Religious Outgroup Research Articles

Violent Conflict and Hostility Towards Ethnoreligious Outgroups in Nigeria

ABSTRACT This study examined the effect of exposure to violent conflict on hostility towards ethnic and religious outgroups among Nigeria’s population and among its two major religious groups (i.e., Christians and Muslims). Violent conflict had a robust positive effect on outgroup hostility among the Nigerian population and among Christians. A plausible mechanism behind this finding is that the threat posed by violent conflict strengthens ingroup cohesion, erodes trust in outgroup members, and makes intergroup boundaries salient. This is especially so when the opposite party to the conflict constitutes a distinct cultural outgroup. The main conflict affecting Christians involves nomadic pastoralists of Fulani ethnicity, who are Muslims. Among Muslims, violent conflict rather had a weak positive effect on outgroup hostility that was not robust to alternative operationalizations of outgroup hostility. The null effect might be because the main conflict affecting Muslims—the Boko Haram insurgency—does not involve Christians. A significant number of Muslims are also affected by conflicts involving nomadic Fulani pastoralists.

Palestinians and Israelis believe the other's God encourages intergroup benevolence: A case of positive intergroup meta-perceptions

How does religious belief influence intergroup conflict? Research addressing this question generally focuses on how individuals' own beliefs influence intergroup behavior. However, intergroup cooperation may also be influenced by second-order beliefs; in this case, perceptions about how outgroup members' religious beliefs influence their intergroup behavior. Indeed, across different domains, intergroup conflict is often driven by inaccurate and negative intergroup perceptions and predictions. If true of religion, such negatively biased predictions may independently hinder intergroup cooperation by reducing the extent to which individuals see religious outgroup members as cooperative partners. Contrary to this hypothesis, three preregistered studies (N = 1081) provide consistent evidence that Palestinians and Israelis predict that belief in God motivates outgroup members to give more money in intergroup exchanges (Studies 1 and 2) and to place a greater value on outgroup members' lives (Study 3). Results have important implications for policymakers' and the public's understanding of religion's role in intergroup relations.

Thinking About God Encourages Prosociality Toward Religious Outgroups: A Cross-Cultural Investigation

Most humans believe in a god or gods, a belief that may promote prosociality toward coreligionists. A critical question is whether such enhanced prosociality is primarily parochial and confined to the religious ingroup or whether it extends to members of religious outgroups. To address this question, we conducted field and online experiments with Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish adults in the Middle East, Fiji, and the United States (N = 4,753). Participants were given the opportunity to share money with anonymous strangers from different ethno-religious groups. We manipulated whether they were asked to think about their god before making their choice. Thinking about God increased giving by 11% (4.17% of the total stake), an increase that was extended equally to ingroup and outgroup members. This suggests that belief in a god or gods may facilitate intergroup cooperation, particularly in economic transactions, even in contexts with heightened intergroup tension.

Collective Efficacy as the Conditional Effect of the Relationship between Religiocentrism and Support for Interreligious Violence

When a person identifies with a particular religion, they identify not only with the ingroup’s religious values but also with the ingroup’s evaluations towards the relevant religious outgroup. Using a theoretical notion of ethnocentrism, this study offers religiocentrism to explain how one favourably perceives their religious affiliation and unfavourably evaluates the religious outgroup. Specifically, this study is focused on the recent interreligious conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia. In carrying out the study, we employ relevant constructs to test our hypothesis that religiocentrism is indirectly related to support for interreligious violence via perceived injustice and that this relation is stronger for individuals with high collective efficacy. We perform a confirmatory factor analysis to test all the measures’ validity. In testing the hypothesis, we conduct a moderated mediation analysis to test the indirect relations between religiocentrism and support for interreligious violence via perceived injustice and to test the conditional effect of collective efficacy on the relationship. The results show that collective efficacy significantly moderates the relation between religiocentrism and support for interreligious violence. The finding contributes to the discussion of the various roles of collective efficacy in interreligious conflicts, dependent on the nature of the conflicts.

Election cycles and global religious intolerance

Mass elections are key mechanisms for collective decision-making. But they are also blamed for creating intergroup enmity, particularly while they are underway; politicians use polarizing campaign strategies, and losing sides feel resentful and marginalized after results are announced. I investigate the impact of election proximity-that is, closeness to elections in time-on social cleavages related to religion, a salient form of group identity worldwide. Integrating data from ∼1.2 million respondents across 25 cross-country survey series, I find no evidence that people interviewed shortly before or after national elections are more likely to express negative attitudes toward religious outgroups than those interviewed at other times. Subgroup analysis reveals little heterogeneity, including by levels of political competition. Generalized social trust, too, is unaffected by election calendars. Elections may not pose as great a risk to social cohesion as is commonly feared.

