South SFV Today

Exposure to other religions could curb science denial

Sep 6, 2024

A multifaceted new study by Yu Ding, an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, finds that there is another strong predictor of science denial: how much exposure religious people have to members of other faiths.

As Ding reviewed studies of religious intensity and science denial, he found several unanswered questions. For instance, why don’t all religious people find their faith incompatible with science? Quakers and Jews often have strong religious convictions yet are well represented in the STEM disciplines. Likewise, why does individual religious intensity not account for geographic variations in levels of science denial? A Pew Research Center study found that 42% of Muslim respondents in Tunisia believe there is a “general conflict” between religion and science versus 16% of Muslim respondents in Morocco.

This led Ding, along with professors Gita Johar and Michael Morris of Columbia Business School, to examine a lack of religious diversity as a pathway to science denial. The trio hypothesized that science denial may arise from religious intolerance — an unwillingness to accept any view that contradicts the accepted dogma — and that intolerance may be the result of a lack of religious diversity within a particular area.

“Contact theory suggests that when people live in less religiously diverse areas they are not as exposed to ideas that contradict their beliefs and might be less willing to consider them,” Ding explains. “If you live in an echo chamber of your own beliefs, you may not be willing to go through the whole process of understanding when judging other beliefs. It’s easier to simply reject the contradictory ones.”

Ding and his colleagues tested their hypothesis in seven studies. The first showed that low levels of religious diversity in U.S. counties were related to residents’ refusal to socially distance and get vaccinated during the COVID pandemic. They also found that income, racial, and political diversity did not predict science denial as consistently. The second study expanded the inquiry to a global scale. It revealed that countries with less religious diversity have lower innovation levels and lower levels of science education attainment than countries that are more religiously diverse.

Then, the researchers sought to establish the relationship between science denial and religious diversity at the individual level in a series of attitudinal studies. Using data drawn from the World Values Survey of more than 65,000 people, they found that countries with higher levels of religious diversity had lower levels of science denial, and vice versa. (Among the more religiously diverse, more science-friendly countries: Singapore and South Korea. Some of the less diverse and less science-friendly: Egypt and Yemen. The U.S. was in the middle on both measures.)

Ding and his colleagues also conducted surveys among Christians in the United States, Muslims in Pakistan, and Hindus in India finding that people who were more intolerant toward other religions also held negative attitudes toward scientific findings that conflict with their faith and science in general.

“Across our studies we found that religious diversity had significant effects on science denial in 21 out 23 analyses,” Ding says.

Ding’s interest in this subject stems from marketing perspectives: "Science communication is core to marketing many products," he notes.

Approaching it as a marketing problem allows targeting various audiences such as policymakers who can influence societal structures or educators aiming for cognitive flexibility among students.

For example Singapore's Ethnic Integration Policy initiated back around '89 aimed at reducing ethnic segregation indirectly increased inter-religious contact leading up-to higher innovation/science education rates comparatively across nations today!

Ultimately communicators need considering varied recipient backgrounds fostering trust thereby combating inherent biases/Distrust creating avenues tackling complex issues including pervasive Science Denial!