Whose Sincerely Held Beliefs Count? Political Ideology Shapes Perceptions of Religious Exemption Requests

Four studies collectively investigate whether schematic and political biases predict how people conceptualize sincerely held religious beliefs and reason about religious exemptions. Studies 1a (N = 99) and 1b (N = 151) suggest that U.S. Americans schematically associate conservative (but not liberal) stances on religion-relevant issues with sincerely held religious belief. Studies 2 and 3 investigate how politically diverse U.S. Americans evaluate exemption requests that are either schema-consistent (conservative request; Study 2; N = 402) or inconsistent (liberal request; Study 3; N = 400) and reveal that people might not exclusively rely on these schemas for judgments about religious exemption requests, as people are more willing to grant exemptions to both conservative schema-consistent and liberal schema-inconsistent religious claims than to nonreligious claims. However, political ideology critically shapes judgments about the religious sincerity of beliefs, whether denying exemption requests constitutes First Amendment violations, and whether exemptions should ultimately be granted.