# Rejecting Opposite Ideologies without Discriminating against Ideological Opponents? Understanding Nonbelievers’ Outgroup Attitudes

Filip Uzarevic, Vassilis Saroglou, Isabelle Pichon

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Filip Uzarevic, Vassilis Saroglou, Isabelle Pichon. Rejecting Opposite Ideologies without Discriminating against Ideological Opponents? Understanding Nonbelievers' Outgroup Attitudes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2019, 42 (1), pp.62-77. 10.1080/01973533.2019.1689980. hal-05496415

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Rejecting Opposite Ideologies Without Discriminating
Against Ideological Opponents? Understanding
Nonbelievers' Outgroup Attitudes

<table><tr><td>Journal:</td><td>Basic and Applied Social Psychology</td></tr><tr><td>Manuscript ID</td><td>HBAS-2019-0066.R1</td></tr><tr><td>Manuscript Type:</td><td>Original Article</td></tr><tr><td>Keywords:</td><td>Ideological conflict, Prejudice, Atheism, Value defense</td></tr></table>

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Manuscripts

Filip Uzarevic, Vassilis Saroglou, Isabelle Pichon
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 1

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Abstract

Several people fail to only reject opposite ideologies without discriminating against opponents. Do nonbelievers make this distinction? Across two experiments in three cultures (total N = 2,064), we investigated participants' willingness to help a religious target involved in religious anti-liberalism (antiabortion), activism (promoting Christian ideas), or devotion (religious service); or a neutral cause (copying syllabus or visiting family). In comparison to a control condition (neutral target, neutral cause), nonbelievers--except French atheists--made this distinction: they were unwilling to help the religious target when acting for any of the three religious causes, but not when acting for a neutral cause. Groups with opposite ideologies, here believers and nonbelievers, seem both similar and qualitatively dissimilar in their outgroup attitudes.
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 3

# Rejecting Opposite Ideologies Without Discriminating Against Ideological Opponents?

## Understanding Nonbelievers' Outgroup Attitudes

Research shows that religiosity predicts prejudice toward ideological and moral outgroups (other religionists, atheists, gay persons: Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005; Ng & Gervais, 2017). Though religionists believe that they do distinguish between “hating the sin” and “loving the sinner” (Veenvliet, 2008), this does not seem to be the case. For instance, religious homonegativity translates into discrimination of gay persons also when they act in a way not threatening the religious values (Batson, Floyd, Meyer, & Winner, 1999). In other words, religiosity implies general prejudice, not limited to the defense of religious values; and the disparagement of outgroup targets as persons and not only of threatening ideas and acts.

Interestingly, new research indicates that nonbelievers (i.e. the nonreligious) also show prejudice toward outgroups perceived as opposing nonbelievers' ideas and values, i.e. moral conservatives, fundamentalists, and mere religionists belonging to the major world religions (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017; Kossowska, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, & Sekerdej, 2017; Uzarevic, Saroglou, & Muñoz-García, 2019). We extend here this research to deepen our understanding of nonbelievers' outgroup attitudes. Does their prejudice differ from religious prejudice? Do nonbelievers distinguish between “hating” opposite ideas/acts and tolerating the ideological “enemy”? We detail below our rationale, research question, and hypotheses.

## The Ideas-Acts vs. Persons Distinction in Prejudice

Symbolic threat, that is the perception of some outgroups as a threat to one's own values, is one of the major explanations of negative outgroup attitudes and prejudice (Stephan, Ybarra, & Rios, 2016). Nevertheless, from an ethical point of view, people have the right to defend their own ideas, values, and acts, and thus to fight their ideological opponents' ideas, values, and acts. One critical way to distinguish, in outgroup negative attitudes, between prejudicial discrimination and defense of one's own values is to examine whether people
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 4

show prejudice and discrimination only when an outgroup member acts to promote opposite ideas and values (for instance, runs for political representative), or whether they do so also when the target acts for a neutral cause (e.g., rents an apartment and becomes a neighbor).

In principle, people are able to make the distinction between ideas and acts to condemn and the persons to respect, and do so at both the explicit and implicit levels (Wenger & Daniels, 2006). However, research on prejudice also shows that, especially at the behavioral level, perceiving a target as a threat to one's own values "contaminates" the attitudes toward that person and translates into discriminatory and hostile behavior even on domains that are irrelevant with regard to the perceived value threat (e.g., Batson et al., 1997).

Critically, the distinction between ideas we can combat and persons we should respect is a fundamental principle in modern democratic societies. The European Union guidelines on the protection of freedom of religion or belief (Council of the European Union, 2013) protect "the right to express opinions on any or all [...] beliefs" (p. 6) but prohibit "all forms of intolerance and discrimination against persons because of their [...] belief" (p. 8).

## Religious (Non-)Distinction Between “Hate the Sin” and “Love the Sinner”

Religious discourse, across the three monotheisms, emphasizes the sinner-sin distinction. Jesus, for instance, is depicted as condemning the sin, but interacting with and accepting the sinners. There is empirical evidence that (Christian) religiosity predicts the explicit endorsement of the sinner-sin distinction (Hoffarth, Hodson, & Molnar, 2018; Veenvliet, 2008) and moral but not social condemnation of homosexuals (Doebler, 2015).

However, when it comes to subtler measures, religious people seem less prone to make the difference. Endorsing the sinner-sin distinction does not prevent them from condemning both homosexual behavior and gay persons (Veevnliet, 2008) and legitimizes and explains antigay bias, as shown in a recent analysis of US and Canadian data (Hoffart et al., 2018, Studies 4 and 5). Also, in another study, religiosity of Belgian students predicted
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 5

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not only the disapproval of homosexuality, but also a tendency for physical aggression toward
a gay target (Blogowska, Saroglou, & Lambert, 2013, Exp. 1).

Furthermore, religious US students tended to discriminate against a gay student by
helping him/her less, not only when planning to attend a gay rally, but also when planning to
visit a grand-mother (Batson et al., 1999; see also Mak & Tsang, 2008, for similar attitudes
toward the sexually promiscuous). ¹ Similarly, Canadian students high on religious
fundamentalism were unwilling to help targets perceived as threatening their values
(homosexuals, single mothers) to face unemployment—they considered them responsible of
their unemployment status (Jackson & Esses, 1997, Exp. 1 and 2). Finally, Polish religious
students were willing to help a morally neutral female student to pass an exam after she was
robbed of her bag containing her books and notes, but did not do so when that student was a
feminist (Blogowska & Saroglou, 2011, Exp. 1).