Thinking about God discourages dehumanization of religious outgroups.

In seven studies, six with American Christians and one with Israeli Jews (total N = 2,323), we examine how and when belief in moralizing gods influences dehumanization of ethno-religious outgroups. We focus on dehumanization because it is a key feature of intergroup conflict. In Studies 1-6, participants completed measures of dehumanization from their own perspectives and also from the perspective of God, rating the groups' humanity as they thought God would rate it, or wish for them to rate it. When participants completed measures from both their own and God's perspectives, they reported believing that, compared with their own views, God would see (or prefer for them to see) outgroup members as more human. In Study 7, we extend these findings by demonstrating that thinking about God's views reduces the extent to which religious believers personally dehumanize outgroup members. Collectively, results demonstrate that religious believers attribute universalizing moral attitudes to God, compared to themselves, and document how thinking about God's views can promote more positive intergroup attitudes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Religious affiliation seldom seems to influence hiring or competence ratings of job applicants: studies conducted in Sweden and in the USA

BackgroundReligion is an important ingroup characteristic for many people. For different reasons, people with different religious affiliations might prefer members of their religious outgroup. Previous studies have investigated perceptions of and behaviour toward religious ingroup and outgroup members in various contexts. The four studies presented here investigated whether competence and likeability ratings differ depending on the target’s and participant’s religious affiliations in a recruitment context. Two studies were conducted in Sweden, while the other two were conducted in the USA.MethodsParticipants in 4 studies rated a Christian, Muslim or atheist job applicant and a control applicant on 4 competence and 3 likeability items on 7-point Likert scales. The difference in ratings between the target applicant and control applicant was used to measure perceived competence and likeability of the target applicant. In the two latter studies, one in Sweden and one in the USA, participants also chose to hire either the target or the control applicant.ResultsOverall, participants in three studies rated control applicants as more likeable than target applicants. In the two US studies, targets were also rated as less competent than control applicants. Christian participants in the two US studies rated the Christian applicant as more likeable than both other targets. In the second US study, atheist participants rated Christians as less likeable than both other targets. In one of the Swedish studies, atheist participants rated the atheist applicant as more likeable than both other targets. The only significant difference in competence ratings between targets was made by Christian Swedes, who rated Muslim applicants as less competent than Christian applicants. The only significant difference in hiring decisions was that Swedish atheist participants hired Christians less often than they hired control applicants.ConclusionTogether, the results suggest that job applicants are sometimes viewed as more likeable if they belong to a religious ingroup rather than a religious outgroup, but that this only rarely translate to significant differences in competence ratings or hiring decisions.

Moralistic and local god beliefs and the extent of prosocial preferences on Tanna Island, Vanuatu

ABSTRACT The co-existence of Christian and indigenous “Kastom” belief systems on Tanna Island, Vanuatu provides a rare opportunity to explore the relationship between cooperation and religion. Here, we use data on religious beliefs and practices, religious priming, and four versions of a dictator game at two sites—one predominantly Christian and one predominantly Kastom—to test a suite of hypotheses linking prosocial behavior to beliefs about and commitment to both a powerful moralistic god and a less morally concerned local supernatural force. We found belief that the moralistic god was more punitive did not predict increased giving towards co-religionists but did predict giving more to a religious outgroup member over a co-religionist. Belief that the moralistic god was more rewarding predicted less giving towards a distant coreligionist or outgroup member. Religious commitment predicted giving to a distant coreligionist over someone from one's own village. We did not find any effect of beliefs about and commitment to less morally-concerned local supernatural forces on giving. We also did not find the predicted effects of religious priming on giving. These findings suggest a more complex relationship between religious beliefs and prosocial behavior than current theory can accommodate.

Religious behavior and European veil bans

ABSTRACT Do societal religious practices affect European policies towards Muslim veils? We argue that public religious behavior has a substantial effect on European countries’ and regions’ decisions regarding whether or not to ban the wearing of the veil in public spaces. Using data from the European Social Survey, we find that countries with higher levels of religious attendance are substantially less likely to enact veil bans than those where religious attendance is less common. We augment these findings with data from Switzerland, where variation across subnational units parallels the patterns witnessed in Europe more broadly: aggregate religious attendance decreases the likelihood of both voting on veil bans and actually enacting them. In environments characterized by a salient secular-religious divide, high levels of religious attendance lead to greater support for the public expression of religion – even for religious outgroups – and this support is often channeled into more accommodating policies towards religious expression.

