Anti-atheist exclusion rises when trust matters critically in a role

Evidence

Gervais found converging evidence to support this prediction. First, across nations, anti-atheist prejudice among believers was reduced where atheists are more numerous, even after controlling for important individual and international differences, such as conservatism, human development, and individualism. Second, in a Canadian university sample, anti-atheist prejudice was reduced among believers who thought that atheists were more common, and this was the case especially among the most deeply religious participants. Last, it was found that experimentally induced reminders of how common atheists are statistically eliminated anti-atheist prejudice. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 312 (#complicates, via linked claim)

This is likely because although religious people might infer that ethnic outgroup members or gays hold norms that differ from their own, atheists might be seen as holding norms that are directly antithetical to their own. Or, it could be that atheists may be distrusted because people are unsure what exactly atheists believe. A Christian or a Hindu, for example, might be able to infer some of the norms of a Muslim, but an atheist might be viewed as a wildcard; religious people might distrust atheists not only for the norms they are perceived to follow, but also for their perceived lack of norms. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 295 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Prosocial religious cohesion inherently requires excluding nonbelievers from trust; Anti-atheist and anti-gay prejudices have distinct distrust versus disgust profiles; Anti-atheist prejudice stems from trust concerns, not xenophobia or outgroup dislike (+3 more)

Related

• Anti-atheist prejudice stems from trust concerns, not xenophobia or outgroup dislike (similarity 0.94)
• An unlikely mechanism reduces atheist distrust even among believers (similarity 0.88)
• Cross-national correlations cannot establish causal direction for atheist distrust (similarity 0.88)
• Atheists generally do not distrust religious believers (similarity 0.87)
• Belief-centered religions generate more prejudice against atheists than practice-centered ones (similarity 0.87)
• Prosocial religious cohesion inherently requires excluding nonbelievers from trust (similarity 0.87)
• Atheism is perceived as a public threat to cooperation, not a private belief (similarity 0.87)
• Outgroup prevalence reduces distrust-based prejudice even as it raises fear-based prejudice (similarity 0.86)
• Distrust of atheists exceeds what warmth and competence stereotypes alone predict (similarity 0.86)
• Nonbelievers show mild trust toward believers while believers trust only their own (similarity 0.85)
• Atheists are intuitively distrusted as much as convicted rapists (similarity 0.85)
• Atheists are distrusted more than other stigmatized groups even amid rising tolerance (similarity 0.85)
• Atheists are distrusted as norm-wildcards whose beliefs cannot be inferred (similarity 0.85)
• Anti-atheist and anti-gay prejudices have distinct distrust versus disgust profiles (similarity 0.85)
• Anti-atheist prejudice cannot be explained by xenophobia or general outgroup distrust. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Perceived atheist prevalence directly reduces anti-atheist prejudice across nations and experiments #complicates (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 312
• Fine-grained discrimination of whom to trust limits the role of noncognitive trust. #corroborates (0.80)
• Atheists are distrusted as norm-wildcards whose beliefs cannot be inferred #expands (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 295