Nonbelievers’ Outgroup Attitudes and Prejudice

Similarly to religious prejudice toward ideological and moral outgroups, new research
also shows that nonbelievers and those scoring low in fundamentalism or high in antireligious
critique tend to express negative outgroup attitudes and prejudice toward ideological and
moral outgroups. These include (1) moral conservatives, (2) antiliberal activists (those
fighting against the right of abortion or gay rights), (3) religious fundamentalists, and even (4)
"mere" religionists of the major world religions, i.e. Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists
(Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017; Kossowska et al., 2017; Uzarevic et al., 2019; Uzarevic &
Saroglou, 2019). These prejudicial attitudes include dislike, social distance, and unwillingness
to have these targets as political representatives, spouses, or neighbors.

These findings, coming from various Western countries (France, Poland, Spain, UK,
and USA), can be understood in the light of the “ideological-conflict hypothesis” (Brandt,
Reyna, Chambers, Crawford, & Wetherell, 2014). According to this theoretical perspective, it
is not only conservatives who show outgroup prejudice as traditionally found, but negative attitudes and prejudice toward specific though different outgroups characterize the whole spectrum of the ideological continuum, be it in the moral (from the right- to the left-wing) or religious (from fundamentalism to atheism) domains. Similarity also exists regarding the broad mechanisms underlying religious and nonbelievers' prejudice: the latter is also found to be explained by the perception of religionists and fundamentalists as constituting a symbolic or realistic threat (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017; Kossowska et al., 2017, Study 2).

Does nonbelievers' prejudice strictly mirror religious prejudice? Recent studies provide two initial answers to this question. First, there is a quantitative difference: the strength of the nonbelievers' prejudice against moral and religious conservatives seems weaker compared to the size of the religious prejudice against moral liberals and atheists (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017). Second, religious prejudice is typically explained by specific associated individual differences, i.e. authoritarianism and the need for closure and structure (Brandt & Renya, 2010; Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005). In contrast, the prejudice of nonbelievers, found to overall be open-minded (e.g., Moore & Leach, 2016; Uzarevic, Saroglou, & Clobert, 2017) and low in authoritarianism (Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005), seems to be partly explained by the strong importance they attribute to rationality (and possibly autonomy), as well as a basic distrust of others and the world (Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2019).

## Nonbelievers' Outgroup Attitudes: Value Defense or Discrimination of Persons?

Extending and nuancing that previous research, in this work we aim to further investigate nonbelievers' negative outgroup attitudes by focusing on a possible qualitative difference with respect to what is known regarding religious prejudice. This concerns the above-described distinction between (1) opposite ideas, acts, and values that can be fought and (2) ideological opponents who should be respected as persons and not be discriminated. Since this research question is fully original, we develop below the arguments in favor of two
possibilities: nonbelievers, either as other ideologists, are not prone to make the ideas-acts-
values vs. persons distinction (general antireligious prejudice); or as liberal ideologists, are
prone to make this distinction. Overall, as arguments in favor of the second possibility seem
stronger, we privilege the latter expectation (value defense and non-discrimination).

General antireligious prejudice.

Nonbelief in general, and atheism in particular, can be conceived as an ideology with
specific ideas and beliefs (supernatural entities do not exist, there is no afterlife), values
(autonomy in thought and action; importance of scientific rationality), and group identity
(insertion into a tradition of atheistic thinkers, scientists, and activists) (Uzarevic et al., 2019;
Zuckerman et al., 2016). Though less structured than religion, nonbelieving ideologies do not
simply constitute the absence of any inclinations (like “I am a non-golfing person”) or full
indifference toward religion. As citizens, nonbelievers make up their mind and adopt specific
attitudes regarding the religious ideas, practices, and values present in each society.

Thus, since people tend to transfer their negative attitudes toward opposite ideologies
and values to the individuals who endorse them, nonbelievers, like religionists, may also be
prone to exhibit not only defense of their values and opposition against value-threatening
ideas and acts, but also prejudice and discrimination of ideological opponents as persons, i.e.
even when the latter act in a neutral way that does not threaten nonbelievers’ values.

An empirical indicator favoring this idea comes from recent research (Uzarevic et al.,
2019) showing that nonbelievers tend to be unwilling to have ideological opponents not only
as political representatives or spouse, but also as neighbors, what in fact constitutes the
disregard for a basic human right. Moreover, indirect evidence suggests that antireligious
sentiments have a unique effect, not justified by (other) value defense: antireligious critique
uniquely predicts Westerners' hostility toward the Muslim veil and this is not only explained
by liberal or conservative values (Fasel, Green, & Sarrasin, 2013; Saroglou et al., 2009).
**Value defense and non-discrimination.**

However, we argue that nonbelievers should overall be not prone to confound opposite values with ideological opponents and may show the capacity for distinguishing between the two. Thus, they should avoid helping ideological opponents when the latter act in a way that threatens the nonbelievers' values but not when they act in a morally/ideologically neutral way. There exist several arguments in favor of this expectation.

First, as mentioned earlier, nonbelieving ideologies are less organized, less structured, and weaker compared to political and religious ideologies. Similarly, nonbelievers most often do not belong to formal groups but may rather self-identify with an intellectual tradition. Nonbelievers' prejudice against dissimilar groups seems to be weaker in size compared to the religious prejudice against dissimilar groups (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017). Thus, nonbelievers may combat opposite ideas, values, and acts rather than outgroup members.

Second, in several Western European countries, secularism has historically and legally been associated with a state's neutrality (or “laicity”), i.e. the strict separation of religion from the State and the public sphere. Laicity, mentioned in France's constitution before liberty, equality, and fraternity, implies the moral obligation to defend people's right to express diverging opinions and ideas, and the State's and society's support, including financial, of religious freedom, in particular the freedom to publicly practice religious rituals. Thus, some secularists should oppose religious ideas that threaten the religion-state separation but should, in principle, support religious practice and protect religious people from discrimination.

Third, nonbelievers, compared to believers, across cultures, endorse to a greater degree the value of autonomy in thought and action (self-direction in Schwartz's model: Saroglou et al., 2004) and the importance of science and rationality (Ståhl, Zaal, & Skitka, 2016). They embrace liberal and self-expressive societal values and oppose survival and self-restrictive values (Norris & Inglehart, 2004). Nonbelievers' support of issues like abortion, euthanasia,
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 9

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and gay marriage and adoption are partly explained by their opposition to collectivistic values which restrict an individual's right to make personal decisions on morally debatable issues (Deak & Saroglou, 2015). Thus, nonbelievers should be intolerant of the intolerant people, but *only when* the latter threaten autonomy.

