Protestants In Northern Ireland Research Articles

ТРИУМФ И ТРАГЕДИЯ: СОБЫТИЯ ПЕРВОЙ МИРОВОЙ ВОЙНЫ В ИДЕОЛОГИИ УЧАСТНИКОВ ОЛЬСТЕРСКОГО КОНФЛИКТА (1969-1998 гг.)

The paper covers the specifics of the interpretation of the World War I events by radical unionist and republican groups during the Troubles in 1969-1998. The main sources are urban physical memorials in Northern Ireland. The author identifies the origins of the motives for the glorification of the figures of the World War I participants, in particular, the Battle of the Somme, and the Easter Rising. The mechanism of mutual influence of historical memory, narratives associated with collective trauma or collective triumph, and mythology constructed by radical groups to broadcast their own ideology is described. The author concludes that events of the past which have a special symbolic meaning for the identity of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, are interpreted within the framework of radical Unionist and Republican ideology, and act as tools for legitimizing violence, mobilizing the population and preserving social polarization.

Text-based E-contact: Harnessing cooperative Internet interactions to bridge the social and psychological divide

ABSTRACT In order to bridge the psychological and physical divide between different groups, researchers have harnessed the positive elements of the Internet to improve intergroup contact. One new and effective Internet strategy is Electronic- or E-contact. Unlike other contact approaches, E-contact is an experimental intergroup intervention that uniquely accommodates Allport’s contact theory and recategorisation processes, to create a structured, cooperative, synchronous and goal-directed online text interaction between members from different groups. E-contact has been found to successfully improve intergroup relations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and Muslims and Catholics in Australia; and reduce bias against lesbian women and gay men, people with schizophrenia, Indigenous Australians, and transgender individuals. This paper discusses the unique engineering and advantages of E-contact interventions in comparison to existing contact strategies, identifies the theories that guide E-contact interventions, provides meta-analytic evidence of its effects, and discusses the strengths, limitations and future directions for E-contact research.

Does Brexit Mean a Return to Sectarianism? Beyond ‘the Border Issue’, the Future of Social Identities in Northern Ireland from a Political Psychological Perspective

the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, appeared to have put an end to the political violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. However, although violence has been reduced after the Good Friday Agreement, the conflict between the two groups, which has deep historical roots, is more likely to be considered a continuous problem on the island. In the Brexit climate where the contested rhetoric of ‘sovereignty’ is salient, the integrationist process of the GFA may reverse into re-segregation and ancient enmities between denominational groups. Therefore, using both psychological and historical analyses, this article discusses how Brexit affects national identity dynamics in post-conflict Northern Ireland from a political psychological perspective.

Improving intergroup relations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland via E‐contact

AbstractNorthern Ireland is characterised by extensive segregation between its predominantly Catholic and Protestant communities. With the aim of overcoming this segregation, the current study experimentally evaluated the effectiveness of electronic or E‐contact as a novel indirect contact and prejudice‐reduction strategy. Here, Catholic and Protestant participants were not required to meet physically but were involved in a collaborative and goal‐orientated online interaction with a member of the other community. As predicted, E‐contact improved both Catholics’ and Protestants’ outgroup attitudes via improved contact expectancies and reduced intergroup anxiety. These findings provide support for the contemporary role of online interactions in actively overcoming the physical and psychological barriers that often prevent prejudice reduction in segregated communities.

RELIGION AS A MARKER FOR ETHNIC GROUPS IN CONFLICT AND OF POLITICAL NATIONAL CONFLICTS

The links between religion and ethnic and/or political dividing lines has manifested itself in many different ways in contemporary conflicts. In this paper I present briefly the following two forms: religion as a cleavage line of groups in ethno-religious confrontations: struggles between Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims in the Balkans; of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; of Sunni and Shia and Iraq; of Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka; of Muslims and Catholics in Indonesia; and religion as a mechanism for legitimizing power in the form of State Religions: National-Catholicism in Francoism, which is likely to generate the formation of the internal religious enemy.

