While research shows individuals often react with hostility to racial and class privilege, reactions to religious privilege are understudied. In a registered report made possible by the Open Science of Religion Project, we investigated how religiousness is related to hostile (e.g., denial) and prosocial (e.g., remorse) reactions to religious privilege across three studies. Study 1 (N = 395) assessed correlational relationships between attitudes toward privilege and parochial (e.g., Christian nationalism, religious fundamentalism) and universal (e.g., religious intellectual humility, sanctification of social justice) dimensions of religiousness. Study 2 (N = 737) induced actual reactions to religious privilege, manipulating whether privilege was framed as a merit-based or group-based threat. Study 3 (N = 699) primed universal and parochial religiousness to examine the causal relationship between religiousness and reactions to privilege. Across our studies, parochial religiousness was related to hostile reactions, whereas two forms of universal religiousness were related to prosocial reactions.

Weedman, M., Al-Kire, R. L., & Tsang, J.-A. (2024). Hostile and prosocial reactions to Christian privilege in the United States: A registered report.Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000545