Finally, people low in religiosity, compared to the very religious, are usually characterized by higher flexibility and open mindedness (Zuckerman et al., 2016). They tend to be more open to experience (Saroglou, 2010), less in need for epistemic closure (Saroglou, 2002), and more reliant on analytic instead of intuitive-holistic thinking (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). They may thus be immune to the “contamination” of their attitudes toward dissimilar individuals from their negative attitudes toward ideas they perceive as threatening. Interestingly, whereas Westerners generally show subtle discrimination by being more unwilling to help a Muslim target compared to a non-Muslim target when both are defending an antiliberal cause, atheists are equally unwilling to help these antiliberal targets, regardless of their ethnoreligious status (van der Noll, Saroglou, Latour, & Dolezal, 2018).

Various ideological oppositions and forms of nonbelief.

In the present work, we also aimed to nuance our research question by distinguishing between different kinds of nonbelievers’ ideological opponents and their respective causes, as well as between different forms of nonbelief. We thus first distinguished between religious targets (Christians) acting for different religious causes (religious activism, religious worship, and religious moral anti-liberalism) and a religious target acting for a neutral cause.

If nonbelievers do make the ideas-acts vs. persons distinction, they would be unwilling to help the religious target only when acting for *religious causes*; but not when acting for *neutral causes* (e.g., visiting a relative). Moreover, if nonbelievers make the distinction between religious ideas and acts that are threatening vs. nonthreatening to their values, they should be unwilling to help a religious target only when that target acts in an antiliberal way.
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 10

*Religious moral anti-liberalism* implies acting against issues like the right to abortion or *gay rights*, acts that clearly restrict individuals' autonomy and threaten liberal values in *modern secular societies*. *Religious activism* typically implies propagating a Christian vision of the society, which could either be perceived as a threat to society's secularity, or alternatively be tolerated by the freedom of expression. Finally, *religious worship* implies frequently gathering for public prayer, which does not threaten liberal values and is supported by secularism and laicity. Still, by participating in worship, religious observants may constitute an ideological outgroup in *nonbelievers'* minds.

There also exists some heterogeneity between nonbelievers (Silver, Coleman, Hood, & Holcombe, 2014). In this work, we focus on three common forms of nonbelief, i.e. *atheism* (*disbelief in God*), *agnosticism* (*not affirming belief in God*), and being *antireligious* (*hostility toward religion and faith*). These attitudes overlap to some extent and *there is evidence indicating some similarities between agnostics and atheists in personality as well as similarities between being agnostic, atheist, and antireligious in showing outgroup prejudice* (Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2019; Uzarevic et al., 2019). *Thus, they can all be considered as having religionists and moral conservatives as their ideological opponents.* Nevertheless, the *antireligious, who deny any value in religion* (Duriez et al., 2005) and discriminate against *fundamentalists because of religion's perceived irrationality* (Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2019), as well as the *atheists, who discriminate even against the most socially acceptable religious group in the West* (Buddhists; Uzarevic et al., 2019), may express stronger outgroup prejudice than *agnostics* (*who are less antireligious and more positively oriented toward spirituality*: Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2017), by being less prone to distinguish between *rejecting opposite ideas and tolerating opponents as persons*.

## Overview of the Studies
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 11

Two experiments were conducted, one in the UK and France, and the other in Reunion Island--which belongs to France. They focused on the willingness to help a hypothetical religious target in need to act for a cause varying across the between-subject conditions. Helping a neutral (i.e. no mention of religious affiliation) target that was acting for a neutral cause was the control condition each time. In Experiment 1, we examined the behavioral inclinations of participants who self-identified as atheists, agnostics, and Christians toward a religious target who planned to act for the propagation of religious ideas for a Christian vision of society (religious activism) or for a neutral cause (making copies for a course syllabus). In Experiment 2, aiming to better distinguish between clearly antiliberal and not antiliberal religious causes, we investigated how nonbelief and antireligious critique predict the helping of a religious target who acts for an antiliberal cause (fights against abortion rights), simply worships (attends a religious assembly), or acts for a neutral goal (visits a relative).

## Experiment 1

### Method

#### Participants.

Participants were 1,849 adults (18-76 years old, M = 28.58, SD = 11.35; 52% women), residents or nationals of the United Kingdom (N = 658) and France (N = 1,191). They were recruited online, through Crowdflower, Facebook, other social networks, and internet forums. They reported being atheist (respectively, by country: 252 and 453), agnostic (126 and 207), Christian (130 and 258), Muslim (17 and 30), Buddhist (5 and 15), Jewish (3 and 6), or “other” (47 and 65). The rest of the participants (78 and 157) did not report affiliation. The main comparisons were between atheists, agnostics, and Christians (total N for the two samples = 1,426). In addition to the 1,849 responses, 466 were excluded from the analyses because of: non-adult age or no report of age (72), nationality and residence other than British or French (116), incorrect responses to two trap questions aiming to control for the quality of
the online survey responses (177) ², suspicion of double responding (42), failure in the
manipulation check at the end of the survey (54), and misapplication of the instructions for
the prosociality task (5). ³ We tried to collect about 50 responses per cell (two countries ×
three conditions × three convictional groups) and, if possible, more, to allow for possible data
exclusions. The *N* per cell varied from 61 to 173 (France) and from 35 to 90 (UK).
Nonbelievers were more numerous than Christians in these online samples.

## Procedure.

The study's design was adapted from Batson et al. (1999) and van der Noll et al. (2018). The former study investigated religious opposition to homosexuality and/but not homosexual persons, and the latter investigated Westerners' opposition to Muslim (antiliberal) ideas and/but not Muslim persons. The study was advertised as investigating cognitive and emotional factors in life decisions. It took about 15 minutes for participants to complete the experiment, which was in English or French, depending on the country.

After reporting their socio-demographic information, participants were randomly
assigned to the three conditions. In all conditions, they were asked, firstly, to read a short note
in two parts, allegedly written by a randomly chosen student. The first part of the note
manipulated the religious status of the target student (religious vs. neutral), and the second
part of the note manipulated the student's cause for action (propagation of religious ideas vs.
neutral). The three conditions included: (1) a *religious target* acting for a *religious cause*, (2)
*a religious target* acting for a *neutral cause*, or (3) a *neutral target* acting for a *neutral cause*
(for UK, respective Ns = 223, 217, 218; for France, Ns = 378, 393, 420). Second, participants
were given the opportunity to help the hypothetical student who wrote the note. At the end,
participants were debriefed and thanked. Below we detail the manipulation of the target's
status and cause and the measurement of the dependent variable, i.e. willingness to help.

