I came across this research.
http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~will/Gervais%20et%20al-%20Atheist%20Distrust.pdf
http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~will/Gervais%20et%20al-%20Atheist%20Distrust.pdf
Recent polls indicate that atheists are among the least liked people in areas with religious majorities (i.e.,
in most of the world). The sociofunctional approach to prejudice, combined with a cultural evolutionary theory of religion’s effects on cooperation, suggest that anti-atheist prejudice is particularly motivated by distrust.
And if that weren't bad enough.A description of a criminally untrustworthy individual was seen as comparably representative of atheists and rapists but not representative of Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, feminists, or homosexuals.
But there seems to be some hope.Finally, Study 6 demonstrated that distrust of atheists translates into discriminatory decision making.
Anyway, read the paper for yourself; it's long, but rather interesting.On the other hand, based on the present findings, we predict that people living in largely nonreligious countries (e.g., Denmark; Zuckerman, 2008)—much like nonreligious participants in our studies—would exhibit greatly attenuated anti-atheist prejudice, or possibly none at all. Available evidence supports these predictions:
explicit anti-atheist prejudice among religious individuals is most pronounced in strongly religious countries, an association that holds up across more than 50 countries, even after including important individual-level and country-level relevant control measures.
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