What is it about?
In this article, we suggest that dogmatic beliefs, manifested as strong beliefs that there is no God (i.e., dogmatic atheism) as well as strong beliefs in God (i.e., religious orthodoxy), can serve as a cognitive response to uncertainty. Moreover, we claim that people who dogmatically do not believe in religion and those who dogmatically believe in religion are equally prone to intolerance and prejudice towards groups that violate their important values. That is because prejudice towards these groups may be an efficient strategy to protect the certainty that strong beliefs provide.
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Why is it important?
The present studies contribute to the existing literature by showing for the first time that both dogmatically atheistic and dogmatically religious beliefs are associated with intolerance of uncertainty and result in prejudice towards different groups that pose a threat to their value systems.
Perspectives
Our research is the first to show that dogmatism is a formal, content-free dimension that may be related to different, and even opposing, worldviews. Both dogmatic believers and dogmatic atheists exhibited a strong need for certainty, clear-cut answers, coherence, and meaning in life, even though they are looking for it by following different paths. The epistemic motives underlying both belief systems are basically the same, as are the general consequences of both forms of dogmatic thinking. Prejudice is not limited only to religious believers or to those on the political right, but rather, as a response to uncertainty it may also occur among dogmatic atheists and the otherwise politically and socially liberal.
Professor Małgorzata Kossowska
Jagiellonian University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Many faces of dogmatism: Prejudice as a way of protecting certainty against value violators among dogmatic believers and atheists, British Journal of Psychology, February 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12186.
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