Psychology of Religion

Believers' prejudicial attitudes toward atheists is heavily influenced by one moral intuition, according to research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. The study of 630 U.S. Christians was based on the Moral Foundations Theory, which holds there are five...

People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods, a new study suggests – casting doubt on the idea that religious belief is a "default setting" for humans. Despite being written out of large parts of history,...

Are all scientists atheists? Do they believe religion and science can co-exist? These questions and others were addressed in the first worldwide survey of how scientists view religion, released today by researchers at Rice University. "No one today can deny...

American politicians who openly express religious views may be more successful because even voters who think that religion should not play a role in politics view them as more trustworthy compared with non-religious candidates, according to a study published in...

A recent study by researchers at Charles Sturt University suggests that the followers of different religions have different views on climate change, with Buddhists and Christian literalists on opposing ends of the spectrum. In the study, published in PLOS One,...

People are more likely to be influenced by a scientist who believes in harmony between religion and science than a scientist who sees the two in conflict, according to new research published in the journal Public Understanding of Science.  Carl Sagan, Stephen...

More and more people in the United States are casting aside religion and identifying as atheists -- yet polling has found that nearly half of Americans still wouldn't vote for a presidential candidate who didn't believe in God. Most Americans think atheists are...

Media and popular culture might portray religion and science as being at odds, but new research from Rice University suggests just the opposite. Findings from the recently completed study "Religious Understandings of Science (RUS)" reveal that despite many misconceptions regarding...

Do we need religion in order to be moral? George Washington cautioned against “indulg the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion”, and today more than half of Americans believe morality is impossible without a belief in God. The...

My idea of bliss is a Sunday walk that takes in first some English countryside, and second a pleasant medieval church, with some glass or woodwork or monuments. I once even wrote a piece, published in the Larkin journal, about...

New research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science has found that being exposed to the word God can increase risk-taking behaviors in some situations, even among those who don't believe in the divine creator. "Religion has great...

Research has shown that religious beliefs offer their adherents a variety of psychological benefits: from coping with stress to increasing self-control to promoting pro-social behaviors. But religious belief is on the decline in the Western world. What's an atheist to...

As much as social equality is advocated in the United States, a new study suggests that besides evaluating their own race and religion most favorably, people share implicit hierarchies for racial, religious, and age groups that may be different from their conscious,...

Oliver Burkeman explores human nature, violence, feminism and religion with one of the world’s most controversial cognitive scientists. Can he dent Steven Pinker’s optimism? In the week that I interview the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker in his...