Psychology Commons^™

Delicious Justice: Schadenfreude Toward Atheists Bound For Hell, Maxine Najle

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

In the wake of the death of a prominent atheist figure in 2011, an especially unsavory side of anti-atheist prejudice became evident as many celebrated the death of a prominent atheist, rejoicing that he would be in hell. The current study explores how these attitudes reveal a sense of schadenfreude in anti-atheist prejudice previously unexplored in the literature. Potential origins of this schadenfreude are discussed, and a study to experimentally explore this phenomenon was carried out. Using the repeated taste-test paradigm, this study gave participants atheist primes and hell primes between identical drinks and measure perceived taste after these manipulations, …