In Godlessness We Distrust: Using Social Psychology to Solve the Puzzle of Anti-atheist Prejudice

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Volumn 7, Issue 6, 2013, Pages 366-377

  Gervais, Will M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84879487183     PISSN: None     EISSN: 17519004     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/spc3.12035     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
2. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713-770.
3. Bateson, M. Nettle, D. Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology Letters, 2, 412-414.
4. Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A. & Shackelford, T. K. (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 60-81.
5. Boyd, R., Richerson, P.J., & Henrich, J. (2011) The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 108, 10918-10925.
6. Brewer, M. B., & Brown, R. (1998). Intergroup relations. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology 4th ed., (pp. 554-594). New York: McGraw-Hill.
7. Chudek, M., & Henrich, J. (2011). Culture-gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 218-226.
8. Cottrell, C. A. & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A sociofunctional threat-based approach to "prejudice". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 770-789.
9. Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S.T., & Glick, P. (2007). The BIAS map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 631-648.
10. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
11. Dijksterhuis, A., Preston, J., Wegner, D. M., & Aarts, H. (2008). Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 2-9.
12. Edgell, P., Gerteis, J., & Hartmann, D. (2006). Atheists as "other": Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review, 71, 211-234.
13. Esses, V. M., Jackson, L. M., Dovidio, J. F., & Hodson, G. (2005). Instrumental relations among groups: Group competition, conflict, and prejudice. In J. F. Dovidio, P. Glick, & L. A. Rudman (eds.) Reflecting on the Nature of Prejudice (pp. 227-243). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
14. Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6, 878-902.
15. Gervais, R. (December 22, 2010). Does God exist? Ricky Gervais takes your questions. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/22/does-god-exist-ricky-gervais-takes-your-questions/
16. Gervais, W. M. (2011). Finding the faithless: Perceived atheist prevalence reduce anti-atheist prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 543-556.
17. Gervais, W. M. (in press). Perceiving minds and gods: How mind perception enables, constrains, and is triggered by belief in gods. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
18. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012a). Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 298-302.
19. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012b). Reminders of secular authority reduce believers' distrust of atheists. Psychological Science, 23, 483-491.
20. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012c). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336, 493-496.
21. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (in press). Religion and the origins of anti-atheist prejudice. Chapter to appear in S. Clarke, R. Powell, & J. Savulescu (Eds.), Intolerance and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
22. Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 1189-1206.
23. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
24. Goodstein, L. (2009, April 27). More atheists shout it from the roof-tops. New York Times, p. A1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&
25. Haidt, J. (2007). The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science, 316, 998-1002.
26. Haley, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2005). Nobody's watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 245-256.
27. Hammer, J. H., Cragun, R. T., Hwang, K., & Smith, J. M. (2012). Forms, frequency, and correlates of perceived anti-atheist discrimination. Secularism and Nonreligion, 1, 43-67.
28. Henrich, J., Ensimger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J. C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D., & Ziker, J. (2010). Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science, 327, 1480-1484.
29. Huang, J. Y., Sedlovskaya, A., Ackerman, J. M. & Bargh, J. A. (2011). Immunizing against prejudice: Effects of disease protection on attitudes toward out-groups. Psychological Science, 22, 1550-1556.
30. Hunsberger, B., & Jackson, L. M. (2005). Religion, meaning, and prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 807-826.
31. Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., Knobe, J. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disapproval of gays. Emotion, 23, 714-725.
32. Jackson, L. M., & Hunsberger, B. (1999). An intergroup perspective on religion and prejudice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38, 509-523.
33. Johnson, D. D. P., & Krueger, O. (2004). Supernatural punishment and the evolution of cooperation. Political Theology, 5, 159-176.
34. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18-35.
35. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Evolutionary psychology: An emerging new foundation for the psychology of religion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (pp. 101-119). New York: Guilford.
36. Kurzban, R., & Leary, M. R. (2001). Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: The functions of social exclusion. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 187-208.
37. Leach, C. W., Ellemers, N., & Barreto, M. (2007). Group virtue: The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 234-249.
38. Magee, M. W., & Hardin, C. D. (2010). In defense of religion: Shared reality moderates the unconscious threat of evolution. Social Cognition, 28, 379-400.
39. Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2012). The cultural evolution of religion. In E. Slingerland & M. Collard (Eds.) Creating Consilience: Integrating Science and the Humanities. (pp. 243-265). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
40. Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2013). The origins of religious disbelief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 20-25.
41. Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (in press). Secular rule of law predicts reduced political intolerance of atheists worldwide. Religion, Brain, and Behavior.
42. Norenzayan, A., Gervais, W. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2012). Mentalizing deficits constrain belief in a personal god. PLoS One 7, e36880.
43. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322, 58-62.
44. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
45. Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Seli, P., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief. Cognition, 123, 335-346.
46. Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751-783.
47. Piazza, J., Bering, J. M., & Ingram, G. (2011). "Princess Alice is watching you": Children's belief in an invisible person inhibits cheating. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109, 311-320.
48. Pichon, I., Boccato, G., & Saroglou, V. (2007). Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: A priming study. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 1032-1045.
49. Preston, J., & Epley, N. (2009). Science and God: An automatic opposition between ultimate explanations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 238-241.
50. Quillian, L., (1996). Group threat and regional change in attitudes toward African-Americans. The American Journal of Sociology, 102, 816-830.
51. Randolph-Seng, B., & Nielsen, M. E. (2007) Honesty: One effect of primed religious representations. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 17, 303-15.
52. Roes, F. L., & Raymond, M. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 126-35.
53. Schaller, M. (2011). The behavioural immune system and the psychology of human sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366, 3418-3426.
54. Schaller, M., & Neuberg, S. L. (2012). Danger, disease, and the nature of prejudice(s). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1-54.
55. Schaller, M., & Park, J. H. (2011). The behavioral immune system (and why it matters). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 99-103.
56. Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007) God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18, 803-809.
57. Shariff, A. F., Cohen, A. B., & Norenzayan, A. (2008). The devil's advocate: Secular arguments diminish both implicit and explicit religious belief. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8, 417-423.
58. Shenhav, A., Rand, D. G., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 141, 423-428.
59. Sosis, R., & Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 264-274.
60. Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. (1979). Category accessibility and social perception: Some implications for the study of person memory and interpersonal judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 841-856.
61. Swan, L. K., & Heesacker, M. (2012). Anti-atheist bias in the United States: Testing two critical assumptions. Secularism and Nonreligion, 1, 32-42.
62. Tan, J. H. W., & Vogel, C. (2008). Religion and trust: An experimental study. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29, 832-848.
63. Taylor, M. C. (1998). How White attitudes vary with the racial composition of local populations: Numbers count. American Sociological Review, 63, 512-535.
64. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1983). Extension versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review, 90, 293-315.
65. Wojciszke, B. (1994). Multiple meanings of behavior: Construing actions in terms of competence and morality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 222-232.
66. Ysseldyk, R. Haslam, S. A., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2012). Love thine enemy? Evidence that (ir)religious identification can promote outgroup tolerance under threat. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 15, 105-117.
67. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 60-71.
68. Zuckerman, P. (2007). Atheism: Contemporary numbers and patterns. In M. Martin (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (pp. 47-65). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
69. Zuckerman, P. (2008). Society Without God. New York: New York University Press.