Contemplating Death Leads To The Derogation Of Atheists

Event Center BC

Discrimination towards atheists is an often understudied form of discrimination. Recent research has suggested that existential fear (e.g., the fear of death/non-being) may be driving prejudice towards atheists (Cook, 2015). Research to date has focused on negative perceptions of atheists rather than examining how evaluations of atheists may be influenced by the salience of death- related thoughts. The current study (N=138) examines how mortality salience influences the evaluation of an atheist target. Participants were first randomly assigned to write about dying or dental pain. They then were randomly assigned to evaluate an atheist or gamer (control). Results showed that individuals in the mortality salience condition evaluated the atheist target less positively than any of the other condition (F(1, 131) = 4.27, p = .04). Implications for terror management theory are discussed.