Religious Americans Have Less Positive Attitudes Toward Science, but This Does Not Extend to Other Cultures

Abstract

It is commonly claimed that science and religion are logically and psychologically at odds with one another. However, previous studies have mainly examined American samples; therefore, generalizations about antagonism between religion and science may be unwarranted. We examined the correlation between religiosity and attitudes toward science across 11 studies including representative data from 60 countries ( N = 66,438), nine convenience samples from the United States ( N = 2,160), and a cross-national panel sample from five understudied countries ( N = 1,048). Results show that, within the United States, religiosity is consistently associated with lower interest in science topics and activities and less positive explicit and implicit attitudes toward science. However, this relationship is inconsistent around the world, with positive, negative, and null correlations being observed in various countries. Our findings are inconsistent with the idea that science and religion are necessarily at odds, undermining common theories of scientific advancement undermining religion.

The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

“…However, recent studies suggest that the negative relation between religiosity and trust in science might be US-specific and be weak or absent in other countries [91][92][93][94] . Additionally, although trust is likely closely linked to credibility, explicit trust assessments and credibility ratings of specific statements may diverge, perhaps particularly for the kind of obscure statements used in the current study.…”

Is There Anything Good About Atheists? Exploring Positive and Negative Stereotypes of the Religious and Nonreligious

“…For example, religiosity and proscriptions against sexual behavior reliably covary across cultures (Moon, 2021;Weeden & Kurzban, 2013), implying that-to the extent that this link underlies positive stereotyping of atheists specifically as fun-people might so stereotype atheists across cultures. By contrast, religiosity and skepticism of science might not reliably covary across cultures (McPhetres et al, 2020); people in cultures where religiosity and science skepticism do not covary might not stereotype atheists as scientifically-minded.…”

Scientists, speak up! Source impacts trust in health across five countries

“…Finally, evidence suggests that people endorsing different ideologies might be less likely to accept scientific advice regarding Covid-19 prevention measures (Calvillo et al, 2020;McPhetres & Zuckerman, 2018;McPhetres et al, 2020;Pennycook et al, 2020;Plohl & Musil, 2021;Rutjens et al, 2021). For that reason, we explored whether political orientation and religiosity might be important in health advice acceptance.…”

“…Finally, based on previous research suggesting that religious people have less positive attitudes towards science in the US (Chan, 2018;McPhetres & Zuckerman, 2018;McPhetres et al, 2020), we predicted that highly religious Americans would trust the advice less and intend to comply with it to a lower extent when the advice was the scientific journal.…”

“…During the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, lack of adherence to Covid-19 prevention measures is a crucial factor in increasing the virus infection rate (Shallcross et al, 2021). Except for trust in science (Stosic et al, 2021), compliance can be also impacted by factors such as how public health advice is communicated and characteristics of the message source or recipient (Brick et al, 2020;Hanel et al, 2018;Maio et al, 2018;McPhetres et al, 2020;Murphy et al, 2021;Rutjens et al, 2018;Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020). In this paper, we examine the effect of source framing and uncertainty (which we describe below) in health advice communication, to understand their impact on trust and intentions to comply with such advice cross-culturally.…”