A low belief in human evolution was associated with increased levels of racism, prejudice, and discriminatory behavior against minority groups, according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Researchers used data from the Pew Research Center and the American General Social Survey, testing their hypothesis among 45 countries.
“Low belief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes, and support for discriminatory behaviors against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), Blacks, and immigrants in the United States (Study 1), with higher ingroup biases, prejudicial attitudes toward outgroups, and less support for conflict resolution in samples collected from 19 Eastern European countries (Study 2), 25 Muslim countries (Study 3), and Israel (Study 4),” the journal report found.
“Overall, these findings highlight the importance of belief in human evolution as a potentially key individual-difference variable predicting racism and prejudice,” the authors of the report determined.
