Willful Suspension of Belief
Religious prejudice from the perspective of social psychology

Prepared for:
PSYC 6211
Week 8 Application

The morning of January 20, 2009, I stood on the lawn of the Mall with nearly 2 million other spectators to witness Barack Obama’s inauguration as the President of the United States. Nearness to people from varied backgrounds inevitably led to interesting conversations — about social issues, the economy, and finally religion. During the inaugural address, I heard this: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers” (Obama, 2009, ¶47). My new acquaintances exclaimed, “hey, that’s you!” on the new President’s mention of nonbelievers. I was simply glad to be explicitly included in a venue that would typically deny (at best ignore) my existence.

photo by Daniel Marsula/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Not everyone experienced my reaction. One religious leader accused President Obama of trying to redefine who we are as a nation. In his words, we are “distinctly Christian” (Hennenberger, 2009, ¶5). In reality, the existence of “In God We Trust” on our currency and “under God” in our pledge has a short history – since the Eisenhower administration, when they were added (in part) as a means of distinguishing Americans from ‘godless Communists’ (Bates, 2004). According to research from the University of Minnesota, “atheists are the most distrusted and disliked minority group in the country” (Niose, 2008, p.17). In a recent Gallup poll, atheists were the minority that Americans were least likely to consider when voting for a President of the United States (45%), well below women (88%), Mormons (72%), and even homosexuals (55%) (Jones, 2007). At prominent levels, this bias continues. President Eisenhower insisted that government makes no sense without deeply-held religious beliefs (‘Religion,’ 2006). While presidential candidate Romney declared, “a person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith” (Allen, 2007, ¶11), he prefaced that by statements that our constitution was written for religious people and that religion is necessary for freedom’s existence (Allen, 2007).

Why are nonbelievers distrusted? Understanding what drives people to accept and like others helps provide perspective.

Schemas/Stereotypes.
Many people have a preconceived notion of what non-believing people look like and behave. While schemas and stereotypes facilitate understanding a world that would otherwise seem too complex, they also can lead people to erroneous judgment (Weiten, 2007). For instance, some hold the idea that without belief in God, atheists are necessarily immoral people (Silverman, 2009).

Illusory Correlation
According to Weiten (2007), people often overestimate how frequently they see expected traits portrayed by stereotyped groups. This leads to confirmation bias, believing one’s own hypothesis based on subjective (albeit, inaccurate) experience. Someone who views Richard Dawkins spewing dozens of negative adjectives about their God may feel that their existing idea of nonbelievers (“atheists are angry and rude”) has been confirmed. They are less likely to remember (or even know) the many times throughout their life that a nonbeliever has held open a door, coached little league, or let them pass in traffic.

Ingroup/Outgroup
By sheer number —around 10% of the American population (‘U.S. Religious,’ 2008) — nonbelievers are more often than not part of an outgroup. During most of human history, sticking close to members of one’s own group has helped to ensure survival. Because of this history, we are instinctively drawn to those who are like us (ingroup). We tend to avoid those who are markedly different from us – or perceived as such (Weiten, 2007).

Attribution Assumptions
When assigning reasoning behind behavior, humans tend to be more forgiving of themselves and of people who are recognized as being “like them.” Alternately, negative actions by an unknown person (or member of an outgroup) are typically labeled as internally motivated. The SUV with a fish on it ran a red light? He must be in a hurry (external attribution). The minivan with the Flying Spaghetti Monster? She’s recklessly disrespectful of the law (internal attribution) (Weiten, 2007). To be fair, I have to admit my own bias here; I might assign the label “hypocrite” to the fish-wearing SUV that cuts me off in traffic!

Similarity of Perceived Experience
We are drawn to those who are like us; our friends and intimates are most often people from similar backgrounds, with similar interests (Weiten, 2007). That said, even more important is the perception of shared experience. Research has demonstrated people prefer objectively dissimilar people who are perceived to have the same subjective experiences as them, even beyond their preference for those who are like them. That is to say, I may come from a background much like Person A, while Person B is quite different. But, because Persons A and B share a similar use of Sunday mornings (church attendance), Person A will likely have a more positive mental image of Person B than of me (Pinel, et al., 2006).

Attitude
Society’s attitude toward atheists has three main components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. It is possible to cognitively hold a positive attitude toward a nonbeliever (“I recognize the right of this person to believe what they believe.”) while still having negative affective (“Atheists scare and disgust me.”) and behavioral (“I will not hire anyone who is a nonbeliever.”) components (Weiten, 2007). The affective – or emotional – portion of attitude has been shown to be more predictive of behavior than intellectual attitudes (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007).