Religion, anti-slavery, and identity: Irish Presbyterians, the United States, and transatlantic evangelicalism, c.1820–1914

Abstract Scholars have devoted much attention to the causes and consequences of Presbyterian emigration from Ulster to the thirteen colonies before 1776. This article moves beyond the eighteenth century to examine the continued religious links between Presbyterians in Ireland and the United States in the nineteenth century. It begins with an examination of the influence of evangelicalism on both sides of the Atlantic and how this promoted unity in denominational identity, missionary activity to convert Catholics, and revivalist religion during the first half of the century. Though Irish Presbyterians had great affection for their American co-religionists, they were not uncritical, and significant tensions did develop over slavery. The article then examines the religious character of Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scots identity in the late nineteenth century, which was articulated in response to the alleged demoralising influence of large-scale Irish immigration during and after the Famine of the 1840s, the so-called Romanisation of Catholicism, and the threat of Home Rule in Ireland. The importance of identity politics should not obscure religious developments, and the article ends with a consideration of the origins and character of fundamentalism, perhaps one of the most important cultural connections between Protestants in Northern Ireland and the United States in the twentieth century.

Cooperation and conflict: field experiments in Northern Ireland.

The idea that cohesive groups, in which individuals help each other, have a competitive advantage over groups composed of selfish individuals has been widely suggested as an explanation for the evolution of cooperation in humans. Recent theoretical models propose the coevolution of parochial altruism and intergroup conflict, when in-group altruism and out-group hostility contribute to the group's success in these conflicts. However, the few empirical attempts to test this hypothesis do not use natural groups and conflate measures of in-group and unbiased cooperative behaviour. We conducted field experiments based on naturalistic measures of cooperation (school/charity donations and lost letters' returns) with two religious groups with an on-going history of conflict—Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Conflict was associated with reduced donations to out-group schools and the return of out-group letters, but we found no evidence that it influences in-group cooperation. Rather, socio-economic status was the major determinant of cooperative behaviour. Our study presents a challenge to dominant perspectives on the origins of human cooperation, and has implications for initiatives aiming to promote conflict resolution and social cohesion.

Images of the Protestants in Northern Ireland: A Cinematic Deficit or an Exclusive Image of Psychopaths?

Films about the political conflict in Northern Ireland (from 1968 to 1998) have been prevalent over the last three decades and they have reflected changes in Northern Ireland. Through its discursive construction, its independent voice and its popular reach, cinema provides a unique vehicle for the exploration of the Troubles and the peace process. This article attempts to trace the relationship between cinema and this conflict, notably through films dealing with Protestants, as a series of such films were produced at the time of the Good Friday Agreement. Thus, cinema does not only transcribe history in a static way but takes part in the changes going on in Northern Ireland.

Does Affirmative Action Work? Evidence from the Operation of Fair Employment Legislation in Northern Ireland

An affirmative action programme, established by the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1989, has been an important attempt to ensure ‘fair participation’ in employment for both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland since 1990. The programme includes detailed monitoring of the community background of employees and requires employers to undertake remedial action where fair participation is not evident. Agreements were concluded between the regulatory agency and many employers specifying what affirmative action measures were required. Based on the annual monitoring returns submitted between 1990 and 2005, this article evaluates the effectiveness of the affirmative action programme in promoting fair employment participation using fixed effects models. The analysis shows that there has been a general shift towards workforce integration in Northern Ireland but the increase of under-represented groups in agreement concerns is greater than in concerns with no agreement. The success of agreements, however, is limited to certain industrial sectors and medium-sized enterprises.

Cultural Threat and Anti‐immigrant Prejudice: The Case of Protestants in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACTCultural threat has emerged as a consistent predictor of anti‐immigrant and anti‐minority attitudes across many different national contexts. We examine this issue in the context of Northern Ireland using representative survey data, suggesting that Protestant and unionist communities experience a higher level of cultural threat than Catholic and nationalist communities on account of the ‘parity of esteem’ principle that has informed changes in the province since the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Our analyses confirm that, although there is evidence for some level of anti‐immigrant sentiment across all groups, Protestants and unionists do indeed report relatively more negative attitudes towards a range of immigrant and ethnic target groups compared with Catholics, nationalists or respondents who do not identify with any political category. The analyses further suggest that their higher level of perceived cultural threat partially accounts for this difference. We argue that cultural threat can be interpreted as a response to changes in Northern Ireland that have challenged the dominant status enjoyed by Protestants and unionists in the past. More generally, we argue that a politicised characterisation of cultural threat needs to be elaborated through future work. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Extended contact effects as a function of closeness of relationship with ingroup contacts

