How to counter anti-Mormon bias

Vanderbilt's John Geer and Brett Benson and Claremont Graduate University's Jennifer Merolla have released a new study on the extent of anti-Mormon bias among the public and the best ways to counter it:

Bias against Mormons is significantly more intense among the public than bias against either African Americans or women, according to a new scientific poll by three professors from Vanderbilt and Claremont Graduate universities.

The survey was designed to assess bias against Mormons, how best to combat it and its potential impact on the nomination process and general election campaign.

...A national representative sample of 1,200 people participated along with an additional over-sample of another 600 “born-again” Southerners. The over-sample was designed to measure the concerns that people have expressed about Romney’s religion among the evangelical base of the Republican Party.

...Key findings of the study include:

* Bias against Mormons is significantly more intense among the public compared to bias against women and blacks. The bias against Mormons is even more pronounced among conservative Evangelicals. Their bias against Mormons rivals their bias against atheists.

* Only about half the nation claims to even know a Mormon or to know that Romney is Mormon.

* The extent of the bias against Romney is moderated if the individual already knows that he is Mormon. That information seems to demystify the Mormon religion, making people more tolerant of the religion. Those who do not know Romney is Mormon exhibit much greater bias upon learning of his religion.

* When participants in the survey are provided information that stereotypes Mormons, such as ‘Mormons are part of a non-Christian cult” or “Mormons are polygamists,” they react negatively to Romney’s candidacy.

* Participants react favorably to messages that dispel the negative stereotypes about Mormons. Examples would be “about a hundred years ago the Mormon Church banned polygamy,” or “the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints stresses traditional family values.” However, simple appeals for religious tolerance do not win over support for Romney from the respondents.

Unfortunately, as Geer pointed out in an interview about the study with Newsweek.com, Romney's speech on faith in America took exactly the wrong approach:

NEWSWEEK: Let's talk about the address specifically. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Romney said Monday that he would not focus on his Mormon beliefs in a major speech on religion this week and instead would discuss his concern that "faith has disappeared from the public square." Based on your data, is this the right approach?

GEER: The data we have suggests it's probably not a good idea. How much he wants to talk about his faith and the Mormon religion is not entirely clear based on our evidence. But we have pretty compelling results that suggest that if people learn more about the Mormon religion--in a sense checking the kind of bias that exists out there, that Mormons believe in polygamy, that Mormons represent a cult, etc.--that if you check that information with counter-information, such as letting people know that the Mormon church banned polygamy a hundred years ago, and you provide that kind of context, that people become a little bit more tolerant and show less bias. Our data are pretty clear. There is bias against Mormons--but it dwindles once people learn more.

NEWSWEEK: What about a plea for tolerance, like Kennedy made in 1960?

GEER: We gave people the biased information against Mormons and try to counter it with various scenarios, information being one of them--like "the LDS church is big on family and traditional values." Then we just did a plea for tolerance, literally clipping from Kennedy's Houston ministers speech one of the passages where he talks about the need to have tolerance. The tolerance doesn't work. It's the information that checks the bias. When people who are not aware that Romney is Mormon are given the classic caricature of Mormons, that drives down Romney's ratings. But the thing is, you can only bring back the ratings of Romney with new information. A plea to tolerance does not work. Sure, it's a good thing. But you first have to let people know what you're asking people to be tolerant of. That's the key takeaway.

[Disclosure: Benson and Merolla are former graduate students here at Duke.]

Comments

[Rob]

Just this past Sunday, the often-addled Tim Russert said in his interview with Romney, "[I]t wasn't till 1978 that the Mormon church decided to allow blacks to participate fully. Here was the headlines in the papers in June of '78. 'Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias. Citing new revelation from God, the president of the Mormon Church decreed for the first time black males could fully participate in church rites.' You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation. Didn't you think, 'What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?'"

Now Russert is himself a member of a Church that continues to deny women the opportunity to "fully participate in church rites." Would he like to defend his Church's sexism? Has he asked any Catholic candidate to do so?

The answer, of course, is that the mainstream media in general, and Russert in particular, are perfectly fine with a double standard when it comes to Mormons.

Question to the class for bonus credit: Can you think of any other kinds of double standard the media employ?

[Howard]

I don't know, the question may have helped Romney as it educated the public with regard to the Mormon church. That seems to be in keeping with the results of the study referenced above.

Plus, it's great to know that the Mormons are receiving new revelations from God on a regular basis.

It seems like a fair question to me. Candidates use their religious affiliation as a form of qualification. They should have the opportunity to explain what values they derive from their faith.

Additionally, they should be asked how they reconcile belonging to religious organizations where there are policies that contradict our widely held political values (such as equal rights, individual freedom and tolerance).

These divergences exits in Judaism as well (where the rabbinical role of women is, or has been, limited). Its not just Catholics and Mormons.

It wasn't just a fair question, it was an interesting one. It tells us something about Romney (and I think his answer was reasonable enough, by the way) and it brings questions related to the separation of Church and State into public discourse.