{"id":69474,"date":"2016-10-26T09:55:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T14:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69474"},"modified":"2016-10-26T12:47:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T17:47:41","slug":"atheists-still-americas-most-disliked-group-now-along-with-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/10\/26\/atheists-still-americas-most-disliked-group-now-along-with-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheists Still America’s Most Disliked Group, Now Along with Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at The Society Pages’\u00a0Discoveries<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ten years ago, sociologist\u00a0Penny Edgell<\/a>\u00a0and her colleagues\u00a0published a surprising finding: atheists were the most disliked minority group in the United States<\/a>. Americans said atheists were less likely\u00a0share their vision of Americans society than were Muslims, gays and lesbians, African Americans, and a host of other groups — and that\u00a0they wouldn\u2019t like their child marrying one.<\/p>\n

But that was a decade\u00a0ago. Today, fewer\u00a0Americans<\/a> report\u00a0a religious affiliation and, in the intervening years, many non-religious groups have made efforts to improve their public image.<\/p>\n

So, have things gotten better for atheists? The authors recently published the findings from a ten-year follow up<\/a> to answer these questions, and found that not much has changed.\u00a0Atheists\u00a0are now statistically tied<\/em> with Muslims\u00a0for the most disliked group in the United States. Despite an increased\u00a0awareness of atheists and other non-religious people over the last decade, Americans still distance themselves from the non-religious.<\/p>\n

\"Flickr
Flickr photo from David Riggs<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This time around, the authors asked some additional questions to get at\u00a0why<\/em> so many people dislike atheists. They\u00a0asked if\u00a0respondents think atheists are immoral, criminal, or elitist, and whether or not the increase in non-religious people is a good or bad thing. They found that one of the strongest predictors of disliking atheists is assuming that they are immoral. People are\u00a0less likely to think\u00a0atheists are\u00a0criminals\u00a0and those who think\u00a0they are\u00a0elitist actually see it as a good thing. However, 40% of Americans also say that the increase of people with \u201cno religion\u201d is a bad thing.<\/p>\n

These findings highlight the ways that\u00a0many people in the United States still use religion as a sign of morality, of who is a good citizen, a good neighbor, and a good American.\u00a0And the fact that Muslims are just as disliked as atheists shows that it is not only\u00a0the\u00a0non<\/em>-religious that get cast as different and bad. Religion\u00a0can be a basis for both inclusion and exclusion, and the authors conclude that it is\u00a0important to continue interrogating when and why it excludes.<\/p>\n

Amber Joy Powell is a PhD student<\/a> in sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her current research interests include crime, punishment, victimization, and the intersectionalities of race and gender. She is currently working on an ethnographic study involving the criminal justice response to child sexual assault victims.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at The Society Pages’\u00a0Discoveries. Ten years ago, sociologist\u00a0Penny Edgell\u00a0and her colleagues\u00a0published a surprising finding: atheists were the most disliked minority group in the United States. Americans said atheists were less likely\u00a0share their vision of Americans society than were Muslims, gays and lesbians, African Americans, and a host of other groups — and that\u00a0they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,329,272,283,693,285,1756,20063,42,23659],"class_list":["post-69474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-emotion","tag-marriagefamily","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-public-opinion","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-arabsmiddle-easterners","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-religion","tag-religion-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/10\/3-5.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69474"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69507,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69474\/revisions\/69507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}