## *Manipulation of the target status and cause.*
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 13

As in van der Noll et al. (2018), each participant was told that, as a part of the study, some students were asked to write a brief note about themselves, and that s/he will be asked to read one of the notes by a randomly chosen student. The first part of the note included the student's self-description; the second part mentioned the student's cause for action.

In the *neutral target's condition*, the first part of the note was as follows: “I am 23 years old and I am in the first year of my Master’s studies at the Faculty of Economics and Social, Political and Communication Sciences. The course I like the most is Anthropological History and Theories. The course I like least is Urban Sociology. I took that course because the description was attractive, but the professor teaches so badly that, honestly, it is not interesting. Regarding my family, I still have my two parents, an older brother and a younger sister. I like sports, such as climbing and badminton; I also like hiking. I usually go hiking on Sundays. When it comes to food, I love pizza, and I hate fish. I would add that I like history, books, historical movies, and documentaries a lot.” In the two *conditions involving a religious student*, the text was the same, but we replaced “I usually go hiking on Sundays.”, by the sentence “As a Christian, I usually go to church on Sundays.”.⁴

After reading the first part of the note, participants were told that they could choose whether or not to help the student whose note they just read to win a voucher for a local copy and print shop. Before making this decision, participants were asked to read the second part of the note, in which the same student described what they planned to do with the voucher. In the two conditions involving a *neutral cause*, the text read as follows: “To conclude, it would be really great if I could win the voucher, so that I can print my course syllabus. The extra pocket money I make with my student job is limited. So, this contribution would be a non-negligible boost for me.” In the condition involving a *religious cause* (by the religious target), the text was the same, but, instead of copying “my course syllabus”, the note mentioned copying “materials that spread the Christian faith and the Christian vision of the society”.
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 14

Dependent variable: Willingness to help.

After the manipulation, each participant was presented 15 simple numerical tasks (e.g., 45 + 23). Possible solutions were presented in two columns, and the participants were asked to choose, among four possibilities, the correct answer from either the left or the right column. They were told that choosing a correct answer from the left column would add 1€ to the voucher of the student who wrote the notes. If they chose the correct answer in the right column, this would add 1€ to an unknown, randomly chosen student. As the measure of prosociality toward the target, we used the proportion of correct responses attributed to the student (i.e. in the left column), relative to the total number of correct responses. After participants completed these tasks, they were asked to explain how they decided to distribute their answers, by choosing one of the following possibilities: (1) “I wanted to support the student who wrote the note”; (2) “I did not want to support the student who wrote the note”; (3) “I wanted to divide the answers more or less equally”; and (4) “Other (please explain)”.

After a distraction task consisting of counting geometrical shapes within a complex form, participants reported their religious affiliation. Finally, they were asked the open-ended manipulation check question.⁵

Results

In accordance with the journal's policy, the Results section puts the accent on detailed descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, locations, and scales) and effect sizes. Note though that the results presented below were also significant with traditional statistical significance testing. (The same hold for Experiment 2). Locations ($\xi$) and scales ($\hat{\omega}$) estimates were computed using formulas provided by Trafimow, Wang, and Wang (2018), for location, $\xi = \bar{x} - \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}}\hat{\delta}\hat{\omega}$, and for scale $\hat{\omega} = s / \sqrt{1 - \frac{2}{\pi}\hat{\delta}^2}$, in which $\bar{x}$ = arithmetic mean, $s =$
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 15

standard deviation, $\hat{\delta} = \sqrt{\frac{\pi}{2} \frac{Sk^3}{Sk^3 + \left(\frac{4-\pi}{2}\right)^3}}$, and Sk = skewness, computed using the formula

by Joanes and Gill (1998, as cited in Trafimow et al., 2018), $Sk = \frac{1}{n} \sum_{i=1}^{n} (x_i - \bar{x})^3 / s^3$; $\hat{\delta}$ was multiplied by -1 when Sk had a negative value.

To examine whether the target's religious status and cause affected prosociality toward the target, and whether this effect was different for atheists, agnostics, and Christians, we investigated, separately for UK and France, the predictive effects of the convictional group, the condition, and the group × condition interaction, on prosociality toward the target. There was a small to medium effect of the convictional group, for UK and France, respective partial η²s = .04 and .07. In both countries, Christians were more likely to help the student, Ms (SDs) = 0.71 (0.33), 0.71 (0.31), compared to atheists, Ms (SDs) = 0.54 (0.40), 0.53 (0.34) (ds = 0.45 and 0.55), and agnostics, Ms (SDs) = 0.60 (0.34), 0.53 (0.31) (ds = 0.33 and 0.58).

There was also a large effect of the condition, for UK and France, respective partial η²s = .13 and .10. In both countries, participants showed less prosociality in the religious target acting for religious cause condition, Ms (SDs) = 0.39 (0.38), 0.42 (0.34), than in the two conditions where the target, religious, Ms (SDs) = 0.70 (0.32), 0.64 (0.32), or neutral, Ms (SDs) = 0.72 (0.32), 0.67 (0.29), was acting for a neutral cause (respective ds = 0.88, 0.67, 0.94, and 0.79). When the cause was neutral, participants did not differ in prosociality toward a religious target, compared to that toward a neutral target.

Critically, in both the UK and France, there was a medium to small effect of interaction between the participants' convictional group and the condition, partial η²s = .06 and .01. To further investigate this interaction, we examined, distinctly for each country and for the three convictional groups (atheists, agnostics, and Christians), the effect of the
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 16

condition on prosociality toward the target (see the descriptive statistics and the effects in Table 1 and Figure 1, top). In the UK and France alike, both atheists and agnostics showed lower prosociality in the religious target/religious propagation condition, compared to the other two conditions, with large effect sizes. Moreover, atheists in France, even for the neutral cause, were less likely to help the religious compared to the neutral target, the effect being small to medium. Finally, Christians in France were similar to atheists and agnostics in being less likely to help in the religious target/religious propagation condition, compared to the other two conditions (effects being medium to small). Nevertheless, in absolute terms, they still tended to help the target in the religious target/religious cause condition (proportion of helping was higher than 0.5; see Figure 1, top).

