In a follow-up experiment, the researchers flipped the script. Instead of nudging people to think about death to see how that changed their views on atheism, they had people think about atheism and then tested the effect on thoughts of death. Two hundred students of various religious faiths first wrote about their thoughts on their own deaths, on atheism, or on experiencing extreme pain. Next, they did a word-completion task where they were given prompts like “S K _ _ L,” which could spell out a neutral word (skill) or a death-related word (skull).
The people prompted to think about death were more likely than those prompted to think about pain to complete the words with death-related options, unsurprisingly. But more shocking was that the people who thought about atheism were just as likely as the people who thought about death to pick death-related answers.
“We found that thinking about atheism actually increased thoughts of death to the same extent as thinking about death itself,” said Cook, who described the result as “surprising.”
Atheists may cue thoughts of death because they threaten people’s vision of the afterlife, the researchers wrote. When these central values about life after death are threatened, people cling to them more tightly and reject those who don’t share them.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member