Using survey data from Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland ( N = 428), the authors examined the effects of extended contact via different types of ingroup contacts (neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and family members) and tested whether closeness to ingroup contacts moderated the effects of extended contact on outgroup trust. Results demonstrated that extended contact effects varied as a function of the relationship to ingroup contacts, and that extended contact interacted with closeness ratings in predicting outgroup trust. Consistent with hypotheses, extended contacts via more intimate ingroup relationships (i.e., friends and family) were overall more strongly related to outgroup trust than extended contacts via less intimate ingroup relations (i.e., neighbors and work colleagues). Moreover, within each level of intimacy extended contact was related to outgroup trust only at high, and not at low, levels of rated closeness to ingroup contacts. The theoretical contributions, limitations and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Imagined Intergroup Contact: Theory, Paradigm, and Practice

A goal shared enthusiastically amongst many social psychologists is the improvement of intergroup relations. Conflict between groups is usually related to distinct, and in many cases opposing, identities, based on (for example) ethnicity, nationality, and religion, but also gender, age, sexual orientation and political or individual preferences. Our research has developed a new intervention for improving intergroup relations based on an integration of theory and empirical work on social cognition and intergroup relations. We've called the technique Imagined Contact because it is based on the mental simulation of intergroup contact experiences. Collectively, our research has focused on refining and evaluating imagined contact as an effective tool for the enhancement of intergroup relations. Our article in Social and Personality Psychology Compass provides a summary of the basic theory underlying imagined contact, a review of empirical findings to date, and a framework for developing practical applications of the intervention (in particular as a school-based intervention). We wanted to offer a teaching and learning guide for this article because we believe that the imagined contact task provides a flexible, effective, and easy-to-use tool for teachers, seminar leaders, students, and practitioners. The task can be used as a basis for encouraging more positive and open attitudes towards other groups, a way of preparing people for future intergroup encounters, a stimulus for discussions about the value in experiencing social diversity, and a way of illustrating the power of mental processes in forming and challenging attitudes about others.

Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and Experience of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland

Two studies used random sample surveys to test the “contact hypothesis” on intergroup attitudes of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. In Study 1, archival data from two different surveys in 1989 (N= 310 Catholics, 422 Protestants) and 1991 (N= 319 Catholics, 478 Protestants) showed that contact was positively related to attitudes toward denominational mixing. Study 2 (N= 391 Catholics, 647 Protestants) explored predictors of intergroup forgiveness, and also showed that intergroup contact was positively related to outgroup attitudes, perspective‐taking, and trust (even among those who had a worse experience of sectarian conflict). These studies indicate that research in peace psychology can provide a deeper understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland and, in due course, contribute to its resolution.

The Moral Minority: Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland and Their Political Behaviour

It has long been asserted that strong evangelical religious beliefs underpin strong unionist and loyalist political attitudes in Northern Ireland. Although recent literature has argued for a wide diversity of political attitudes amongst evangelicals, this has not been quantified. Based on analysis of the 1991 Northern Irish Social Attitudes Survey and the 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, this article argues that evangelicals are attitudinally different to other Protestants in Northern Ireland. However, their distinctiveness arises from their conservative moral attitudes and not, as widely claimed, from stronger unionist political values. Indeed, in terms of party identification, in 1991 evangelicals were less likely than other Protestants to support the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). And although there has been a small shift towards the DUP over the course of the 1990s, it is not due to any strengthening of the unionism of evangelicals, but rather the increasing importance of moral conservatism in predicting voters' party choice in Northern Ireland.

Effects of direct and indirect cross-group friendships on judgments of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: the mediating role of an anxiety-reduction mechanism.

