues. These findings are generally supportive of the culture wars thesis and should help return examinations of culture wars back to where they were originally theorized to be waged: among elites.
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Assessing the racial views of white conservative protestants: Who do we compare with whom?
Marylee Taylor & Stephen Merino
Public Opinion Quarterly, Winter 2011, Pages 761-778
Abstract:
Using 1996-2000 General Social Survey responses from non-Hispanic whites, we test claims of earlier researchers that conservative Protestant theology encourages adherents to prefer individualistic rather than structuralist explanations for racial inequality. Methodological issues are central to this research, as special attention is given to the comparisons on which conclusions rely. We use two alternate definitions of conservative Protestantism: one based on denominational preference, the other on self-identification and beliefs. Conservative Protestants defined in each fashion are compared to five other religious categories, and results are reported with and without controls for such background characteristics as education and region of residence. Findings indicate the need for important qualification to claims about the influence of religion on attributions for racial inequality. Among the large group of denominationally defined conservative Protestants, attributions prove to be minimally different from those of other demographically similar Christians. Self-identified conservative Protestants are more individualistic and less structural than other white Christians, even after controls, but this group is small. The primary attitudinal divide is between Christian groups and the more racially progressive non-Christians - Jews, adherents of other faiths, and the unaffiliated.
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A Clash of Civilizations? Preferences for Religious Political Leaders in 86 Nations
Nate Breznau et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2011, Pages 671-691
Abstract:
Huntington claimed that today's major conflicts are most likely to erupt between religiously defined "civilizations," in particular between Christianity and Islam. Using World Values Surveys from 86 nations, we examine differences between Christians and Muslims in preferences for religious political leaders. The results suggest a marked difference between Muslims and Christians in their attitudes toward religious politicians, with Muslims more favorable by 20 points out of 100. Devoutness, education, degree of government corruption, and status as a formerly Communist state account for the difference. Little support is found for the clash-of-civilizations hypothesis. Instead, we find that a clash of individual beliefs - between the devout and the secular - along with enduring differences between the more developed and less developed world explains the difference between Islam and Christianity with regards to preferences for religious political leaders.
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When authoritarianism meets religion: Sacrificing others in the name of abstract deontology
Matthieu Van Pachterbeke, Christopher Freyer & Vassilis Saroglou
European Journal of Social Psychology, December 2011, Pages 898-903
Abstract:
Authoritarianism is a stable construct in terms of individual differences (social attitudes based on personality and values), but its manifestations and behavioral outcomes may depend on contextual factors. In the present experiment, we investigated whether authoritarianism is sensitive to religious influences in predicting rigid morality. Specifically, we investigated whether authoritarians, after supraliminal religious priming, would show, in hypothetical moral dilemmas, preference for impersonal societal norms even at the detriment of interpersonal, care-based prosociality toward proximal persons and acquaintances in need. The results confirmed the expectations, with a small effect size for the religious priming × authoritarianism interaction. In addition, these results were specific to participants' authoritarianism and not to their individual religiosity. The interaction between authoritarian dispositions and religious ideas may constitute a powerful combination leading to behaviors that are detrimental for the well-being and the life of others, even proximal people, in the name of abstract deontology.
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Sam Reimer
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2011, Pages 763-779
Abstract:
The organizational niche, a fruitful concept from the organizational ecology literature, frames this study on the diverse orthodoxy of congregations within the same denomination. Congregations diversify along a conservative-to-liberal continuum, which lessens niche overlap with nearby congregations in their denomination. Pastors and priests in United Methodist and Episcopal congregations in three U.S. regions were able to locate their congregations (and other congregations in their denomination in close proximity) along this conservative-to-liberal continuum, an indication that orthodoxy distinctions were important to congregational identity. In comparison, Assemblies of God congregations showed little intradenominational diversity in orthodoxy, since sectarian boundaries narrow their niche. Theoretical and methodological implications of this intradenominational diversity are explored.
