E-Mail A new study suggests that, while atheists and theists share moral values related to protecting vulnerable individuals, atheists are less likely to endorse values that promote group cohesion and more inclined to judge the morality of actions based on their consequences. Tomas Ståhl of the University of Illinois at Chicago presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 24, 2021. In many countries, including the U.S., widespread cultural beliefs hold that atheists lack a moral compass. However, no previous studies have systematically examined the differences between atheists' and theists' concepts of morality. To address this gap, Ståhl conducted two surveys examining the moral values of 429 American atheists and theists via Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. He also conducted two larger surveys involving 4,193 atheists and theists from the U.S. (a predominantly religious country) and Sweden (a predominantly irreligious country).