True Believers
Evaluating Resistance toward Muslim American Political Integration
Brian Calfano, Nazita Lajevardi & Melissa Michelson
Politics and Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Muslims in the United States are often constructed as anti-American and are perceived to have little engagement with politics. Moreover, Arab and Muslim identity is often conflated in the public mind. In this note, we introduce results from a randomized survey experiment conducted in three states with varying Muslim populations — Ohio, California, and Michigan — to assess how trustworthy respondents rate a local community leader calling for unity when that individual signals themselves to be an Arab, Muslim, or Arab Muslim, as opposed to when they do not signal their background. Across the board, and in each state, respondents rate the community leader as less trustworthy when he is identified as Muslim American or as Arab Muslim, but not when he is identified as Arab. These results suggest that the public does not conflate these two identities and that Muslims are evaluated more negatively than Arabs, even when hearing about their prosocial democratic behavior.
Racialized Religion and Judicial Injustice: How Whiteness and Biblicist Christianity Intersect to Promote a Preference for (Unjust) Punishment
Samuel Perry & Andrew Whitehead
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
America's judicial system is both exceptionally punitive and demonstrably unjust toward racial minorities. While these dual realities are structured into America's institutions, we propose they are also partially sustained by the intersection of ideologies that are both racialized and sacralized. Using multiple waves of the General Social Surveys and a unique measure that asks Americans to choose between two forms of judicial injustice (wrongful conviction or erroneous acquittal), we examine how white racial identity intersects with biblical literalism to bolster America's bent toward unjust punitiveness. In the main effects, Americans who affirm biblical literalism are more likely to show a preference for convicting the innocent, as are whites compared to Black Americans. Examining interaction effects, however, we find whiteness moderates the influence of biblical literalism such that only white biblical literalists (as opposed to non‐white biblical literalists or white non‐biblical literalists) are more likely to prefer wrongful conviction. Indeed, in our full model, being a white biblical literalist is the strongest predictor of preferring wrongful conviction. We theorize that preference for wrongful conviction over erroneous acquittal stems, at least in part, from the combination of sacralized authoritarianism and perceived racial threat.
Protecting America’s borders: Christian nationalism, threat, and attitudes toward immigrants in the United States
Rosemary Al-Kire et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies are divisive issues in American politics. These attitudes are influenced by factors such as political orientation and religiousness, with religious and conservative individuals demonstrating higher prejudice toward immigrants and refugees, and endorsing stricter immigration policies. Christian nationalism, an ideology marked by the belief that America is a Christian nation, may help explain how religious nationalist identity influences negative attitudes toward immigrants. The current research addresses this through four studies among participants in the US. Across studies, our results showed that Christian nationalism was a significant and consistent predictor of anti-immigrant stereotypes, prejudice, dehumanization, and support for anti-immigrant policies. These effects were robust to inclusion of other sources of anti-immigrant attitudes, including religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and political ideology. Further, perceived threats from immigrants mediated the relationship between Christian nationalism and dehumanization of immigrants, and attitudes toward immigration policies. These findings have implications for our understanding of the relations between religious nationalism and attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy in the US, as well as in other contexts.
Racial Dynamics of Congregations and Communities: A Longitudinal Analysis of United Methodist Congregations, 1990–2010
Kevin Dougherty, Gerardo Martí & Todd Ferguson
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
A large body of research documents the difficulty congregations have in creating and sustaining racially diverse memberships. However, little scholarship explores the overlapping consequences of racial change in congregations and neighborhoods over time. Since the number of all-white neighborhoods has fallen sharply in recent decades, we ask in this study: what are the consequences of racial change in congregations and neighborhoods on congregational attendance? We employ longitudinal data from over 20,000 United Methodist congregations between 1990 and 2010 paired with census tract data for the same time period. We use growth curve models to test three hypotheses derived from Organizational Ecology Theory. While Methodist churches have decreasing attendance, we find that racial diversity inside a church is associated with higher average attendance by year and across years. Outside a church, percent white in the neighborhood positively predicts attendance, at least in the short term. Both white and nonwhite Methodist churches have higher attendance when located in white neighborhoods; white churches in nonwhite neighborhoods fare the worst. Our conclusion discusses these patterns and highlights the complexities of accommodating racial differences in congregations amidst ongoing demographic changes outside their doors.
The Hidden Cost of Prayer: Religiosity and the Gender Wage Gap
Traci Sitzmann & Elizabeth Campbell
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Religion is a preeminent social institution that meaningfully shapes cultures. Prevailing theory suggests that it is primarily a benevolent force in business, and differences across world religions preclude examining effects that thread across religions. We develop a theoretical account that fundamentally challenges these assumptions by explaining how and why religiosity — regardless of which religion is prominent — differentiates based on gender, widening the gender wage gap. Guided by an integrated review of the religion literature, we specify three dimensions of gender differentiation — social domains, sexuality, and agency — that explain why religiosity widens the gender wage gap. A series of studies tested our theoretical model. Two studies showcased the predictive power of religiosity on the gender wage gap across 140 countries worldwide and the 50 United States via gender-differentiated social domains, sexuality, and agency, explaining 37% of the variance in the wage gap. U.S. longitudinal data indicated the gender wage gap is narrowing significantly faster in secular states. Moreover, experiments allowed for causal inference, revealing that gender-egalitarian interventions blocked the effect of religiosity on the gender wage gap. Finally, theoretical and empirical evidence converge to suggest that religiosity’s effect on the gender wage gap applies across the major world religions.