From a review of social psychological principles, it is clear why nonbelievers are still considered a pariah by many, and why the idea of electing an atheist President seems far-fetched. Fortunately, social psychology also indicates what can change nonbelievers’ status. Obama’s “shout-out” in his inaugural address is a powerful start. When a respected person models the behavior of acknowledging nonbelievers, viewers are conditioned to (consciously or otherwise) become more accepting (Weiten, 2007). In my daily life, I am aware of how my own positive interactions can spark cognitive dissonance in people who may otherwise expect nonbelievers to be despicable people. I have watched as my own parents have struggled with the tension between the competing ideas of “Atheists are evil” and “Our daughter is a good person and mother.” Education and awareness are also important. Affective attitudes more strongly influence current attitudes, but intellectually chosen changes of attitude (central) are more robust and long-lasting than emotionally-driven changes (peripheral) (Weiten, 2007).

This does not mean that addressing the affective component of attitudes is unimportant. To the contrary, a high level of perceived warmth of a person or group increases the likelihood that others will help and protect them and decreases how likely others are to actively hurt them (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007). Because atheists are often thought of as cold and impersonal, this is an opportunity for change. One blogger I know labeled himself as the “Friendly Atheist.” The title of his blog alone give some visiting believers a pause to consider how they treat him. Nel Noddings (2008) cites author E. O. Wilson as another example of how nonbelievers can project warmth. “It is clear that Wilson shares with Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens a skepticism toward religious belief. But he wants to communicate and to solicit cooperation on a project of vital interest to humanity” (p.373). By becoming more accessible and approachable, atheists become more sympathetic characters.

In 1987, then-Vice President Bush said to a reporter, “I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God” (O’Hair, unknown, ¶2; Sherman, 2007). At this year’s national prayer breakfast, President Obama twice mentioned the existence of non-believing citizens and acknowledged their right to abstain from religion (‘Godless,’ 2009). However one describes those for whom faith is not a part of their lives — agnostic, atheist, secularist, nontheist, freethinker, humanist, or any number of other monikers —society is beginning to change so that prejudice toward them is less acceptable. I hold out for the time we can honestly say we live in a post-theological (Niose, 2008) world.

References

Allen, M. (2007). “Romney: Freedom requires religion.” Politico, December 7, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7238.html

Bates, S. (2004). “Godless communism” and its legacies. Society, March/April 2004. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from Academic Search Premier.

Cuddy, A.J.C., Fiske, S.T., Glick, P. (2007). The BIAS map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 4, 631-648. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from Academic Search Premier.

‘Godless watch, continued,’ 2009. Democracy in America blog. The Economist. Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/02/
godless_watch_continued.cfm

Hennenberger, M. (2009). Obama’s nonbeliever nod unsettles some. AOL News. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from http://news.aol.com/main/obama-presidency/article/obamas-nonbeliever-nod-during/316339

Jones, J. (2007). Some Americans reluctant to vote for Mormon, 72-year-old presidential candidates. Gallup News Service. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from http://www.gallup.com/poll/26611/
Some-Americans-Reluctant-Vote-Mormon-72YearOld-Presidential-Candidates.aspx

Niose, D. (2008). The post-theological umbrella. Humanist, January-February 2008. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from Academic Search Premier.

Noddings, N. (2008). The new outspoken atheism and education. Harvard Educational Review; Summer 2008; 78, 2; Research Library p. 369. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from ProQuest Online.

Obama, B. H. (2009). Inaugural address. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

O’Hair, M. (unknown). The history of the issue. Positive Atheism. Retrieved February 6, 2009, from http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/ghwbush.htm

Pinel, E.C., Long, A.E., Landau, M.J., Alexander, K., Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006, Vol.90, No. 2, 243-257. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from Academic Search Premier.

‘Religious belief quotes’ (2006). Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://thinkexist.com/
quotes/with/keyword/religious_belief/

Ruscio, J. (2006). Critical Thinking in Psychology: Separating Sense from Nonsense (Second Ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth , Cengage Learning.