## Discussion

Nonbelieving participants who were provided the opportunity to help a hypothetical target in need to act for either a neutral cause (making class copies) or a religious activism cause (propagation of a Christian vision of the society), overall, did not offer less help to the religious, compared to the non-religious, target when the cause was neutral. However, they were less likely to help a religious target involved with religious activism, compared to a target, religious or not, acting for a neutral cause. Thus, the global trend of the results does not indicate that nonbelievers have a general antireligious prejudice, but favors the hypothesis that nonbelievers make a distinction between value defense (here secularism in society, possibly threatened by religion's predominance) and non-discrimination of their ideological opponents, religionists, when they do not threaten nonbelievers' ideas and values. Interestingly, the above results were not due to a possible simple ingroup-outgroup effect, since, when the cause was neutral, nonbelievers and Christians showed no different levels of prosociality between the religious and the neutral target (see Table 1).
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 17

However, the results cannot be taken as an unambiguous proof that nonbelievers fully
make the “sinner-sin” distinction with regard to secular values. First, the above results applied
to non-believers, both atheists and agnostics, in the UK, but only to the agnostics in France. In
contrast, French atheists showed general antireligious, discriminatory, prejudice by offering
less help to the religious target, compared to the non-religious, even when both targets’ cause
was neutral. This is in line with our hypothesis that, should any differences exist, atheists
should be more prejudicial than agnostics. The fact that this was only confined in France may
be explained by France’s historically stronger, compared to the UK, emphasis on “laicity”, i.e.
full state-religion separation in the public sphere, as an important national value. This may
lead to intolerance against religious people even when the latter do not threaten nonbelievers’
ideology. Possibly in line with the strong institutional importance of secularism in France,
French Christians were also found here to be less willing to help the religious activist. It may
be that laicity is so normative in that country that religionists over perform in their tendency
to show that they endorse the religion-state separation in society.

Second, it is unclear whether opposition to the propagation of a Christian vision of the society denotes strict value defense or simply discrimination of any kind of religious activity, even when that activity does not threaten secular values. In Experiment 2, we aimed to clarify this, by distinguishing between the two possibilities in the design.

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 aimed to conceptually, methodologically, and cross-culturally replicate
and extend Experiment 1. To clarify whether the low willingness to help a religious target
propagate a Cristian vision of society, found in Experiment 1, was possibly due to a perceived
threat of liberal values (individual autonomy and religion-state separation) or rather to a mere
opposition against religionists for any kind of religious activity, even for practicing their
religious faith, we distinguished in Experiment 2 between (1) helping a religious target attend
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 18

an anti-abortion rally (an antiliberal action) and (2) helping the same target attend a religious assembly. Religious worship does not threaten society's liberal values and citizens' rights and is well protected in secular societies. However, nonbelievers' valorization of rationality (Ståhl et al., 2016) may lead them to express negative outgroup attitudes because they perceive religious ritual as involving irrational beliefs and acts.

Additionally, we replaced the neutral cause with a visit to a relative. Furthermore, we carried out the study in Reunion Island, which administratively belongs to France but is culturally different and less secularized. Finally, to measure the intensity of nonbelief, given the low rate of people self-identifying as atheist or agnostic in that region, we adopted a continuous measure of intensity of irreligion and de-consideration of religion.

## Method

### Participants.

Participants were 215 adults (18-70 years old, M = 24.40, SD = 10.45; 73% women), recruited in Réunion Island, which administratively belongs to France. They filled in the questionnaire either online (n = 161) or in a paper and pencil form (n = 54). All participants reported French/Réunion Island nationality or residence, except one who reported being Mauritian. They reported being Christian (121), atheist (34), agnostic (19), Muslim (13), Buddhist (3), or “other” (24). One participant did not report religious affiliation. In addition to the 215 participants, 36 were not included in the analyses because of not agreement with the consent form (1), not reporting their age (7), incorrect or missing responses to the trap question aiming to control for the quality of the survey responses (16) 6, refusal to allow their data to be used for research purposes after having been debriefed (2), and failure of the manipulation check at the end of the survey (10). 7 As in Experiment 1, we aimed to collect at least 50 participants per condition, and more if possible, to allow for possible data exclusions.

### Procedure.
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 19

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The study was announced as an investigation of the cognitive and emotional factors in
various decisions. It took approximately 20 minutes for the participants to complete the
experiment. The design was very similar to that of Experiment 1. We again distinguished
between a religious and a neutral target and a religious or neutral cause, but we changed the
content of the causes and added one condition of a religious target acting for an antiliberal
moral cause. Participants were thus randomly assigned to one of the four conditions: (1) a
*religious target* acting for an *antiliberal cause* (attending an antiabortion protest; n = 56); (2)
a *religious target* acting for a *devotional religious cause* (attending a religious assembly; n =
55); (3) a *religious target* acting for a *neutral cause* (visiting family; n = 50); or (4) a *neutral*
*target* acting for a *neutral cause* (visiting family: n = 54). As in Experiment 1, participants
read the two parts of the note, allegedly written by a student, were then asked to decide
whether to help that student (vs. another, anonymous student) by solving the numerical tasks,
and provided post-experimental information.

In the first part of the note, i.e. the self-description of a randomly chosen student, the
text in the *neutral target* condition was as follows: “Hello! I am 22 years old and I study
educational sciences. I was asked to tell you something personal, something that I would say
only to someone that I know well. Although I was excited to start college, one thing that
worried me was that it seemed very different from high school. I thought I would not adapt
easily to university and that I would not be able to meet new people. I did not have many
friends, maybe just because I was scared. However, after a few weeks, I started to feel a little
more comfortable. Now I really enjoy being here. I met several nice people and I have very
good friends.” In the *conditions involving a religious student*, the text was identical, but
included an additional sentence: “My faith in Jesus helped me a lot.”

After reading the first part of the note, as in Experiment 1, participants were informed
that they would be given the possibility to help the student whose note they read to win a 50¢
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 20

voucher. They then read the second part of the note describing what that student planned to do with the voucher. The description of the *neutral cause* for the two respective conditions (with a religious or a neutral target) was as follows: “I was hoping that at least one of your tasks would have positive consequences for me, because I could really use those 50 Euros right now. I have been saving for weeks to try to buy a ticket to Mauritius. My brother is currently living there and I would really like to visit him. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to save enough money, but 50 euros would sure help me out a lot! I really want to go, the money would be great!” In the other two conditions involving a religious target and a *non-neutral cause*, instead of the sentence “My brother is currently (...)”, the note contained “There will be a religious assembly, and I would really like to participate” (*devotional cause*) or “There will be a demonstration against abortion, and I would really like to participate” (*antiliberal cause*).

Afterwards, the same task as in Experiment 1 was used to measure participants’ propensity to help the hypothetical student (vs. an unknown one). The only difference was that the amount represented by each correct answer would be one entry to a raffle for 50€.

After the distraction task (as in Experiment 1), participants answered five items from a measure of *antireligious critique*, i.e. the External Critique subscale of the Post-Critical Belief Scale (short version: Duriez, Soenens, & Hutsebaut, 2005; 7-point Likert scales). This scale measures a fully critical view of religion as being rationally indefensible, outdated, and an illusory existential defense. A sample item is “Faith is an expression of a weak personality” (α in the present data = .77). Then, participants indicated their religious affiliation. Finally, they were presented the open-ended manipulation check question, were debriefed, and thanked.

## Results

Descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, locations, and scales) for prosociality, distinctly by condition and by convictional group, are detailed in Table 2 (see also Figure 1, bottom). Given the small *Ns*, we gathered atheists and agnostics into a unique
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 21

group of nonbelievers. In line with Experiment 1 (UK), believers did not differ between conditions in prosociality, η² = .00. On the contrary, also in line with Experiment 1 (UK and France), nonbelievers tended to help less the religious target acting for the antiliberal cause compared to the other three conditions, η² = .12, i.e. when the religious target was acting for a devotional or a neutral cause, or when the target was neutral, ds = 0.78, 0.99, 0.46.

The mean levels of the post-experimentally measured antireligious critique were similar across conditions, Ms = 3.16, 3.26, 3.29, and 3.49. The means of antireligious critique by convictional group followed the intuitive order, with Christians scoring the lowest, agnostics in the middle, and atheists scoring the highest, Ms = 3.00, 3.64, and 4.35.

We next investigated whether antireligious critique predicted helping differently depending on the condition. We examined in moderated regression analysis the effects of (1) condition (a categorical variable with four levels), (2) antireligious critique (a continuous variable), and (3) the interactions between conditions and antireligious critique, while (4) controlling for gender, age, socioeconomic status, and education, on prosociality toward the target. To increase power, all the participants of the study--not only the nonbelievers and Christians--were included. The analyses were computed using the SPSS macro PROCESS (Model 1; Hayes, 2012; for the method including multi-categorical variables, see Hayes & Montoya, 2017). Since it was crucial for our hypotheses to understand the antireligious critique's effect on prosociality within each condition, we report the effects per condition in Table 3. Results with standardized prosociality, antireligious critique, and covariates are presented in Figure 2. As shown in Table 3 and Figure 2, antireligious critique predicted low prosociality in the two conditions where the religious target was acting for either an antiliberal cause or a devotional religious cause, but not in the two other conditions where the target, religious or neutral, was acting for a neutral cause.

## Discussion
Experiment 2 conceptually, methodologically, and cross-culturally replicated
Experiment 1 and provided further clarification. First, compared to the other conditions,
nonbelievers tended to help less the religious target when acting for an antiliberal cause.
Again, the effect was not due to an ingroup-outgroup distinction, since, when the cause was
neutral, nonbelievers and Christians did not show lower vs. higher levels of prosociality
toward the religious target compared to the neutral target. Second, using a continuous measure
of deConsideration of religion, instead of self-identification as atheist or agnostic, and
providing other types of the target's action, we found again, but in another culture (Reunion
Island), that strong nonbelievers do make the distinction between value defense and not
discriminating ideological opponents: they were unwilling to help religious targets undertake
religious actions but were not unwilling to help a neutral cause, i.e. visiting a relative, be the
target religious or neutral.

Furthermore, Experiment 2 shed light on the extent of nonbelievers’ negative outgroup
attitudes. Those scoring high in antireligious critique tended not to help the religious target
not only when the cause of the target’s action was antiliberal, threatening personal autonomy
and citizens’ rights (attending an anti-abortion rally), but also when the cause of the action
was common religious worship. The latter constitutes the most central, basic, and universal
behavior implied by and almost defining religiosity. One way to understand this finding is to
presume that strong nonbelievers deprecate religious rituals, even the most typical ones, as
involving beliefs and practices that are at odds with rationality, which is highly valued and
even moralized by atheists (Ståhl et al., 2016).

General Discussion

Across two experiments in three cultural contexts, i.e. the UK, France, and Reunion
Island, we consistently found that, overall, nonbelievers tend to make a distinction in their
negative attitudes toward their ideological opponents, Christian religionists, between (1)
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 23

disliking and opposing religiously motivated actions, possibly perceived as threatening to nonbelievers' liberal and secular values, and (2) respecting these religionists as persons, i.e. not discriminating them compared to the nonreligious for actions that do not threaten the above values. The former actions included (1) religious anti-abortion militantism, (2) propagation of religious ideas and a Christian vision of the society, and (3) attending a regular religious service. The neutral acts included copying a course syllabus and visiting a relative.

The above results are meaningful and can be integrated into, while nuancing, ongoing research in (1) psychology of religious prejudice and (2) the ideological-conflict hypothesis. They importantly qualify previous research that has shown that either nonbelievers are unprejudiced compared to the religious who are prejudiced toward targets perceived to threaten their values (classic research on religious prejudice: Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005), or that nonbelievers and liberals are also prejudiced, like the religious believers and the ideological conservatives, but with symmetrically opposite outgroups (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017; Kossowska et al., 2017; Uzarevic et al., 2019; Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2019).

With regard to that previous research, the present work clarifies that nonbelievers' negative outgroup attitudes also seem to be based on the perception of value threats (presumably antiliberal, anti-secular, and antirational threats) but are qualitatively different. Whereas religious believers tend to “hate” both “the sin and the sinner”, by discriminating gay persons, single mothers, or a feminist even when these persons act for a neutral cause (Batson et al., 1999; Blogowska & Saroglou, 2011; Jackson & Esses, 1997), nonbelievers reject (do not support) opposite ideas and acts but do not discriminate their ideological opponents (religionists) when these opponents act in a neutral way that does not threaten their values. This fits with the empirical picture of nonbelievers tending to be more flexible and openminded (Zuckerman et al., 2016), more using analytic thinking (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012), and needing less epistemic closure (Saroglou, 2002). All these individual differences
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 24

can be reasonably considered as facilitating the sin-sinner, ideas/acts-persons non-distinction.

Moreover, the present results extend research showing that Western pro-atheists do not discriminate (Muslim) religionists compared to neutral targets: they are equally unlikely to help them when these two targets act in a antiliberal way (van der Noll et al., 2018).

