No abstract

This research aims to investigate the impact of minority members' decision about whether or not to adopt the majority's religion on how the majority perceives these minority members and on beliefs about religious and cultural diversity. It is hypothesized that the adoption of the majority's religion would be more positively evaluated, the minority person adopting the religion would be perceived to identify more with the national polity and less with the minority ingroup, the minority group as a whole would be more positively viewed, more tolerant religious beliefs would prevail and the majority would accept cultural maintenance by the minority. However it is also hypothesized that the positive effect of this strategy would be moderated by the origins of the minority person. Greek-Orthodox students (n = 223) participated in a 2 (type of decision) x 5 (group membership) between-subjects design conducted in Greece, a mono-religious society which has become culturally diverse due to immigration. The target groups represent religious minorities with Greek citizenship (Jews and Muslims of Thrace), immigrant groups of different ethnic orientation and similar religious background (Albanian Muslims and Pakistanis) or groups sharing ethnicity but differing in religious beliefs (Albanian Muslims and Albanian atheists). The moderation hypothesis was confirmed for perceived identification with the minority ingroup, presenting Albanians in a worse position. However, group membership influenced mainly group perceptions and beliefs about diversity. The theoretical and political implications of the findings and their importance for the specific context are discussed.

Amidst growing societal tensions, social media platforms become hubs of heated intergroup exchanges. According to social identity theory, group membership and the value we assign to it drive the expression of intergroup bias. Within the blooming scholarship on social and political polarization online, little attention has been paid to interreligious deliberations, despite the well-established relationship between religion and intergroup grievances. The present studies are designed to address the void in the scholarship of social identity and online religion by examining how religious identities, or the lack thereof, affect intergroup biases in the form of identityspecific topic preferences and topic-sentiment polarization. Drawing from social identity theory, five hypotheses were tested. The data for the study, a product of a natural experiment, are YouTube commentary sections featuring videos on two cases of interreligious debates between (1) Christian and Muslim or (2) Christian and atheist speakers. Using topic-sentiment analysis, a multistage method of topic modeling with latent semantic analysis and sentiment analysis, 24,179 comments, for the Christian-Muslim debates, and 52,607 comments, for the Christian-atheist debates, were analyzed. The results demonstrate normative content and identity-specific instances of topic-sentiment polarization. In terms of content, Christian-Muslim and Christian-atheist discussions are nearly completely preoccupied with theological or intellectual concepts. While interreligious polarization is robust in both debates, it appears more normative among Christians-Muslims and deeper among Christians-atheists, possibly indicating the higher stakes in the battle for moral authority. Interreligious debates on YouTube serve to uplift and defend the in-group and to delegitimize the outgroup in a broader battle for moral authority. Regardless of group affiliation, these debaters were concerned with 'big picture' questions of meaning and how best to address them. Stereotyping and cultural altercations appear mostly as a reaction to challenged identity characteristics, suggesting that issuebased social differences and cultural incompatibilities, often emphasized in selfreport research, may be evoked as rationalizations of interreligious prejudice. Last, the successful application of topic-sentiment analysis lends support for the more systematic utilization of this method.

Personal values become increasingly relevant for immigrant-related bias in the European context. Situated in group conflict theories, human values theory and social identity theory encourage different interpretations of how our interest in the welfare of those closest to us, i.e. the in-group (benevolence), and the prosperity of all beings (universalism) inform attitudes towards immigrants. The present study examines how these self-transcending human values affect perceptions of immigrant threat. Using nationally pooled data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for fifteen European countries, the results show that benevolence and universalism tend to affect perceived immigrant threat in opposite directions. A part of individuals' anti-immigrant bias does not stem from strictly self-interested motivations, as often proposed, but by a sense of loyalty to the interests of our immediate contacts. The group we place our loyalty matters. So does the national context suggesting that grand scheme interpretations can fall short.