Memory of Conflicts and Perceived Threat as Relevant Mediators of Interreligious Conflicts

The present study investigated to what extent memory of conflict and perceived threat explain the relation between religiosity and supporting interreligious conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia. We employed data from the survey of the interreligious conflicts in 2017, involving 2026 adults from five hotspot regions: Aceh Singkil, South Lampung, Bekasi, Poso, and Kupang. Our confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance demonstrated that all employed scales were valid and reliable across religious groups. Our structural equation modelling showed that while the memory of conflicts was only positively related to supporting lawful protests, the perceived threat was shown to be strongly related to supporting both lawful and violent protests. This shows that memory of past physical injuries is not highly susceptible to exclusive behaviours against the religious outgroup. However, it is the individuals’ evaluation of the religious outgroup as a result of past conflicts which encourages exclusionary behaviours against them. These findings provide empirical insights into the importance of the aftermath of interreligious conflicts and how they can be used to avoid future clashes.

The Relevance of Religion for Political Office: Voter Bias Toward Candidates from Different Religious Backgrounds

Over the last several decades, Gallup data shows an increased willingness among members of the public to support presidential candidates from a wide range of religious backgrounds, though a nontrivial proportion of the public is still unwilling to vote for an Atheist, Mormon, or Muslim. What underlies this opposition? We argue that voters evaluate candidates from religious out-groups more negatively on a wide range of dimensions considered desirable for political office, and that this bias should be more pronounced among the highly religious. We show support for these arguments using a survey experiment fielded with YouGov. Atheists and Muslim candidates were perceived more negatively on a large set of traits considered desirable for political office compared to candidates from religious in-groups, and Mormon candidates fall somewhere in between. The Atheist and Muslim candidates were also perceived as less competent on a diverse set of issues.

Supplemental Material for Thinking About God Discourages Dehumanization of Religious Outgroups

Supplemental Material for Thinking About God Discourages Dehumanization of Religious Outgroups

‘The wickede secte of Saracenys’ – Lexico-semantic means of strengthening the English Christian Self in texts from the Middle English period

This paper focuses on the conceptual category of the Saracen as portrayed in medieval English texts, and the semantic potentials of lexical units used to refer to this ethnic and religious out-group. On the basis of references gathered from broader contexts provided by the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, both the frequency of usage of relevant referring expressions will be looked into. From a historio-pragmatic perspective, it shall be shown that the selected samples present one of many strategies used to strengthen the image of the Christian self by systematically decomposing the image of the ‘misbelieving’ other by means of lexical choice.

If You Don’t Believe in God, Do You at Least Believe in Aristotle? Evaluations of Religious Outgroup Members Hinge upon Moral Perceptions

ABSTRACT Religious people tend to believe atheists are immoral. Although some work suggests that atheists themselves agree, such findings could also reflect symmetric ingroup bias in the moral domain, where atheists likewise view religious targets as untrustworthy and immoral. We examined how American religious and atheist participants rated the morality of atheist and religious targets and assessed a potential intervention: learning that targets adhere to a moral code. Across three studies, both religious and nonreligious participants demonstrated clear ingroup favoritism, rating ingroup targets more moral than outgroup targets. However, this ingroup bias was reduced when participants learned the target adheres to a warm and coherent moral system rooted in philosophy and concern for others. These findings extended beyond evaluations to downstream social consequences such as distancing. Such findings challenge arguments that atheists view themselves as immoral and point the way forward toward reducing religious ingroup bias.

Patterns of exclusion of ethno-religious minorities: The ethno-religious hierarchy across European countries and social categories within these countries

In this contribution, we set out to rigorously test previous theoretical propositions that people tend to have consensual and cumulative rankings of exclusion of ethnic and religious outgroups, often referred to as ‘ethnic hierarchies’ constituting a shared and particular pattern of ranking different outgroups, preferably excluded from possible social interaction. Crucial questions are (1) to what extent are European natives’ levels of exclusion of Muslim, Jewish and Gypsy minority groups consensually and, moreover, hierarchically ranked? (2) to what extent is this pattern of exclusion comparable across representative samples of European countries and (3) to what extent is it comparable across relevant social categories within these countries? We take advantage of high quality cross-national European data asking representative samples of respondents whether they would not allow particular ethno-religious groups into their country, analyzed with probabilistic scalogram analysis. We found convincingly strong empirical evidence for the consensual and cumulative ranking of exclusion of typical ethno-religious outgroups: most Europeans wish to allow no Gypsies to come into their country, followed by Muslims and finally Jews as the least excluded ethno-religious outgroup. This rank order of outgroups’ exclusionism was found in 18 out of 20 different European countries. Notwithstanding differences in the level of exclusion across countries, citizens within these countries rank order these ethno-religious groups in a similar, comparable and cumulative way. Moreover, we presented evidence that this cumulative rank order is present within many different social categories within these countries. Our contribution may be one of the first to rigorously test heavily cited theoretical propositions on social and polemic representations.

