Atheism May Be More Common Than We Think, Study Finds

Do you believe in God? Are you an atheist? Your answers to these questions may depend not only on your beliefs but also how you think others want you to answer.

This poses a difficult problem for demographers, social science researchers and pollsters. Typically, to evaluate the ideological makeup of the population, researchers rely on telephone surveys that reach a representative sample of people. But how do you get a true sense of what people believe if some feel pressure to hide their true thoughts and feelings?

Using an innovative research method, researchers from the University of Kentucky found that there may be many more American atheists, defined as people who disagree with the proposition that God exists, than traditional polls have revealed. The results of the study were published online Tuesday in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

“Just as there are, and have historically been, closeted gay men and lesbians out there, there are probably lots and lots of closeted atheists out there, who don't even identify themselves as such in anonymous polls,” said professor of psychology Will Gervais. While Gallup polls suggest that atheists make up about 3 to 11 percent of the population, Garvais and his coauthor Mazine Najle found that as many as 20 to 35 percent of Americans may not believe in God.

So how did they avoid the traditional pitfalls of polling research?

Instead of asking respondents directly about their beliefs, they used what's known as an "indirect sampling method." Using this method, the researchers provided 4,000 research subjects with lists of statements, such as "God exists." They then asked how many of those statements — but not which statements specifically — the subjects disagree with.

This allows people who might be reluctant to say they don't believe in God to report their lack of belief indirectly.

“Within our sample, one in three atheists in our online survey did not disclose their lack of belief, highlighting the level of stigma associated with lack of belief,” said Najle, a doctoral candidate in psychology.

"If it turns out that atheism isn't all that rare, it might challenge a lot of prevailing theories," said Gervais. "Basically, it'd mean that those of us who study the natural foundations of religion need to question our bedrock theories and assumptions."

Gervais added that he was "surprised by just how far the indirect measurement diverged from established polls of religious disbelief. Our best estimate is more than double what Gallup telephone polls estimate."

Indirect sampling has its drawbacks, because it is much less precise than traditional survey methods. Instead of getting direct feedback about subjects' responses to questions, the researchers must extrapolate from trends in their data. The researchers acknowledged that this method is "noisy," which is why their results produced an imprecise estimate.

"It's 26 percent as a best guess, but it could be quite a bit lower... or higher," Gervais said. "Could be 20 percent, could be 35 percent." He also acknowledged that the fundamental quality of the research method is up for debate.

"Social psychology has been taking a beating lately for producing results that are too good to be true, and it's a real feather in the cap for this journal that they didn't pressure us at all to put out the 'perfect' paper, rather than just transparently communicate what we found, including the good, the bad, and the ugly," he said.

Photo credit: David Howard