NEW DELHI — People are significantly more likely to associate good deeds with religious believers rather than atheists. This psychological bias, which links kindness and helpfulness with faith, appears to be widespread across different cultures.
Previous research focused on the negative stereotype that associates atheism with immoral behaviour, such as assuming a serial killer is more likely to be an atheist than a religious believer.
However, the new studies, led by cognitive science graduate student Alex Dayer, University of California Merced explored the positive side of this mental association by examining the stereotype that extraordinarily good people are religious.
The findings were striking: US participants were almost 20 times more likely to guess that a helpful man believed in God than that he was an atheist, while New Zealand participants were 12 times more likely to make the same assumption. This bias linking religious belief with prosocial behaviour was much stronger than the inverse stereotype associating atheism with antisocial behaviour.
Colin Holbrook, a Professor in the university’s Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, explained that while people do intuitively link atheism with immoral behaviour, they associate believing in God with generosity, helpfulness, and caring to a much greater extent. This suggests that the stereotype of the moral person of faith may be a more powerful force than the stereotype of the immoral atheist.
The study's results align with a theory about the historical development of major world religions, which emphasises the role of belief in moralising gods in fostering cooperation and trust within religious communities.
While the experiments measured stereotypes rather than actual behaviour, Holbrook noted that the idea that religious believers are more likely to help others is a question that requires further research to determine its validity, although the debate continues to persist on the atheist and theist phenomenon because it has been theorised that morals are relative and operate beyond religious beliefs.