Is There Anything Good About Atheists? Exploring Positive and Negative Stereotypes of the Religious and Nonreligious
Jordan Moon, Jaimie Arona Krems & Adam Cohen
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Negative stereotypes about atheists are widespread, robust, rooted in distrust, and linked to discrimination. Here, we examine whether social perceivers in the United States might additionally hold any positive stereotypes about atheists (and corresponding negative stereotypes of the religious). Experiments 1 (N = 401) and 2 (N = 398, preregistered) used methods of intuitive stereotypes (the conjunction fallacy). People tended to stereotype atheists as fun, open-minded, and scientific — even as they harbor extreme intuitive anti-atheist prejudice in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 (N = 382) used a quasi-behavioral partner-choice paradigm, finding that most people choose atheist (vs. religious) partners in stereotype-relevant domains. Overall, results suggest that people simultaneously possess negative and also positive stereotypes about atheists, but that corresponding negative stereotypes of the religious may be even stronger. These effects are robust among the nonreligious and somewhat religious, but evidence is mixed about whether the highly religious harbor these positive stereotypes.
Political Congregations, Race, and Environmental Policy Attitudes
Khari Brown, Edwin Eschler & Ronald Brown
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data from eight surveys collected between 1996 and 2016, this study examines race differences in the association between hearing sermons about environmental and other social‐political issues and support for policies aimed at protecting the environment. While accounting for religious faith, political partisanship, and social‐demographic characteristics, we find that Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to hear sermons about environmental and other social‐political issues. However, hearing such messages more strongly associates with Whites supporting environmental conservation policies than it does for Blacks and Hispanics.
United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect
Sarah Charles et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2021
Abstract:
Religious rituals are associated with health benefits, potentially produced via social bonding. It is unknown whether secular rituals similarly increase social bonding. We conducted a field study with individuals who celebrate secular rituals at Sunday Assemblies and compared them with participants attending Christian rituals. We assessed levels of social bonding and affect before and after the rituals. Results showed the increase in social bonding taking place in secular rituals is comparable to religious rituals. We also found that both sets of rituals increased positive affect and decreased negative affect, and that the change in positive affect predicted the change in social bonding observed. Together these results suggest that secular rituals might play a similar role to religious ones in fostering feelings of social connection and boosting positive affect.
Posterior medial frontal cortex and threat-enhanced religious belief: A replication and extension
Colin Holbrook et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, December 2020, Pages 1361–1367
Abstract:
Research indicates that the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) functions as a ‘neural alarm’ complex broadly involved in registering threats and helping to muster relevant responses. Holbrook and colleagues investigated whether pMFC similarly mediates ideological threat responses, finding that downregulating pMFC via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) caused (i) less avowed religious belief despite being reminded of death and (ii) less group bias despite encountering a sharp critique of the national in-group. While suggestive, these findings were limited by the absence of a non-threat comparison condition and reliance on sham rather than control TMS. Here, in a pre-registered replication and extension, we downregulated pMFC or a control region (MT/V5) and then primed participants with either a reminder of death or a threat-neutral topic. As mentioned previously, participants reminded of death reported less religious belief when pMFC was downregulated. No such effect of pMFC downregulation was observed in the neutral condition, consistent with construing pMFC as monitoring for salient threats (e.g. death) and helping to recruit ideological responses (e.g. enhanced religious belief). However, no effect of downregulating pMFC on group bias was observed, possibly due to reliance on a collegiate in-group framing rather than a national framing as in the prior study.
Religion and Educational Mobility in Africa
Alberto Alesina et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2020
Abstract:
This paper offers a comprehensive account of the intergenerational transmission of education across religious groups in Africa, home to some of the world’s largest Christian and Muslim communities. First, we use census data from 20 countries to construct new upward and downward religion-specific intergenerational mobility (IM) statistics. Christian boys and girls have much higher upward and lower downward mobility than Muslims and Animists. Muslims perform well only in a handful of countries where they are small minorities. Second, we trace the roots of these disparities. Although family structures differ across faiths, this variation explains only a small fraction of the observed IM inequities (roughly 12%). Inter-religious differences in occupational specialization and urban residence do not play any role. In contrast, regional features explain nearly half of the imbalances in educational mobility. Third, we isolate the causal impact of regions from spatial sorting exploiting information on children whose households moved when they were at different ages during childhood. Irrespective of the religious identity, regional exposure effects are present for all children moving before 12. Fourth, we map and characterize the religious IM gaps across thousands of African regions. Among numerous regional geographic, economic, and historical features, the district's Muslim share is the most important correlate. Children adhering to Islam underperform Christians in areas with substantial Muslim communities. Fifth, survey data reveal that Muslims display stronger in-group preferences and place a lower valuation on education. Our findings call for more research on the origins of religious segregation and the role of religion-specific, institutional, and social conventions on education and opportunity.