ABSTRACT

Religious people tend to believe atheists are immoral. Although some work suggests that atheists themselves agree, such findings could also reflect symmetric ingroup bias in the moral domain, where atheists likewise view religious targets as untrustworthy and immoral. We examined how American religious and atheist participants rated the morality of atheist and religious targets and assessed a potential intervention: learning that targets adhere to a moral code. Across three studies, both religious and nonreligious participants demonstrated clear ingroup favoritism, rating ingroup targets more moral than outgroup targets. However, this ingroup bias was reduced when participants learned the target adheres to a warm and coherent moral system rooted in philosophy and concern for others. These findings extended beyond evaluations to downstream social consequences such as distancing. Such findings challenge arguments that atheists view themselves as immoral and point the way forward toward reducing religious ingroup bias.

摘要

宗教人士倾向于认为无神论者是不道德的。尽管一些工作表明无神论者自己同意，但这些发现也可能反映了道德领域的对称内群体偏见，无神论者同样认为宗教目标是不可信和不道德的。我们研究了美国宗教和无神论者如何评价无神论者和宗教目标的道德，并评估了一种潜在的干预措施：学习目标遵守道德准则。在三项研究中，宗教和非宗教参与者都表现出明显的内群体偏好，认为内群体目标比外群体目标更道德。然而，当参与者了解到目标坚持以哲学和对他人的关心为基础的温暖和连贯的道德体系时，这种内部偏见就会减少。这些发现超出了对下游社会后果的评估范围，例如疏远。这些发现挑战了无神论者认为自己不道德的论点，并为减少宗教内群体偏见指明了前进的方向。