Understanding out-group attitudes toward Muslims: The role of religion and conservative ideologies (Symposium).
(2013) International Association for the Psychology of Religion Conference — Location: Lausanne, Switzerland (27.August.2013)
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- Abstract
- In the current context of widespread Islamophobia, it seems particularly important to understand how beliefs and ideologies may enhance or reduce such attitudes. Since Gordon W. Allport’s conclusions that religion both makes and unmakes prejudice, research in social psychology and psychology of religion has flourished in both directions. Indeed, whereas some studies suggest that religion and conservative ideologies increase prejudice toward other religious groups such as Muslims, other studies have in turn found that religion fosters prosociality. The present symposium will focus on the circumstances in which conservative ideologies and religion may promote either pro- or anti-Muslim attitudes. The four papers brought together in this symposium put various contexts into perspective and examine how, in those particular contexts, beliefs and ideologies relate to attitudes toward Muslims. The originality of this symposium is to present surveys that (1) use sample from different cultures including non-Western ones, (2) measure a multiplicity of attitudes toward Muslims and Islam, (3) deal with minority size and level of analysis and (4) use priming methodologies. Van der Noll’s paper deals with the important issue of resistance toward accommodating Islam in the public sphere in the West. The paper examines how religiosity and multiculturalism influence attitudes toward the provision of Islamic education in German public schools. Fasel’s paper goes further and analyzes the role of conservative ideologies in promoting anti-veil attitudes in Switzerland, both at the individual and community level. Furthermore, the influence of the proportion of Muslim immigration on such attitudes is also discussed. Clobert’s paper aims to overcome a common limitation found in literature on Islamophobia by focusing on Eastern cultures and religion. The paper examines how Eastern religions (e.g., Buddhism) impact attitudes toward Muslims and Islamophobia among different samples. Finally, Johnson’s paper puts the prosociality-promoting role of religion into perspective by replicating Batson’s Good Samaritan study. Johnson compares the effect of either a religious or a secular benevolence prime on helping a Muslim confederate.
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Clobert, M., & Cohen, A. B. (2013). Understanding out-group attitudes toward Muslims: The role of religion and conservative ideologies (Symposium). International Association for the Psychology of Religion Conference, Lausanne, Switzerland. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/50024