I like You Even Less at Christmas Dinner! Prejudice Level as a Function of an Approaching National or Religious Holiday

Abstract

In many conducted psychological studies, it has been demonstrated that attitudes towards minority groups can change under the influence of electoral campaigns, as well as terrorist attacks, or street riots. In the first study presented in this article, we have examined whether the level of prejudice towards Muslims increases during the period preceding national and religious holidays. It was assumed that during such periods, issues of identity are accented, which may reinforce negative attitudes towards an external group not included in the category of “we”. The study was carried out following the lost letter procedure. It turned out that the prejudices thus operationalized against Muslims grew modestly in the period preceding a state holiday, and much more so in the period preceding Christmas. In the second study we activated accessibility of concepts of a national or Catholic nature, after which we measured anti-Muslim prejudices. It turned out that activated content of a religious nature influences (to a small degree) the activation of prejudices, while in respect of activation of content of a national character we did not record such an impact.

Notes

1 While Bennett and Einolf (2017), based on a study involving 179,961 respondents from 136 countries, do suggest that religiosity favors helping others, their data concerns exclusively declarations of one’s own altruism, and they are not supported by any objective indicators. In addition, participants were asked about giving support to “a stranger”, which is not the same as aiding a person who professes a different religion, supports another political party, or has a different sexual orientation. Put differently, this “stranger” does not necessarily constitute a threat to any values of importance to the individual.

2 In studies by Johnson, Rowatt, and LaBouff (2012) it was demonstrated that if the displayed content of a religious character is subliminal in nature (stimulus emission time: 35ms), this impacts activation of prejudices towards minority groups. We thus decided to examine whether an analogous effect appears in which the exposition time of the stimulus is clearly longer, which would most likely allow the participant to consciously read the displayed word. This is also why we decided to display the stimulus for 70 ms. Of course, the possibility of consciously reading a specific word in such conditions depends on multiple factors (participants’ individual characteristics, length of the word, its familiarity and frequency with which a participant has encountered it, etc.), but in a pilot study we demonstrated that a large majority of people were capable of doing so with respect to the material we used.

Additional information

Funding

The preparation of this article was supported by BST grant from Opole University and BST/WROC/2018/A/02 grant from SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities.