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Scientific American summarizes studies which locate people’s distrust of atheists in their fears that atheists are more likely to act deviously in secret because they fear no god is watching them. We have talked about such research before. Then this article explores other research which gives indications about how to combat this problem: When we know [...]
Archive for the ‘Social Psychology’ Category
How To Make God Die A Little More
January 17th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke Pascal Boyer on Imaginary Friends and Supernatural Agents
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Sorry for the hiccup as the site was down, but now that we’re back up, the blogathon goes on! Onward to 9:00am! Reading Pascal Boyer’s frequently illuminating Religion Explained last fall, the single most interesting part for me was his discussion of imaginary friends. According to my mom I had countless imaginary friends as a [...]
Atheists Perceived As Less Trustworthy Than Rapists??
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke I may have underestimated in the past just how bad misperceptions of us are: Consider one of the experiments. One hundred and five students read a brief vignette about a man who fails to take responsibility when he hits a parked van with his car, and then pockets money from a wallet he finds on [...]
How Evangelicals Can Be Very Hurtful Without Being Very Hateful
October 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke The weekend after George W. Bush’s reelection, I attended a MoveOn.org get together at my friends’ house. The idea of the event was that people would volunteer their homes to host nationally coordinated local strategy discussions. So, it was me, my two friends, and a whole bunch of hard-left Upper West Side Manhattanites all of [...]
Memorializing Suicides Without Heroizing Suicide
September 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Gay blogger Jim Burroway believes that Lady Gaga’s advocacy for the LGBT community is genuine and passionate but worries about a backfire effect of her decision to prominently dedicate a song to one of her young fans who took his life recently: as I watch this video of her performing “Hair” and dedicating it to Jamey Rodemeyer at [...]
What Women Want…In Porn?
September 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Susie Bright, in an interview with Salon explains an accidental discovery: There were about a dozen women in the ’80s who started making their own movies, magazines, images, and we fought against all the naysayers. Then, to everyone’s shock, the women’s erotica movement made significant sales. Into the middle of that mix, came along a [...]
Posted in Psychology, Psychology, Sex, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Women's Issues 
7 Comments »Internecine War At Freethought Blogs: Philosopher vs. “Redneck” Edition: Free Will And The Real World Smackdown
September 10th, 2011 Daniel Fincke As far as I have noticed, there has not been a blog war between any of the Freethought Blogs (or, er, since we all moved here anyway) so I was a little trepidatious of going and picking apart the every word of a quick comment on one of my posts by my new favorite blogger, Hank [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Ethics, Faith, Faith, God, God, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology 
Tags: Free Will 19 Comments »Offer Nominations for 3 Quarks Daily’s Prize for Best Blog Writing in Philosophy
September 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke For the third straight year, 3 Quarks Daily will award a prize for blog writing in philosophy. Nominate what you think is the best philosophy blog post from the last year by 11:59pm EST on Monday night (September 5). Below the fold are both the full details of the contest and a very good video interview [...]
Posted in Biology, Biology, Ethics, Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology Tags: Cognitive Science, Neuromorality, Neurophilosophy, Patricia Churchland No Comments »Asking Richard Wade About Whether Believers Are Literally Deluded
July 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In seven previous posts, I have discussed with the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, the problems with forming one’s identity based on one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), how atheists should respond to the possibly religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous, the ethics of advising people to lie about [...]
