A familiar prejudice may have more to do with “identity signaling”

People who express negative attitudes toward atheists are perceived as more religious and may use these attitudes to signal their religious identity, according to new research published in Self & Identity.

Although religion is often linked to prosocial behavior, it can also fuel prejudice, particularly against atheists. In the United States, atheists represent a growing demographic but continue to experience widespread discrimination and social stigma. Previous research has documented that religious individuals are more likely to harbor anti-atheist prejudice, which is often explained through moral distrust, ingroup favoritism, or perceived threats to traditional values. However, these explanations don’t fully address the expressive and social functions of such prejudice.

Joshua T. Lambert and colleagues proposed a new framework: the identity-signaling account of atheist prejudice. Drawing on self-presentation, symbolic self-completion, and self-verification theories, they suggested that expressing anti-atheist attitudes can serve as a signal of religious identity. Just as wearing religious symbols might indicate one’s faith, voicing distrust of atheists may help religious individuals affirm their identity to themselves and others.

The researchers conducted five studies involving 1,734 participants, primarily Christian undergraduates in the United States. Studies 1 and 2 assessed whether people intuitively perceive anti-atheist sentiments as signals of religiosity. Participants read brief statements made by fictional individuals (either endorsing or rejecting atheists), then rated those individuals on various traits, including religiosity. The key manipulation involved the fictional person expressing either willingness or unwillingness to date an atheist (Study 1) or expressing trust or distrust toward atheists (Study 2), with all other information held constant.

Study 3 examined whether people actively use anti-atheist sentiment to communicate their own religious identity. Participants first completed measures assessing how strongly they identified with their religion. Then, under the pretense of completing multiple tasks, participants were instructed to either conceal or convey their level of religious commitment while responding to anti-atheist statements. This allowed researchers to observe whether stronger religious identifiers would vary their responses depending on whether they wanted to hide or highlight their religiosity.

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In Study 4, Christian participants were asked to imagine working with an atheist either publicly or privately, and then report how much identity discomfort, such as feelings of inauthenticity or negative emotion, they would experience. Study 5 explored whether participants’ own prejudice could be altered by manipulating what they believed to be typical among religious Christians. Participants read bogus information suggesting that either most religious Christians dislike atheists or that they tend to accept them. Then, they completed measures of anti-atheist sentiment, allowing the researchers to assess whether perceived group norms shaped their attitudes.

Across all five studies, results consistently supported the identity-signaling account. In Studies 1 and 2, participants rated fictional individuals as significantly more religious when they expressed anti-atheist views. Specifically, those who refused to date atheists or stated they distrusted atheists were seen as more devout compared to individuals who expressed openness or trust. These differences were exceptionally large in magnitude, indicating that anti-atheist statements were strong cues for perceived religiosity.

Study 3 revealed that people do in fact adjust their own attitudes toward atheists depending on whether they wish to appear more or less religious. Participants who strongly identified with their religion were more likely to endorse anti-atheist statements when instructed to signal their religious identity and less likely to do so when instructed to hide it.

In Study 4, imagining affiliation with an atheist, whether in private or public, triggered stronger identity-threat responses among highly committed Christians. They anticipated greater emotional discomfort and felt more inauthentic, particularly in public settings, suggesting that even hypothetical proximity to atheists could threaten their religious identity. Study 5 further demonstrated that anti-atheist prejudice is malleable: participants reported lower prejudice when led to believe that most Christians accept atheists, but only if they strongly identified as Christian.

Participant samples were limited to U.S. college students, predominantly identifying as Christian, which may limit the generalizability of the findings.

The research, “Tell me you’re religious without saying you’re religious: An identity-signaling account of prejudice against atheists,” was authored by Joshua T. Lambert, Charlotte Kinrade, Danielle E. Wahlers, Braden Hall, and William Hart.