Syropoulos, S., Lifshin, U., et al. (2022).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Advance online publication.
https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000391
Abstract
The current investigation tested if people’s basic belief in the notion that human beings have developed from other animals (i.e., belief in evolution) can predict human-to-human prejudice and intergroup hostility. Using data from the American General Social Survey and Pew Research Center (Studies 1–4), and from three online samples (Studies 5, 7, 8) we tested this hypothesis across 45 countries, in diverse populations and religious settings, across time, in nationally representative data (N = 60,703), and with more comprehensive measures in online crowdsourced data (N = 2,846). Supporting the hypothesis, low belief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes, and support for discriminatory behaviors against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), Blacks, and immigrants in the United States (Study 1), with higher ingroup biases, prejudicial attitudes toward outgroups, and less support for conflict resolution in samples collected from 19 Eastern European countries (Study 2), 25 Muslim countries (Study 3), and Israel (Study 4). Further, among Americans, lower belief in evolution was associated with greater prejudice and militaristic attitudes toward political outgroups (Study 5). Finally, perceived similarity to animals (a construct distinct from belief in evolution, Study 6) partially mediated the link between belief in evolution and prejudice (Studies 7 and 8), even when controlling for religious beliefs, political views, and other demographic variables, and were also observed for nondominant groups (i.e., religious and racial minorities). Overall, these findings highlight the importance of belief in human evolution as a potentially key individual-difference variable predicting racism and prejudice.
General Discussion
The current set of studies tested the hypothesis that believing that human beings evolved from animals, relates to (decreased) human-to-human prejudice and discrimination and negative attitudes towards various outgroups. In Study 1, we tested and found support for this hypothesis using data from the American GSS (Smith et al., 1972-2018). Across all the years in which a measure of belief in human evolution was included, it was consistently associated with less prejudice, less racist attitudes and decreased support for discriminatory behaviors against blacks and other minorities among white and presumably primarily heterosexual Americans. These results held when controlling for measures of religiosity, level of education and political views, and were not explained by other measures related to common knowledge, or attitudes towards animal rights (see Supplementary Materials). In Studies 2-4, we further tested if belief in human evolution predicted ingroup bias and negative attitudes towards outgroups in nationally representative samples of 45 countries obtained from the Pew Research Center, including data collected from Eastern Europe (19 countries), Muslim countries (25 countries), and Israel. In support of the hypothesis, belief in human evolution was mostly-consistently associated with decreased discrimination towards outgroups, a finding that held even after controlling for key demographic characteristics, such as religiosity and conservative political beliefs. In Study 4, Israelis who believe in human evolution were more likely to support a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict compared to those did not believe.
