Moral distrust of atheists is not explained by generic stereotype content

Evidence

So, does competence and warmth explain anti-atheist prejudice? We tested this idea by comparing peoples’ stereotypes of atheists to their stereotypes of feminists and Jewish people. Canadian participants perceived all three groups as having similar profiles of competence and warmth. Nevertheless, we found that untrustworthiness was still viewed as more typical of atheists than of either feminists or Jews. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 290

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This is the discriminating empirical result that anchors the book’s core argument for the reader: anti-atheist distrust is specifically religion-linked, not a generic low-warmth outgroup effect.

Related

• Distrust of atheists exceeds what warmth and competence stereotypes alone predict (similarity 0.88)
• Atheist distrust stems specifically from moral distrust, not fear or disgust (similarity 0.87)
• Antipathy toward atheists stems from religious distrust, not general dislike (similarity 0.86)
• Anti-atheist prejudice is specifically about distrust, not general dislike. (similarity 0.85)
• Atheists are specifically distrusted as moral freeloaders, not disliked generally (similarity 0.85)
• Anti-atheist hostility is not simply generalized prejudice (similarity 0.85)
• Religious belief strongly predicts distrust of atheists (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-atheist prejudice stems from distrust while anti-gay prejudice stems from disgust. (similarity 0.84)
• Atheists are intuitively distrusted as much as convicted rapists (similarity 0.84)
• Atheists are distrusted more than other stigmatized groups even amid rising tolerance (similarity 0.84)
• Atheists are intuitively distrusted as much as convicted criminals. (similarity 0.83)
• Belief in God’s existence, not lifestyle, drives outgroup distrust. (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-atheist prejudice stems from trust concerns, not xenophobia or outgroup dislike (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-atheist prejudice cannot be explained by xenophobia or general outgroup distrust. (similarity 0.82)
• Atheists are intuitively distrusted as severely as rapists in experiments. (similarity 0.82)