Fear of supernatural punishment may serve as a deterrent to counternormative behavior,
even in anonymous situations free from human social monitoring. The authors conducted�…

Atheists have long been distrusted, in part because they do not believe that a watchful,
judging god monitors their behavior. However, in many parts of the world, secular institutions�…

Most people believe in a god of some sort. Nonetheless, there are hundreds of millions of
atheists in the world, and they face considerable discrimination and prejudice. This is a�…

Religion is a powerful influence on social attitudes and behavior. Paradoxically, religion is
correlated with both aggressive and prosocial tendencies. We argue that different concepts�…

Religious people differ in how punishing or forgiving they see their Gods. Such different
beliefs may have distinct consequences in encouraging people to act in normative ways�…

Abstract Four experiments (total N= 3591) examined how thinking about Karma and God
increases adherence to social norms that prescribe fairness in anonymous dictator games�…

Recent polls indicate that atheists are among the least liked people in areas with religious
majorities (ie, in most of the world). The sociofunctional approach to prejudice, combined�…

Billions of people from around the world believe in vengeful gods who punish immoral
behavior. These punitive religious beliefs may foster prosociality and contribute to large�…

Do people believe that it is morally acceptable to protest against God? This question was
examined in Internet studies with two samples: undergraduates (n= 358) and a broad-based�…

Most demonstrations of the automatic activation of mental representations and resulting
behavioral effects have been conducted in the context of specific stereotypes. The main�…