Atheists are intuitively distrusted as much as convicted criminals.

Evidence

In several studies using this design, we found that by and large participants did not intuitively judge the description representative of Christians, gays, Muslims, Jewish people, or feminists. But they did intuitively judge that a description of a criminally untrustworthy individual was representative of atheists. The magnitude of atheist distrust in these studies was especially remarkable, and shockingly, the only group we found that was distrusted to the same degree as atheists were people with a known criminal track record: rapists. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 277

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s Big God / partner-choice argument: distrust of atheists is the inverse side of the Big God mechanism — those without perceived divine watchers are flagged as freeriders.
• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in moral psychology or secularism studies; the rapist-comparison finding is striking.

Related

• Atheists are intuitively distrusted as severely as rapists in experiments. (similarity 0.96)
• Atheists are intuitively distrusted as much as convicted rapists (similarity 0.90)
• Atheist distrust stems specifically from moral distrust, not fear or disgust (similarity 0.87)
• Atheists are specifically distrusted as moral freeloaders, not disliked generally (similarity 0.85)
• Atheists are distrusted more than other stigmatized groups even amid rising tolerance (similarity 0.84)
• Moral distrust of atheists is not explained by generic stereotype content (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-atheist prejudice stems from distrust while anti-gay prejudice stems from disgust. (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-atheist prejudice cannot be explained by xenophobia or general outgroup distrust. (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-atheist prejudice is specifically about distrust, not general dislike. (similarity 0.83)
• Distrust of atheists exceeds what warmth and competence stereotypes alone predict (similarity 0.82)
• Believers distrust atheists because they doubt atheists feel watched by God. (similarity 0.82)
• Atheists are distrusted as norm-wildcards whose beliefs cannot be inferred (similarity 0.81)
• Antipathy toward atheists stems from religious distrust, not general dislike (similarity 0.81)
• Atheists generally do not distrust religious believers (similarity 0.81)
• Distrust of atheists depends on perceiving them as rare, not merely immoral. (similarity 0.81)