Overt self-reporting of prejudice is contaminated by social-desirability concerns

Evidence

This study was significant because it went beyond the general finding that atheists are one of the most disliked groups among believers, and revealed a more nuanced picture that gives us clues as to where this dislike comes from. However, the findings in this study were susceptible to a few counterexplanations. First, the distrust measure we used was quite overt. It is possible that, for whatever reason, people may have felt similarly toward both atheists and gays, but felt more comfortable openly voicing distrust of atheists than of gays. In addition, our sample consisted of American adults, overall a quite religious group. To address these concerns, we performed additional studies in a population with considerable variability in religious involvement, but overall far less religious on the whole than most Americans. We studied the attitudes of university students in Vancouver, Canada. To circumvent any possible artifacts that result from overtly asking people about their prejudices, we designed studies that included more covert ways of measuring distrust. We capitalized on a classic judgment task that has been widely used by researchers. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Methodological critique of overt prejudice measures connects to the reader’s earlier reading on moral panics and how social-desirability bias distorts claims about public attitudes. — connects to: Social desirability bias does not inflate symbolic racism’s link to policy views — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 226; The truth of self-reports cannot justify the prejudiced-unprejudiced contrast; probability assumptions underwrite it — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 535; Vague survey wording can make racial prejudice undetectable in response data (+4 more)