Understanding the Morality of Unbelievers: Secular Beliefs about Right and Wrong in Ten Countries

Many people around the world believe that to be moral, one must believe in God. However, individuals who do not believe in God also hold distinct ethical beliefs. Similar to theists, non-theists in different cultures may share overarching narratives about morality and what it is founded upon—a possibility that remains understudied. In the present research, we utilised open-ended survey data to explore what non-theists from ten countries (N = 996) described as the basis of their views on right and wrong. We also investigated how different beliefs about morality clustered together. The findings show diversity but also point towards cross-culturally recurring patterns in non-theistic beliefs and belief clusters concerning 1) important moral principles and 2) perceived sources of morality. We furthermore discuss country-specific findings, such as the importance of ‘conscience’ for Turkish and Czech participants and ‘cultural Christianity’ in the Danish sample. Altogether, the results support research indicating that a lack of belief in God does not entail moral relativism and question views on non-theists primarily seeing morality as self-constructed. Instead, our findings point towards a more prominent role of social interaction and ‘social contract’ in views about the basis of right and wrong. In light of the results, we suggest that predominant ways of measurement in moral psychology may currently obscure diversity in non-theistic moral outlooks, such as more communal secular ethics. The main limitation of the research is convenience sampling. We therefore encourage future work to utilise representative samples to explore differing secular moralities and their predictors.