Distrust of atheists persists even among mildly religious secularized Canadians
Evidence
We relied on national samples of Americans, as well as more secularized samples of university students in Vancouver, Canada. We knew from the previous survey findings that atheists are not going to be popular for most Americans. While Americans distrusted atheists to a greater extent than Canadians, we were not prepared to find strong tendencies to distrust atheists even among mildly religious and largely secularized Canadians! — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 267
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- QUESTION: What mechanism explains anti-atheist distrust surviving secularization? Could connect to partner-choice signaling surviving belief erosion.
Related
- Distrust of atheists by believers is one-directional and deeply asymmetrical (similarity 0.83)
- An unlikely mechanism reduces atheist distrust even among believers (similarity 0.83)
- Atheist distrust stems specifically from moral distrust, not fear or disgust (similarity 0.83)
- Global religiosity remains stable despite European secularization (similarity 0.82)
- Atheists are distrusted more than other stigmatized groups even amid rising tolerance (similarity 0.82)
- Anti-atheist prejudice tracks wherever religious majorities dominate (similarity 0.82)
- Moral distrust of atheists is not explained by generic stereotype content (similarity 0.81)
- Anti-atheist prejudice stems from trust concerns, not xenophobia or outgroup dislike (similarity 0.81)
- American distrust of atheists significantly exceeds that of comparable wealthy democracies. (similarity 0.81)
- Cross-national correlations cannot establish causal direction for atheist distrust (similarity 0.81)
- Anti-atheist prejudice cannot be explained by xenophobia or general outgroup distrust. (similarity 0.80)
- Atheists generally do not distrust religious believers (similarity 0.80)
- Atheists remain the only American group that cannot win majority approval (similarity 0.80)
- Atheists are distrusted as norm-wildcards whose beliefs cannot be inferred (similarity 0.80)
- Religious belief strongly predicts distrust of atheists (similarity 0.79)