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College Students’ Appreciative Attitudes Toward Atheists

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Abstract

Atheists are often marginalized in discussions of religious and spiritual pluralism on college campuses and beyond. As with other minority worldview groups, atheists face challenges with hostile campus climates and misunderstanding of their views. The present study used a large, multi-institutional sample to explore predictors of non-atheist college students’ appreciative attitudes toward atheists. Substantial differences were found across identities; secular and spiritual worldview groups hold the most positive views, whereas Christians and Muslims have the most negative attitudes. Interactions with worldview diversity—but not general religious/spiritual engagement—consistently predict more positive attitudes, and these relationships sometimes vary based on students’ own worldviews. These results suggest that colleges and universities can create more inclusive environments for atheists, who constitute a sizable minority group on today’s college campuses.

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Notes

  1. Technically, atheism cannot be considered a religious or spiritual belief system since the definitions of “religiosity” and “spiritualism” both presume belief in some form of God(s) or a higher power (Brewster et al. 2014) and because of the diversity of beliefs among atheists (American Atheists 2014). However, in many surveys, atheists are grouped with other individuals who do not believe in or identify with a specific religion (including agnostics, nonbelievers, freethinkers, and humanist and secular individuals) into a broader category of “nonreligious” individuals or religious “nones” (Cragun et al. 2012; Putnam and Campbell 2010; Zuckerman 2009). This categorization is not recommended, as the spiritual and religious beliefs held by these individuals vary widely (Cragun et al. 2012; Zuckerman 2009).

  2. As expected, the proportion of religiously unaffiliated students varied considerably by institutional type. This representation was highest at private, nonsectarian institutions (34 %) and public institutions (29 %), with lower proportions of unaffiliated students at Protestant schools (22 %) and Catholic schools (16 %).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. N432 Lindquist Center, University of Iowa, Iowa, IA, 52242, USA

    Nicholas A. Bowman

  2. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Alyssa N. Rockenbach

  3. New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Matthew J. Mayhew

  4. Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

    Tiffani A. Riggers-Piehl

  5. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Tara D. Hudson

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  1. Nicholas A. Bowman
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Correspondence to Nicholas A. Bowman.

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Bowman, N.A., Rockenbach, A.N., Mayhew, M.J. et al. College Students’ Appreciative Attitudes Toward Atheists. Res High Educ 58, 98–118 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-016-9417-z

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