Sherman, R. (2007). Documents at Bush presidential library prove VP Bush questioned citizenship and patriotism of atheists. Retrieved February 6, 2009, from http://www.robsherman.com/
advocacy/060401a.htm

Silverman, D. (2009). Top ten atheist myths. American Atheists. Retrieved February 6, 2009, from http://www.atheists.org/Top_Ten_Atheist_Myths

Weiten, W. (2008) Psychology: Themes and variations. Briefer version. (7th ed.). Belmont, California: Thomson Higher Education.

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (2008). The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Retrieved December 17, 2008, from http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

I left home this morning to drop Maya at her school/daycare, and brought along a van load of toys/baby gear to donate to a local organization, the Family Strengths Network. They have a lending library, and I’d much rather give my items locally. (Besides, even if I went to Santa Fe, the Goodwill doesn’t take toys…WTF?) The gal at FSN happily accepted the toys, but suggested that I might want to take the baby gear (jumper, boppy pillow, bouncy seat) to Hope Pregnancy Center. She gave me directions, and I headed down the road. (Los Alamos is a small town. Everything is usually on Trinity, Central, or Diamond. That’s it.)

As I pulled out, it hit me: Hope Pregnancy Center. Uh-oh. I pulled up, and discovered that the center didn’t open for another half-hour, and annoyingly, their literature was in the (locked) office instead of in the building lobby. Ah, but a woman working there, saw me and rushed to the door to greet me anyway. After trying to pick up the basic literature (and saying “no thanks” to the parenting class info), I explained that no, I wasn’t “in trouble” (so she could put her worried and concerned expression away). I simply had some donation items, but I wanted to understand who they were before I decided whether to give. She tried to have me sit to visit, and I explained that I had my baby in my van, so I didn’t have time.

Yup, it’s a crisis pregnancy center. To their credit, there were no gory pictures or overtly-religious items all around. No, they don’t refer for abortions or birth control (BIG red flag to me — I can understand if they don’t refer for abortions, but birth control? Um, what?). And, no, she insisted, they weren’t judgmental toward people at all — if someone did have an abortion, they offered counseling afterward because “statistics show that abortion causes emotional trauma.”

Me: “Actually, no. Statistics don’t show that.”

Her: (Continue insistently, not cluing in that maybe I’m not the right person to give this speech to).

Me: (twice, before she stopped talking) “Um, I really think I need to leave now.”

Guess I need to keep hunting around. I think it’s wonderful that places exist that will help girls/women with unplanned pregnancies. But, if that place is going to work from a basis of misinformation (despite what their web site says), they’re not getting my donation.

Anyone need a jumper, bouncy seat, and a boppy pillow?

Via Sullivan, I found this chart at Secular Right analyzing people’s political party identification and tendency toward prayer:

One commenter ran the *staggering* numbers:

I just ran some numbers. Allowing for the persistent petitioners who pester him/her/it several times a day, we can assume it averages well over 200M prayers a day. Assuming an average length of a prayer at one minute, that means it averages processing about 139K simultaneous prayers 24/7/365 just on the American circuit. When one considers the peaks around bedtimes, disasters, and final exams, that would take some serious bandwidth, to say nothing of multitasking processing power.

All it leads me to think is that it certainly explains the wait times on the prayer line:

.
.

Nothing profound to say about these; just need a spot to hold on to them for future thought and musing.

These, on religion and morality:

• Religion and Morality (I Drew This)
• Religion and Morality: The Home Front (Secular Right – Reality and Reason)

A bonus link on Evolutionary Psychology:

• Intelligent have ‘better sperm’

I’m hoping to gain access to full text of the journal article that last one considers; this week’s topic in Contemporary Issues in Psych is Bio/Evo Psych.

Received:

“This is a matter of opinion and opinions are like (well you know) everybody has one. My personal opinion? I agree. If after reading this email you disagree, Please, no need to reply back to me. Your opinion is yours and that’s fine, just delete it.
*******************************
A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine that America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves. Pause a moment, reflect back. These events are actual events from history.. They really happened!!! Do you remember?

1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male extremist.

2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim male extremists.

3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim male
extremists.

4. During the 1980’s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim male extremists.

5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim male extremists.

6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim male extremists.

7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver
trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim male extremists.
(remember the pilot of this flight was from Richmond, MO)

8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim male extremists.

9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim male extremists .

10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim male extremists.

11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take down the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim male extremists.

12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim male extremists.

13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by– you guessed it– Muslim male extremists.

No, I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to
ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people… Absolutely No Profiling!

They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President’s security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males alone lest they be guilty of profiling.

