Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
Title
Ratings of Prosocial Personality Traits are Contaminated by Religious Stereotype Bias
Department
Psychology
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2011-2012
Abstract
Previous work has suggested that religiosity is associated with prosociality based on self- and peer-ratings of the personality traits Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. However, a religious prosociality stereotype exists such that the two domains are presumed to be associated. We investigated whether participants' own religiosity and self-ratings of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predict personality ratings of targets as a function of the target's religiosity. Participants rated religiously-labeled targets (e.g., Christian, Atheist) on personality adjectives. Participants higher in religiosity attribute greater Agreeableness to religious targets, an effect mediated by stereotypes about the nonreligious and lessened when the perceiver is more agreeable. Ratings of Agreeableness are affected by stereotypes of religious prosociality and religious ingroup bias.
Conference Name
Association for Psychological Science
Conference Location
Chicago Illinois
ScholarWorks Citation
Galen, Luke; Ellis, Lisa; Sharp, Michael; and VerWey, Amy, "Ratings of Prosocial Personality Traits are Contaminated by Religious Stereotype Bias" (2011). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 408.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/408
