Summary: The stereotype that science and religion are incompatible is pervasive society, particularly in the United States. Although historians find little evidence of tangible conflict between these domains (Ferngren, 2017), research shows that Christian students in science feel unwelcome, suffer from negative stereotypes (Barnes et al., 2020), and underperform on scientific tasks (Rios et al., 2015). These outcomes mirror the lack of belonging and underperformance that plagues women in STEM due to a psychological process called stereotype threat. The stereotypes regarding the chasm between science and religion likely contribute to a lack of Christian representation in the sciences, leading to smaller pools of science students and potentially biased research.

I will explore whether an intervention that bridges the science-religion gulf can mitigate the effects of religious stereotype threat on science performance and sense of belonging. Christian and non-religious college students recruited from Prolific will be randomly assigned to watch either an intervention video produced by BioLogos (arguing for science/religion compatibility) or a neutral video. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the threat condition (religious identity salient) or a no-threat condition and will complete the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Task (framed as a scientific reasoning task). Measures of religiosity and sense of belonging and trust in science will be completed.

Overall, I hypothesize that Christians will have lower science task performance, sense of belonging, and trust than non-religious participants. However, I expect the intervention video and identity threat manipulation to moderate this effect – Christians in the intervention video condition and those in the no-threat condition will have similar outcomes as non-religious participants. Finally, I predict that Christians in the threat condition who view the intervention video will have better outcomes than those who view the neutral video. I will conduct two-way ANOVAs to assess these hypotheses. This study will explore a simple intervention to alleviate threat that Christian students feel in science, improve science performance, and increase diversity in science.