Nonconscious religious primes reliably affect believers but only inconsistently affect atheists.

Evidence

Using these three criteria, we find that nonconscious religious primes have reliable effects on believers. Interestingly, the results are mixed when it comes to nonbelievers. Some studies find priming effects for nonbelievers, while others do not. However, close examination of the findings betrays a revealing pattern. Most, but not all, studies that satisfy the preceding criteria recruited student samples, which can be problematic since beliefs, attitudes, and social identity among students can be unstable, raising questions about the reliability of measures of religious belief and identity for students who are still in transition to adulthood. In short, student atheists might be “soft atheists.” This is especially true for student participants in North America, where being a nonbeliever is counternormative. It is important to distinguish between such “soft atheists” or nonbelievers, and “hard atheists,” who are strongly committed to nonbelief. However, studies often fail to distinguish between these two variants of nonbelief. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 179

Categorization

• XREF: The soft vs. hard atheist distinction parallels the reader’s Big God analytical frame: in North America nonbelief is counternormative (an omniscient-Big-God-like societal gaze), so ‘soft atheists’ show priming effects because they have not fully exited the religious surveillance system. This is a testable bridge between Norenzayan and the apostasy mechanism. — connects to: Religious primes vary in depth of awareness and mechanism of effect — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 24; Theistic religious primes activate in-group identity while nontheistic ones activate universalism. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 28; Publication bias is unlikely to fully explain the religious priming effect. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 88 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the soft atheist / hard atheist distinction, which is the key methodological refinement for distinguishing genuine nonbelief from nominal nonbelief.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘Soft atheism’ as the statistical residue that inflates religious priming effects — what it says about how cultural surveillance (Big God’s leaky reach) persists even among the nonreligious, including in the reader’s own fieldwork/data contexts.