Exposure to religious outgroup symbols and intergroup anxiety in Israel

ABSTRACT Israel is often at the centre of debate regarding religious diversity. We examined how exposure to religious symbols is associated with intergroup anxiety perceived from the Jewish majority among Arab minority groups. We found that outgroup and ingroup priming had different consequences for the two Arab groups: when primed with outgroup Jewish concepts, Arab-Muslim persons reported higher intergroup anxiety than Arab-Christian participants. However, when primed with ingroup concepts, the two minority groups did not differ significantly in intergroup anxiety experienced in interactions with Jews. Our results convey the importance of investigating why and when religious diversity may have a negative impact on intergroup relations.

The Sensitivity of the Bible Verse Selection Task to the Relationship between Christian Fundamentalism and Religious Outgroup Prejudice

Four different studies provide evidence to support the validity of the Bible Verse Selection Task (BVST) as a measure of the strength of Christian fundamentalist beliefs by showing correlations between BVST scores and measures of negativity toward people who often represent “outgroups” for Christians. That is, respondents who obtained high scores on the BVST (representing a greater tendency to select biblical passages associated with fundamentalism as most central to their faith or belief system) also showed a tendency to obtain high scores on measures of negative feelings, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes toward atheists, gay men, lesbian women, and Muslims. These relationships were generally consistent across both Christian-only samples and general samples, with statistically significant coefficients obtained for 30 of 32 predicted correlations. These results support the utility of this scale for research purposes.

Religious Diversity Reconsidered: Local Religious Contexts and Individual Religiosity

AbstractThis study examines how the religious composition of a local U.S. population shapes an individual’s religious involvement. We reconsider Berger’s plausibility thesis and unpack its theoretical mechanisms by (1) conceptualizing religious diversity from each religious group’s perspective, because a specific local religious environment has different implications depending on one’s religion; (2) decomposing the diversity of the population into the religious outgroup’s share and diversity; and (3) including non-affiliated as part of local religious contexts. Furthermore, we adjust for the detailed categories of religious family in a multilevel framework, which addresses the problem of non-substantive correlation and potential heterogeneity among religious groups. Focusing on Protestants, Catholics, and non-affiliated, the analysis reveals that although religious diversity, especially the share of the religious outgroup, tends to be associated negatively with an individual’s religious involvement, there are important differences in how religious diversity is related to religiosity among different religious groups including Protestants and Catholics.

Attitudes toward and inferred beliefs for religious ingroup/outgroup members: Muslim children of Pakistani heritage in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT The post-9/11 era has seen a surge in writings on “Muslim” issues in the West, but little is known about Muslim children's perspectives. Attitudes toward, and beliefs about, the religious ingroup and outgroup were examined in the present study with 5–6-year-old Muslims of Pakistani heritage in the United Kingdom (UK) and Saudi Arabia (SA). Participants completed trait attribution and liking tasks and answered questions on God beliefs and religious practice about themselves, Muslims (ingroup) and non-Muslims (outgroup). Participants described ingroup members more positively, liked them more, and inferred that they held more religious beliefs than outgroup members. Liking was positively associated with outgroup liking for UK participants, who described outgroup members more positively with more religious beliefs, compared with SA participants whose ingroup attitudes were negatively associated with outgroup attitudes. Our findings are discussed in the light of theory and research, and implications for education contexts and well-being are considered.

Radical right populism and religion: mapping parties’ religious communication in Western Europe

ABSTRACTPolitical scientists have strongly focused on the religiosity of voters and its effects on electoral behaviour. However, the religious stances of political parties have largely been neglected. Yet, some scholars argue that religion is on the rise again due to the success of populist radical right parties, which use religious references as a campaigning strategy and present themselves as defenders of Christianity against a Muslim threat. Conducting a dictionary-based quantitative content analysis of the election manifestos and Facebook posts of 36 political parties in seven Western European countries, this study provides evidence that populist radical right parties frame Islam in a more negative way than other party groups while presenting Christianity in a more positive tone. However, constructing religious outgroups seems to be much more important to radical right parties than creating a Christian ingroup. Furthermore, our results suggest that there is no systematic link between ideology and pro-secularism messages.