According to The Book of Revelations: The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40’s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal… the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, he will destroy everything.

And Now: For the award winning Act of Stupidity Of all times the People of America want to elect, to the most Powerful position on the face of the Planet — The Presidency of the United states of America .. A Male of Muslim descent who is the most extremely liberal Senator in Congress (in other words an extremist) and in his 40’s.

Have the American People completely lost their Minds, or just their Power of Reason??? I’m sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the ‘unknown’ candidate Obama.

Let’s send this to as many people as we can so that the Gloria Aldreds and other stupid attorneys along with Federal Justices that want to thwart common sense, feel ashamed of themselves — if they have any such sense. As the writer of the award winning story ‘Forest Gump’ so aptly put it, ‘Stupid Is As Stupid Does’.

Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet…do it! or again. . . just delete.”

My response:

You really like to be afraid, don’t you?

Take a quick look here. This tripe (the part about Barack, anyway) is entirely incorrect, Biblically speaking. Read your Bible. I suggest 2 Timothy 1:7 as a good place to start.

2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

I should mention at this point how glad I am to no longer be involved in this kind of crazy-making fear-inspiring religion. (Or any, for that matter, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this post.) One other point of interest (to me, at least) is that I received this blindly (sender sent to self, with me in the bcc: field) from someone to whom I’d already given a request to cut it out with political emails. The level of passive-aggression in her intro comments (before the forwarded portion) is off the charts. Oh, yes. That’s perfectly fine for you to spam me with this nonsense, then to instruct that if I disagree, I shouldn’t reply.

What.Ev.Er.

The best response I’ve heard about the idea that Barack Obama might (clutch pearls) be a Muslim (ohnoes!) came from General Colin Powell last week on Meet the Press:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

click to view the
full photo essay

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

Exactly. What if Senator Obama *were* Muslim? And?

Via the Humanist Symposium, I found one of the clearest and most concise descriptions of natural human morality that I’ve ever read. Here’s a bit:

Our concept that there is such a thing as right and wrong is hardwired into us by our evolution. We have a sort of universal “moral grammar”, but not a universal “moral language”. For instance: The notion it is wrong to harm an innocent person is universal, but specific notions of who is innocent and who is not innocent are far from being universal.

Read the rest here. As a non-theist who frequently hears from family that it’s “impossible” to find morality without God, this makes so much sense to me.

Rather than coming up with a title on my own, I’ll steal the title of the post I’m linking. Via Carnival of the Godless, I came across Holy Smoke at A Load of Bright. He compares quitting religion (as I did through December, then formally announced as of the first of 2007) to quitting smoking (which I did almost instantly in January 2004, even before I knew I was pregnant). It’s a striking comparison to me — one that resonates with me.

A sampling:

One question that is often asked of atheists is, “how are you going to replace religion? People need religion. If you take it away, what are you going to put in its place?” Many atheists answer this question on face value, normally with an outline of secular humanism. This is correct in a sense, but the question is actually heavily loaded. It assumes that people need religion. Do they really?

I used to think I needed cigarettes like I needed food. At times, when I was broke in university, I would scrape pennies from the floor of my car and the backs of couches to buy cigarettes while my cupboards were bare. “I need a cigarette”, I’d tell my bemused housemates, “I need one”. When you smoke, you are imbibing poison into your body. If there is one thing that, by definition, your body never needs, it is poison. I didn’t need a cigarette. I needed food. If you don’t eat, you die. If you don’t smoke, not only do you not die, you live longer! It’s easy for me to say that now, but at the time I was convinced that it was an essential.

Just as we are all born atheists, we are all born non-smokers. Do people really need religion, or do they just not know any better? Obviously, not all people need religion – the existence of happy atheists proves that. So why would some people need it and not others?

Over time, I’ve found myself filled with nearly zero angst about my walking away from religion in general, Christianity in particular. When I first even contemplated (not out loud, even — just in my head) the idea that God might just not be, the emptiness wasn’t unlike the craving for a cigarette — a loss that, had I not fed an addiction, I wouldn’t have ever recognized.

These days, when I consider religion, it’s largely in relation to how I’m raising my daughter, and how I can coach her to think critically about everything she encounters, even “truths” that I might tell her. Someday, she might be atheist/agnostic. She might be Christian. She might be Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, or a New Age flake. Whichever she becomes, my wish is that she will have spent time genuinely considering *why* she believes what she does.