“We Don’t Want Your Thoughts and Prayers”: Nonreligious Perceptions of Petitionary Prayer

A wealth of established literature has examined the relationship between prayer and various outcomes such as well-being; however, the perceptions we hold of others who engage in prayer remain largely unexamined. In this research we investigated people’s attitudes towards a target who asked for supernatural help for a “selfish” outcome (i.e., a job promotion). We found (non)religious group differences in perceptions of the target, with nonreligious individuals having more negative interpretations of the target and the target’s actions. Moreover, the extent to which the target was seen as taking responsibility for his actions mediated this finding, suggesting an underlying mechanism in which nonreligious people see prayer as offloading responsibility to God. These findings suggest that knowledge about others’ religious behaviour and people’s own (non)religious beliefs significantly inform interpersonal perception. Implications and future directions with regards to debates about religious individuals’ competence, rationality, and beliefs about science and religion are discussed.