Kim Rios, PhD, Ohio University
Negative stereotypes make Christians underperform in science
Despite Christians being a religious majority group in the United States, relatively few Christians pursue higher education and careers in science.
Six studies show that stereotypes about Christians being less competent in and trusting of science are pervasively recognized, and that these stereotypes cause Christians to underperform in scientific domains and disidentify with science in general.
Both Christians and non-Christians, in academia and the general population, report social stereotypes about Christians showing weaker performance, competence, and interest in scientific fields, but not in other fields (Studies 1 & 4). Using four different manipulations of stereotype awareness and three different measures of scientific performance, our studies further showed that when these stereotypes are made salient, Christians underperform relative to non-Christians on scientific tasks (Studies 2, 3 & 6) and identify less with science (Study 5).
Even subtle contextual cues that bear more or less relevance to science, such as the academic building in which the task is administered, are sufficient to compromise Christians' scientific task performance, particularly among the highly religious. When these stereotypes are explicitly removed, the performance difference between Christians and non-Christians disappears.
These results suggest that Christians' awareness of the negative societal stereotypes about their group's competence in science may be partially responsible for the underrepresentation of Christians in scientific fields, as well as Christians' relative deficits in overall scientific literacy. These deficits may then feed into the original stereotypes, perpetuating a costly cycle.