However, it is of importance to note that the two experiments also showed that nonbelievers' proneness to make the (threatening) ideas/acts vs. (non-threatening) persons distinction is not complete and unconditional. First, the combination of stronger antireligious beliefs with a specific cultural context lead to the unwillingness to make such a distinction. In Experiment 1, atheists in France were unwilling to help a religious target even when that target was acting in a neutral, non-threatening way (copying a course syllabus). This finding suggests that in contexts where secularism is highly normative ("laicity" is an important principle in France's constitution and public life), strong nonbelievers are not immune to the generalization of prejudice toward ideological opponents as persons. Importantly, this result adds evidence and extends recent research showing that the strong endorsement among the French of the contemporary ideology of laicity predicts outgroup prejudice, xenophobia, low multiculturalism, and Islamophobia (Nilsson, 2018; Nugier et al., 2016).

Second, antireligious people's unwillingness to help a religious peer attend a religious assembly can be understood from a value conflict perspective. There is, in principle, no reason for nonbelievers to contribute financially to the religionists' needs to publicly practice religion through rituals antireligious people usually perceive as irrational and magic. And *nonbelievers'* negative attitudes toward religious fundamentalists have been found to be partly explained by the formers' valorization of rationality (Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2019).

Nevertheless, to the point that in many democratic and pluralist secular societies, especially those involved in the present studies, people contribute to support, symbolically and financially, various activities in domains that not all citizens like (e.g., several sporting
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 25

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and artistic events), and do so to the point that secularism implies tolerance and support of religious worship and the freedom to exert it, the above finding from Experiment 2 points to a possible atheistic intolerance even of non-intolerant religionists. The finding may also be due to the very specific content of the measure used. The External Critique subscale of the Post-Critical Belief scale specifically taps the full de-consideration of religion, a distinct dimension in that model from relativistic, symbolic irreligion, i.e. nonbelief with an appreciation of some historical, cultural, and anthropological value of religion (Duriez et al., 2005).

In sum, the present work provides evidence that underlines both some similarity and a critical qualitative difference between nonbelievers' and religious prejudice against ideological opponents. From both sides, people are, in principle, animated by the explicit values of tolerance and universalism: "love your enemies", for the religious believers; and "defend the right of your opponents to express their ideas and act accordingly, as long as they do not limit others' rights", for the liberal nonbelievers. However, both groups seem unwilling to help their opponents to act in a way that typically defines who they are, even when this does not affect others' rights. Religionists do not help gays defend gay rights (Batson et al., 1999) or have sexual relationships (Mak & Tsang, 2008) even if these two do not affect religionists' right not to have same-sex relationships. Here, nonbelievers did not help religionists propagate their ideas or gather to pray, even though these two acts do not affect nonbelievers' right not to believe. However, nonbelievers do not to go as far, as religious believers do, to discriminate their opponents even when they undertake non-threatening and noble actions such as preparing for their classes or visiting their family--but French atheists did turn out to go so far.

The present work also presents some limitations that are worthy of mention. First, whereas the two experiments allowed for a nice distinction between different religious causes (activism, anti-liberalism, devotion), very likely varying in their degree of symbolic threat, the
latter was not measured. Further research should investigate whether the three religious actions did indeed differ in their degree of perceived threat for the nonbelievers, and more generally, the explanatory processes underlying the overall distinction (and some non-distinction) in responses made between the different conditions.

Second, the measure of the behavioral inclination not to help, while subtler than explicit self-reported measures of global disliking, was still a paper-and-pencil measure. Further research should investigate whether the ideas/acts vs. persons distinction among nonbelievers indeed translates into real behavior when it comes to not discriminating targets acting for a neutral cause--or the opposite, that unwillingness to help in the religious causes conditions also translates into real behavior. Similarly, it is of interest to examine whether nonbelievers' distinction between ideas/acts and persons will hold even if a stronger ideological outgroup is used, such as a religious fundamentalist and not simply a religionist.

Third, psychology of atheism is only at its beginnings. There is increasing interest in possible variability between different forms of nonbelief (Silver et al., 2014). Different kinds of nonbelievers may have different attitudes toward their ideological opponents. Nevertheless, the atheist-agnostic distinction empirically captures a major variability among nonbelievers, and the similarities between the two are greater than those between agnostics and religionists (Uzarevic et al., 2017, 2019; Uzarevic & Saroglou, 2019). Finally, the evidence here comes from cultures that are Western and secularized (UK and France) or belong to them (Reunion Island), and mostly from online respondents who are usually secular or religiously liberal (Lewis, Djupe, Mockabee, & Su-Ya Wu, 2015). Future research should examine whether these findings generalize to other, especially more religious, contexts. Both possibilities seem open to us, with nonbelievers possibly being even more negative in their outgroup attitudes in those contexts, thus not making the acts-persons distinction, or being more prudent and thus restricting these negative attitudes to only the clearly antiliberal religious causes.
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 27

To conclude, the findings of the current work have implications for understanding the interaction between, on the one hand, general principles involved in intergroup relations (e.g., how ideological groups at the two ends of a continuum may derogate their respective outgroups), and, on the other hand, content-specific characteristics related to the specific ideas and personalities of the respective ideological opponents: for instance, nonbelievers seem more prone than religionists to apply the ideas/acts vs. persons distinction. Importantly, given the increase of the ideological conflict between religionists and nonbelievers in the West (Kaufmann, 2007), and the possibility that future societies may be more polarized on moral issues (Saroglou, 2019), these findings may contribute to a better understanding of factors that facilitate or undermine the peaceful coexistence between opposite convictional groups.
Footnotes

¹ Only those high in religious quest *behaviorally* distinguish between acts/ideas and persons (Batson, Eidelman, Higley, & Russell, 2001; Batson, Denton, & Vollmecke, 2008).

² In Experiment 1, the trap questions were “Please mark that you fully agree with this sentence, just to let us know that you are reading the questions carefully” and “I am filling out this survey using the Internet” (7-point Likert scales). We excluded participants with responses < 6 in either of the two questions.

³ Including these additional participants did not change the main results, i.e. nonbelievers’ lower help of a religious target acting for a religious cause, compared to the other two conditions.

⁴ We intended the description of the target to be neutral in gender, but in one half of the French sample (n = 611) the wording suggested that the alleged student is male. Statistically controlling for this difference did not change the direction of the main results.

⁵ In both experiments, participants also completed, post-experimentally, measures of the big five personality traits, need for closure, religiosity and spirituality, and slippery slope thinking. This was to explore possible differences between atheists and agnostics, but the two groups were overall similar rather than different in the personality measures (and atheists lower in religiosity and spirituality).

⁶ In Experiment 2, we excluded participants with responses other than “Green” in the trap question “What is the color of the grass?” (answers: “Blue”, “Green”, and “Red”).

⁷ If these additional participants were included, the main results were similar, i.e. lower help by nonbelievers of a religious target acting for an antiliberal cause, and lower help as a function of antireligious critique of a religious target acting for a religious cause.
Running head: REJECTING OPPOSITE IDEOLOGIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING 29

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<caption>Table 1</caption>

Descriptive Statistics of Willingness to Help a Target as a Function of Condition and
Participants' Convictional Group, Distinctly by Country (Experiment 1)

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Groups</th><th>Religious Target, Relig. Cause (1)</th><th>Religious Target, Neutral Cause (2)</th><th>Neutral Target, Neutral Cause (3)</th><th rowspan="2">η<sup>2</sup></th><th rowspan="2">Comparisons Post-hoc<br>ds (1-2, 1-3, 2-3)</th></tr><tr><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td colspan="4" style="text-align: center;">United Kingdom</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Atheists</td><td>0.25 (0.34),<br>-0.22 (0.58),<br>90</td><td>0.70 (0.32),<br>1.09 (0.50),<br>86</td><td>0.72 (0.33),<br>1.12 (0.52),<br>76</td><td>.31</td><td>1.36, 1.40, 0.06</td></tr><tr><td>Agnostics</td><td>0.37 (0.29),<br>0.18 (0.34),<br>35</td><td>0.68 (0.29),<br>0.99 (0.43),<br>42</td><td>0.70 (0.32),<br>1.07 (0.49),<br>49</td><td>.19</td><td>1.07, 1.07, 0.07</td></tr><tr><td>Christians</td><td>0.68 (0.34),<br>1.04 (0.50),<br>47</td><td>0.71 (0.34),<br>1.15 (0.55),<br>39</td><td>0.74 (0.30),<br>1.12 (0.48),<br>44</td><td>.01</td><td>0.09, 0.19, 0.09</td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="4" style="text-align: center;">France</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Atheists</td><td>0.32 (0.31),<br>-0.01 (0.46),<br>127</td><td>0.56 (0.33),<br>0.85 (0.44),<br>151</td><td>0.66 (0.29),<br>0.97 (0.43),<br>172</td><td>.16</td><td>0.75, 1.14, 0.32</td></tr><tr><td>Agnostics</td><td>0.37 (0.30),<br>0.11 (0.40),<br>75</td><td>0.61 (0.28),<br>0.83 (0.36),<br>61</td><td>0.61 (0.29),<br>0.86 (0.39),<br>71</td><td>.13</td><td>0.82, 0.81, 0.00</td></tr><tr><td>Christians</td><td>0.62 (0.34),<br>0.90 (0.44),<br>86</td><td>0.75 (0.29),<br>1.12 (0.47),<br>104</td><td>0.77 (0.26),<br>1.06 (0.39),<br>68</td><td>.05</td><td>0.41, 0.49, 0.07</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note. In bold: effect sizes of results that are significant with traditional significance testing.
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<caption>Table 2</caption>

Descriptive Statistics of Willingness to Help a Target as a Function of Condition and
Participants' Convictional Group, in Reunion Island (Experiment 2)

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Religious target,<br>Antiliberal cause</th><th>Religious target,<br>Devotional cause</th><th>Religious target,<br>Neutral cause</th><th>Neutral target,<br>Neutral cause</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th><th>M (SD),<br>location (scale),<br>n</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Non-Believers</td><td>0.37 (0.19),<br>0.63 (0.32),<br>13</td><td>0.54 (0.25),<br>0.77 (0.34),<br>10</td><td>0.60 (0.27),<br>0.78 (0.33),<br>13</td><td>0.47 (0.24),<br>0.69 (0.32),<br>16</td></tr><tr><td>Christians</td><td>0.62 (0.32),<br>0.88 (0.41),<br>32</td><td>0.61 (0.36),<br>0.96 (0.50),<br>35</td><td>0.63 (0.36),<br>1.01 (0.52),<br>27</td><td>0.60 (0.31),<br>0.83 (0.38),<br>25</td></tr></tbody></table>
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<caption>Table 3</caption>

Moderated Regression Analysis of Prosociality on Conditions, Antireligious Critique, and Their Interactions (Experiment 2)

<table><thead><tr><th>Predictor Variables</th><th>b</th><th>(SE)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Age</td><td>-0.00</td><td>(0.00)</td></tr><tr><td>Gender (ref: female)</td><td>-0.03</td><td>(0.05)</td></tr><tr><td>Education</td><td>0.00</td><td>(0.03)</td></tr><tr><td>SES</td><td><strong>-0.05</strong></td><td>(0.02)</td></tr><tr><td>Condition (4. Neutral Target, for Neutral Cause = ref.)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>1. Religious Target, for Antiliberal Cause</td><td>-0.00</td><td>(0.06)</td></tr><tr><td>2. Religious Target, for Religious Devotional Cause</td><td>0.02</td><td>(0.06)</td></tr><tr><td>3. Religious Target, for Neutral Cause</td><td>0.09</td><td>(0.06)</td></tr><tr><td>Antireligious Critique <sup>a</sup></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>1. Religious Target, for Antiliberal Cause</td><td><strong>-0.06</strong></td><td>(0.03)</td></tr><tr><td>2. Religious Target, for Religious Devotional Cause</td><td><strong>-0.09</strong></td><td>(0.03)</td></tr><tr><td>3. Religious Target, for Neutral Cause</td><td>0.03</td><td>(0.04)</td></tr><tr><td>4. Neutral Target, for Neutral Cause</td><td>0.01</td><td>(0.03)</td></tr></tbody></table>

Notes. N = 210. In bold: results that are significant or marginally significant with traditional significance testing. For the full model, R² = .10. For the highest order interaction (conditions × antireligious critique), ΔR² = .05.

<sup>a</sup> Coefficients displayed below are the conditional effects of antireligious critique by conditions. The impact of antireligious critique differed between condition 2 and condition 4, b (SE) = -0.10 (0.04), as well as between condition 2 and condition 3, b (SE) = -0.12 (0.05). Additionally, slopes in condition 1 were different from those in condition 3, b (SE) = -0.09 (0.05).
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<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>*Figure 1.* Willingness to help a target as a function of condition (varying in target's status and cause: religious or neutral) and participants' convictional group (nonbelievers and Christians), in the UK and France (Experiment 1, top) and Reunion Island (Experiment 2, bottom).</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>
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*Figure 2.* Willingness to help a target as a function of antireligious critique, graphed at 1 *SD* below and above the mean, distinctly by conditions varying in target's status (religious or neutral) and cause (antiliberal, religious or neutral) (Experiment 2, in Reunion Island, France).

In bold: results that are significant or marginally significant with traditional significance testing.

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>