Study Shows Atheists Are More Likely to Treat Christians Fairly Than Christians Treat Atheists

Psychologists have long understood that people often favor their own group, a phenomenon known as ingroup bias. However, a fresh study from Ohio University shows that atheists might be defying this common tendency to counter the stereotype of being immoral.

In their research, psychologists found that while Christians exhibited an ingroup bias toward fellow Christians in an economic game, atheists did not show similar bias toward other atheists. The findings were published on July 10 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Colleen Cowgill, the study’s lead author and a PhD student, explains, “The rise of the so-called ‘New Atheists’ about a decade ago coupled with the ongoing ‘culture wars’ between religious and secular groups in the United States has led atheists as a population to gain an unprecedented level of visibility in this country in recent years, even as their prevalence has only incrementally increased. This has sparked a particular interest in anti-atheist prejudice research in social psychology.”

Cowgill adds that atheists face widespread stereotypes of being immoral and untrustworthy, a label many understandably find troubling. “My primary interest was in how atheists themselves respond to these negative stereotypes,” she said.

Psychological research has shown that individuals subjected to negative stereotypes don’t simply accept them. Instead, they often react in ways that challenge these perceptions. “Psychological research has demonstrated repeatedly that individuals facing negative stereotypes are not passive observers of this social landscape, but rather are impacted and react in a dynamic way to negative group-level judgments important to their identities,” Cowgill told PsyPost.

She highlights the concept of stereotype threat—the fear that one’s performance will confirm a negative stereotype about their group, leading to decreased performance regardless of actual ability. Cowgill also refers to identity threat, where discrimination or disparagement based on group membership forces individuals to act in ways that challenge negative stereotypes.

“It is this reasoning that led me to hypothesize that atheists’ behavior toward Christians in economic games might differ from Christians’ behavior toward atheists,” Cowgill explained. “In the same way that many White Americans are often stereotyped as racist and have consequently been shown by research to be particularly motivated to be liked by Black Americans during interracial interactions, I thought that atheists would be uniquely motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes about their amorality or untrustworthy nature during interactions with Christians.”

To test this, Cowgill chose an economic game to measure behaviors such as generosity and fairness—traits tied to ideas of morality. The results supported her hypothesis: “In multiple studies, our atheist participants behaved more fairly toward partners they believed were Christians than our Christian participants behaved toward partners they believed were atheists.”

However, these effects disappeared when religious identities were concealed. “Under those conditions, atheists and Christians demonstrated the same typically observed in-group bias, which rules out the possibility that the results could be entirely explained due to discrimination on the part of the Christians,” Cowgill noted.

The experiment used a modified version of the Dictator Game, where one participant (the “dictator”) decides how to share a monetary reward with another who can only accept what is offered. In a pilot study with 205 participants, people assumed that atheists would treat Christians unfairly. But in three experiments involving nearly 1,200 U.S. residents, the opposite turned out to be true.

Cowgill reflects, “I think that the average person should understand how the stereotypes saturating our society can create a variety of underlying subtexts during interactions between individuals, often leading people to maintain differential goals when they communicate and cooperate.”

She continues, “Oftentimes, we’re not even directly aware of these dynamics. We absorb what our society reflects to us about how to perceive groups of people, how to perceive ourselves, and how others view us, then we carry these expectations with us into our everyday interactions, leading to myriad unexpected outcomes both positive and negative.”

When participants’ religious affiliations were known, Christians gave more money to fellow Christians than to atheists. However, atheists did not show the same bias; they gave equally to atheists and Christians. When participants’ religious identities were concealed, atheists gave more to fellow atheists, possibly feeling less pressure to counteract the stereotype of being immoral. Christian participants’ behavior remained unchanged.

“In this case, atheists appear to have been motivated by negative stereotypes to behave more prosocially,” Cowgill said. “Although that may seem like a net positive, the mechanisms at work here may carry some more troublesome implications.”

She added, “I think it is quite telling that atheists are perhaps so acutely aware of negative stereotypes about themselves that there are observable differences in their behavior as compared with Christians in even this small, low-stakes type of interaction. Arguably, they are on some level aware of a pretty serious stigma about their identity.”

Cowgill raises an important question: “Might that stigma consciousness create obstacles for a talented atheist interested in doing something like running for political office or spearheading a charitable organization—endeavors that could be said to require a trustworthy reputation?” She suggests that these hidden costs of negative stereotyping are still largely unrecognized.

The study has its limitations. “It’s always worthwhile to keep in mind that the differences in behavior observed here between Christians and atheists, while unlikely due to chance given the number of participants and replications, may be explained by some alternative narrative the researchers have overlooked,” Cowgill said. “We did our best to rule out alternative explanations, such as that atheists were simply being discriminated against by Christians, but of course complete certainty can never be achieved.”

Some critics have questioned whether atheists even see themselves as part of a cohesive group. Cowgill suggests, “I think future work should continue to explore how atheists, agnostics, or religious minorities, such as Muslims, are impacted and respond to negative stereotypes or even outright discrimination towards their groups.” She further proposes that future studies look into the potential downsides of this stereotype awareness, such as whether it leads to stereotype threat in moral tasks or causes long-term negative health effects.

In the end, Cowgill stresses the need for more research into how these stereotypes and the behaviors they inspire affect individuals: “Future work should also look at the some of the downsides to awareness of these negative stereotypes about one’s group. Do atheists demonstrate stereotype threat effects in tasks described as being related to moral competence? Does stigma consciousness limit atheists or religious minorities in a significant way or lead to negative health outcomes? All of these questions remain largely unexplored or in need of more in-depth research.”

The study, “Generous heathens? Reputational concerns and atheists’ behavior toward Christians in economic games“, was also co-authored by Kimberly Rios and Ain Simpson.