Though this is typically a forum for news about the lab, and I don’t typically write blog-type posts, I wanted to make an exception to make some clarifications about a discussion of our research on another blog. Jerry Coyne, a biologist, had a post about free will, compatibilism and morality on his blog whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com, in…
Author: sharifflab
Azim named APS Rising Star
Azim was named one of the Association for Psychological Science’s Rising Stars for 2015. According to the APS website “The Rising Star designation recognizes outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.”
Our New Paper on Income Mobility and Income Inequality Now In Press in Perspectives on Psychological Science
Our new paper with SFU’s Dylan Wiwad and Lara Aknin, Income Mobility Breeds Tolerance for Income Inequality: Cross-national and Experimental Evidence, is now in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science. The abstract appears below, and the you can download the pre-print draft here. American politicians often justify income inequality by referencing the opportunities people have…
Updated Heaven, Hell and Crime data for Shariff & Rhemtulla 2012
There have been some requests for the data for Shariff & Rhemtulla (2012)–which shows how national crime rates are divergently predicted by the country’s belief in Heaven and belief in Hell. These data are all freely available, but I’ve compiled them here for download in SPSS format. I’ve updated the data to the most recent…
Azim’s new paper in Current Opinion in Psychology
Azim’s new paper, Does Religion Increase Moral Behavior?, just accepted in Current Opinion in Psychology. In press paper linked here.
New paper on stereotypes about Christians and science performance in press at SPPS
Our new research paper, Negative Stereotypes Cause Christians to Underperform in and Disidentify with Science, with collaborators Kimberly Rios and Rebecca Trotton, and CaML members Zhen Cheng and Azim Shariff is now in press at Social and Personality Psychological Science. The paper shows how negative stereotypes about Christians’ performance in science can actually diminish their performance…
Brett Awarded SSHRC Fellowship
Brett Mercier, a newly-dubbed second year doctoral student and Azim’s fellow Canadian, has been awarded the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s doctoral fellowship. Brett received this award for his proposal to study the relationship between religion and wealth inequality. More information on the SSHRC award found here. Congratulations, Brett!
Adam wins APS Summer Research Grant
One of our talented undergraduate researchers, Adam Norris, has received the APS Summer Research Grant from Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. This summer, Adam will be working on a project with Azim and Stephanie which will examine how religiosity factors into moral appraisals of terrorists and terrorist acts. Congratulations, Adam!
Our meta-analysis of religious priming now in press at PSPR
Azim’s paper with Aiyana Willard, Tess Andersen and Ara Norenzayan, Religious Priming: A meta-analysis with a focus on religious prosociality, has just been accepted at Personality and Social Psychology Review. The paper contains several effect size and p-curve analyses for 93 religious priming studies (n = 11, 653). The abstract is appended below, and the…
A running list of religious priming papers
For those interested, we’ve started collecting a running list of papers that have used religious priming. You can access this page here. If you know of a paper that isn’t listed, but should be, please email us.








