The Downside of Divinity? Reputational Harm to Sectarian Universities from Overtly Religious Advertising

Abstract

The present research explores whether the use of overtly religious advertising by a sectarian university affects its academic reputation. The authors propose that individuals assume universities that engage in more (vs. less) overt religious advertising devote a greater proportion of their institutional resources toward religious education. Further, they posit that individuals exhibit zero-sum thinking about resource allocation whereby they believe that a university’s provision of greater resources toward religion education implies the availability of fewer resources for other academic programs and disciplines. As such, whereas overtly religious advertising can bolster individuals’ evaluations of programs and disciplines closely related to religion (e.g., divinity, theology), it can adversely affect evaluations of programs and disciplines in other areas (e.g., science, engineering, business, economics). Finally, the authors suggest that individuals’ zero-sum thinking has the potential to create the most reputational harm for a religious university’s scientific programs and disciplines due to the presumption of many individuals—even those who consider themselves religious—that religion and science are antithetical. This theorizing is empirically supported by six experiments with over 2,400 participants.