Many people are guided by religious beliefs, but judgments of religiously and secularly motivated individuals remain unclear. We investigated reasoning about religiously versus secularly motivated characters among 5- to 10-year-olds and adults. In Study 1, theist and non-theist children reported similar attitudes toward theists; however, large differences emerged between theist and non-theist a...

This study provides exploratory evidence about how behavioral and neural responses to standard moral dilemmas are influenced by religious belief. Eleven Catholics and 13 Atheists (all female) judged 48 moral dilemmas. Differential neural activity between the two groups was found in precuneus and in prefrontal, frontal and temporal regions. Furthermore, a double dissociation showed that Catholic...

Social psychological researchers have found that most conceptual structures can be primed, i.e. activated unobtrusively and exert an influence on subsequent behavior without the participant’s awareness of this influence. I investigated whether exposing people to words related to a punishing God or a forgiving Christian could influence subsequent moral judgment. Participants completed a ’scrambl...

Abstract The article draws lessons for EU non-discrimination law from the protected grounds of religion and belief through a discussion CJEU’s headscarf judgments. has two ambitions. First, judgments are used to draw broader law, in relation distinction between justification direct indirect discrimination, as well purpose protecting against (religious) discrimination. Second, these analyze crit...

A wealth of research shows that people can achieve accurate interpersonal judgments of others based on brief observations of their nonverbal cues. Here, we review evidence demonstrating that people can accurately judge others’ kinship, sexual orientation, religious identity, political ideology, and professional success from subtle cues in their physical appearance and expressive behavior. Follo...

Moral violations are typically defined as actions that harm others. However, suicide is considered immoral even though the perpetrator is also the victim. To determine whether concerns about purity rather than harm predict moral condemnation of suicide, we presented American adults with obituaries describing suicide or homicide victims. While harm was the only variable predicting moral judgment...

Research on moral psychology has frequently appealed to three, apparently consistent patterns: 1) Males are more likely to engage in transgressions involving harm than females; 2) Educated people are likely to be more thorough in their moral deliberations because they have better resources for rationally navigating and evaluating complex information; 3) Political affiliations and religious ideo...