Asking Richard Wade About How Atheists Should Respond to Alcoholics Anonymous, and How Personal Values Influence Professional Therapy
July 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In three previous posts, the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade and I have discussed the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, and whether atheists should replace religious identities with self-consciously atheistic ones. Along the way, Richard compared religion to heroin. In what follows I take that as an opening [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, God, God, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology Tags: Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous and Religion, Alcoholism, Higher Being 21 Comments »The Best Christian Ever
May 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This video, from ABC’s show What Would You Do?, features an incredible gesture of altruistic human love which made me quite teary to watch. And it’s by someone inspired by Jesus. If only this was the sum of what following Jesus meant to people: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Christianity, Christianity, Jesus, Jesus, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Videos Tags: ABC's "What Would You Do?" 7 Comments »The Religious Conservative's False Choice: "Big Brother" Or "Heavenly Father"
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Duty, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, George W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Theocrats, Theocrats, Torture, Torture, Virtues, Virtues, World Affairs, World Affairs Tags: Political Philosophy, Social Contract, Victor Frankl 3 Comments »Sex And Apostasy
February 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Drew Dyck has written a book called Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back. I want to focus on just a few passages from his interesting five page article from last fall in last November’s Christianity Today. Unlike many Christians who, despite living in a culture [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Prejudice, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Secularism, Sex, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Sex and Faith, Sex and Religion, Sexual Ethics, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Hypocrisy, Sexual Values, Young Adult Sexuality 8 Comments »Near Mindedness Vs. Far Mindedness
December 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Robin Hanson explores the causes and nature of our double-mindedness that makes us talk a good game about long term goals and make grand long term commitments only to default to short term preferences in practice: All animals need different ways to reason about things up close vs. far away. And because humans are especially [...]
William Shatner As Stanley Milgram In The 1975 Film “The Tenth Level”
July 25th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Stanley Milgram was the psychologist who performed the famous obedience experiments which involved getting normal people to go through with administering (what they thought were) extraordinarily painful shocks to other people out of deference to calm but firm orders from an authority figure. Now Mind Hacks points our attention to The Tenth Level a fascinating bit [...]
Why I Think Theistic Religion’s Psychological Grip Can Be Weakened Or Broken
July 10th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In a recent comments section, Gregory Wahl argued to me that religion is so deeply rooted in psychological needs, specifically the longing for immortality, that there is an inherent limitation to the ability of all my philosophical arguments to dissuade the faithful. As this line of reasoning goes, they do not believe for intellectual reasons [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology, Sociology Tags: Atheistic Existentialism, Atheistic Nihilism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalist Nihilism, Healthy-Soul Religion, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nihilism, Nihilistic Existentialism, Sick-Soul Religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Values, William James No Comments »If I Could Read Only One Atheist Blogger, It Would Be…
July 3rd, 2010 Daniel Fincke …Richard Wade of Friendly Atheist, whose ”Ask Richard” column turns one fantastic year old today. It is a column by a retired therapist who gives atheists advice about atheistic parenting, the effects of one’s religious past on one’s present life and the way to go forward constructively in the future as an atheist, and, probably most [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Friendly Atheist, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Psychology, Psychology, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology Tags: Ask Richard, Atheist Family Relationships, Richard Wade 7 Comments »Tom Rees On Why Loss Of Faith Might Be A Two Generational Process
July 2nd, 2010 Daniel Fincke The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study this February revealed that less than one fifth of all American adults under 30 report regular church attendance. But they still also overwhelmingly claim belief in God. Tom Rees thinks that despite their beliefs, their abandonment of the pews may indicate that a multi-generational secularization [...]
Posted in Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociobiology, Sociobiology, Sociology, Sociology Tags: and Culture at the University of British Columbia, Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, Costly Signaling, Credibility Enhancing Displays, Joe Heinrich, Pope John Paul II, Religion in America, Signaling, Tom Rees No Comments »Unconscious Influences
July 2nd, 2010 Daniel Fincke Time ticks off some observed ways in which people have been shown to be susceptible to irrational subconscious influences: Studies have found that upon entering an office, people behave more competitively when they see a sharp leather briefcase on the desk, they talk more softly when there is a picture of a library on the [...]
Contrasting Muslim And Western Psychologies: The Locus Of Control
July 1st, 2010 Daniel Fincke Nicolai Sennels spent several years working with criminal Muslims in Copenhagen (where as of March 2009 “70% of the prison population in the Copenhagen youth prison consists of young man of Muslim heritage.”) He writes the following about the different ways that Westerners and Muslims view the locus of control: There is another strong difference between the [...]
Posted in Islam, Islam, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, World Affairs, World Affairs Tags: Copenhagen, Denmark, Islam In Europe 8 Comments »
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