New study finds atheists and agnostics equally stereotyped as immoral

In a recent study published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, researchers investigated whether stereotypes of immorality are associated with agnostics to the same degree as atheists. The findings revealed that both groups are similarly perceived as immoral when compared to Christians, challenging the notion that agnostics are viewed more favorably than atheists.

Atheism and agnosticism are two distinct positions concerning belief in God or gods. Atheism is characterized by a lack of belief in the existence of any deities. Atheists do not subscribe to the idea that gods or supernatural beings exist, often relying on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to inform their worldview.

Agnosticism, on the other hand, is the position that the existence of God or gods is unknown or unknowable. Agnostics maintain that it is impossible to have certain knowledge about the divine, either due to the limitations of human understanding or because such knowledge is inherently inaccessible.

Despite their differences, atheists and agnostics often find themselves grouped together as nonreligious individuals. However, this grouping overlooks the nuanced distinctions between their beliefs. Atheists explicitly reject the existence of deities, while agnostics remain open to the possibility but doubt the certainty of such knowledge. This distinction is crucial in understanding how each group is perceived and treated in society.

The prevalence of nonreligious individuals in the United States has risen, with atheists and agnostics making up a significant portion of the population. Despite this, atheists remain one of the least accepted minority groups and face ongoing discrimination, largely due to the stereotype that they lack a moral compass.

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This stereotype is rooted in the supernatural monitoring hypothesis, which suggests that people behave more morally when they believe they are being watched by a supernatural entity. However, the nonreligious are a diverse group, and it is unclear if stereotypes of immorality are applied uniformly across different nonreligious identities, such as atheists and agnostics.

Previous research has extensively examined stereotypes about atheists, but agnostics have often been overlooked despite their larger representation in the population. This study aimed to address this gap by comparing people’s inclinations to associate immorality with atheists, agnostics, and Christians.

“Self-identified agnostics are as common in the United States as self-identified atheists. However, stereotypes about agnostics have been investigated to a much lesser extent than atheists,” explained study author Dr. Veronica Bergstrom, who conducted the research at the University of Toronto.

“Our past work suggested, both qualitatively and quantitatively, that agnostics are stereotyped as immoral, but to a lesser degree than atheists. Therefore, in the present study, we were interested in assessing whether stereotypes of immorality are applied to agnostics to a lesser degree than atheists.”

To explore these stereotypes, the researchers employed a conjunction fallacy paradigm, which tests how people use mental shortcuts to associate group members with various stereotypes. Participants read vignettes describing individuals engaging in different levels of immoral behavior and were asked to judge the likelihood of these individuals belonging to specific (non)religious groups. This method helps reveal implicit biases by relying on automatic cognitive processes rather than explicit judgments.

The study involved two parts: the first assessed how likely people were to attribute immoral behavior to atheists, agnostics, and Christians, while the second focused on attributing moral behavior. Participants were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, resulting in a final sample of 353 individuals for the first study and 384 for the second. They were presented with vignettes and asked to choose between two options: a person with a certain occupation or a person with that occupation who also belonged to a specified (non)religious group.

The researchers found that participants were more likely to attribute immoral behaviors to atheists and agnostics compared to Christians. This finding was consistent across varying degrees of immoral acts described in the vignettes, which ranged from relatively minor infractions (academic cheating) to severe transgressions (murdering and dismembering homeless people).

There was no significant difference between the number of conjunction errors made for atheists and agnostics, suggesting that both groups are equally associated with immorality. This result challenges the common perception that agnostics might be viewed more favorably than atheists due to their less definitive stance on the existence of deities.

The second part of the study found that participants were more likely to attribute moral actions to Christians rather than to atheists or agnostics. Similar to the findings on immorality, there was no significant difference between atheists and agnostics in terms of the likelihood of being associated with moral behavior. This indicates that neither nonreligious group is perceived as particularly moral when compared to Christians.

“Although our past work suggested that agnostics are stereotyped as immoral to a lesser degree than atheists, the present study suggests that stereotypes of immorality are applied similarly to the two groups,” Bergstrom told PsyPost. “Given our past work that demonstrated participants’ explicit reports that agnostics are stereotyped as less immoral than atheists, we were surprised that the present study demonstrated that stereotypes of immorality were applied equally across both groups.”

Further analysis revealed that the biases were predominantly driven by theists. Participants who believed in God were more likely to make conjunction errors that associated immorality with atheists and agnostics and morality with Christians. In contrast, nonreligious participants (atheists and agnostics) did not show a significant bias in their judgments, suggesting that theists are more prone to demonstrate ingroup and outgroup biases based on religious identity.

“We did exploratory analyses that suggested that atheist and agnostic participants applied stereotypes of morality and immorality equally across atheists, agnostics, and Christians,” Bergstrom explained. “In contrast, theist participants applied stereotypes of morality and immorality equally to atheists and agnostics, but demonstrated a religious ingroup bias toward Christians compared with the two nonreligious groups. Although follow-up work is needed, these findings suggest that the association between atheism/agnosticism and immorality may be particularly driven by theist beliefs.”

The study, “Are agnostics associated with immorality to the same degree as atheists?“, was authored by Veronica N. Z. Bergstrom and Alison L. Chasteen.