Recent evidence suggests that both direct and indirect friendship with outgroup members (knowledge of ingroup members' friendship with outgroup members) can reduce prejudice toward the outgroup. Two surveys of cross-community relationships in Northern Ireland, using a student sample (N = 341) and a representative sample of the general population (N = 735), tested whether (a) direct and indirect friendships had generalized effects on both prejudice and perceived outgroup variability and (b) reduced anxiety about future encounters with outgroup members mediated such relationships. Structural equation modeling confirmed that, in both samples, direct and indirect cross-group friendships between Catholics and Protestants were associated with reduced prejudice toward the religious outgroup and increased perceived outgroup variability, via an anxiety-reduction mechanism. It is argued that emerging generalization hypotheses help to integrate both cognition and affect and interpersonal and intergroup approaches to contact.

Protestant identification and political change in Northern Ireland

This article demonstrates the responsiveness of national and religious identifications to political change among Protestants in Northern Ireland. It begins by theorizing identification as a process of working out our ideas of self, others and place. Subsequently, it proceeds to outline how the recent Good Friday Agreement (1998) changes the political landscape from the perspective of a variety of Protestants. Then, based on a narrative analysis of interview data collected in 2000, it maps the main directions of change. Three responses are highlighted, as people come to accept, reject or ignore political developments after the Agreement, and their differing relationships with British national and Protestant religious identifications are discussed. The article concludes by highlighting the underlying dynamics of identification with a view to maximizing the acceptance of political change in Northern Ireland.

Explaining Why the Good Friday Accord Is Likely to Bring a Lasting Peace in Northern Ireland

The thirty‐year conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland that cost more than 3,600 lives finally gave way to a new era of peace following the establishment of a power‐sharing government on December 3, 1999. This article first discusses the conflict and the peace process leading to the formation of a power‐sharing Executive Council, and its precipitous abeyance and reinstatement; secondly presents institutional, ideological, political (both internal and external), social, and economic explanations as to why peace is likely to become a reality in the province; and finally suggests some imperatives needed to speed up the process. An interview with Gerry Adams is appended.

Social mobility and constitutional and political preferences in Northern Ireland.

During the past thirty years Catholics in Northern Ireland have experienced unprecedented upward social mobility. Some commentators have suggested that this has led Catholics not merely to adopt the lifestyles of the middle class but also to modify their constitutional preferences, leading to a decline in nationalism. In this paper I examine the relationship between social mobility, on the one hand, and, on the other, both constitutional preferences and political (left or right wing) preferences among Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, using survey data collected in 1996. There is no evidence that Catholics' constitutional preferences are related to their mobility experiences.

Fear of Crime and Locale: The Impact of Community Related Factors upon Fear of Crime

Traditional accounts of fear of crime and victimisation have largely concentrated on factors associated with the individual such as their age, sex or ethnicity and more recently in Northern Ireland their religion. This conventional approach, adopted by many national victimisation surveys such as the British Crime Surveys and the Northern Ireland Crime Survey, has lead to assertions that, for example, women and older people are more anxious about victimisation and Protestants in Northern Ireland are more worried about terrorist attack than their Catholic counterparts. Drawing on the results of the first community based crime survey conducted in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent to which the community in which an individual lives, as opposed to their individual characteristics, directly impacts on their fear of crime. It is argued that, by overlooking the significance of community based factors, some criminologists may actually be obscuring our understanding of the dynamics of this fear.

Young Citizens in Changing Times: Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland

The importance of politics to young people in Northern Ireland, their knowledge of basics like voting age, the salience of politics in their families, and their interest in participating eventually themselves were investigated in this study of young people in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Whether or not they saw a future for themselves in Northern Ireland was found to be related to their perceptions of the fairness or unfairness of the system, and these were both mediated by their feelings of national identity. Participants who thought of themselves as British or Irish were more likely to give higher ratings of importance to politics than those who characterized themselves as Northern Irish, Catholic, or Protestant; and those who identified themselves as Irish were more likely to do so than those who identified themselves as British. Cross‐community contact was similar for both groups and was not related to attitudes toward politics.