Prejudice in interreligious context: The role of metaprejudice and majority–minority status

Abstract

Samples of two hundred forty‐five majority Sunny Muslims, 87 Ahmadiyya Muslims, and 145 Christians were used to investigate the determinants and mediators of prejudice in interreligious context in Indonesia. First, the study extends the idea of in‐group and out‐group metaprejudice; both of which were found to mediate the relationship between perceived quality of intergroup relationship and personal prejudice. Second, we expected that majority members are more likely to reject a minority and that a minority is more likely to more strongly reject another minority than the majority for self‐serving reasons. Additionally, the Sunni majority will prejudice and reject the Ahmadiyya minority more than the Christian minority due to the strained religious relation between the two Muslim groups. The hypotheses were confirmed. The findings are discussed in the context of stereotyping, and prejudice dynamics in other intergroup conflicts and ways of coping with such conflict are suggested.

Do you get us? A multi-experiment, meta-analytic test of the effect of felt understanding in intergroup relations

“…Importantly, the effects of felt understanding were distinct from the concurrent main effects of felt liking, increasing our confidence that it is the extent to which felt understanding involves 'our' perspectives in the eyes of outgroup members that explains its positive effects, as distinct from the likewise positive effects of simply being seen positively by an outgroup per se. An alternative design that did not orthogonally manipulate felt understanding and felt liking would therefore have provided less clarity about whether any effect of felt understanding was due to the meta-meta perspective (our perspective on their perspectives on our perspectives) that it involves, or was more straightforwardly explicable in terms of the lower-order (meta-) perception of felt liking (e.g., Owuamalam et al, 2014;Putra & Wagner, 2017). More broadly, the present findings are consistent with the only other work on the predictive effects of felt understanding, which showed that it predicted outcomes such as trust, political separatism, and post-conflict forgiveness over and above predictors such as stereotypes, meta-stereotypes, and different forms of threat perception in cross-sectional surveys (Livingstone et al, 2019).…”

“…The common theme in this previous research is that group members are concerned with the perceptions and image that members of outgroups have of an ingroup. These include meta-stereotypes (Vorauer et al, 1998), meta-prejudice (Owuamalam et al, 2014;Putra, 2014;Putra & Wagner, 2017), and meta-dehumanization (Kteily et al, 2016). These each address ingroup perspectives on outgroup perspectives (of us), and have been shown to shape intergroup attitudes and behavior.…”

“…These each address ingroup perspectives on outgroup perspectives (of us), and have been shown to shape intergroup attitudes and behavior. For instance, meta-prejudice (believing that an outgroup is prejudiced towards an ingroup; Putra, 2014) has been found to predict negative perceptions and even hostility in turn towards that outgroup (e.g., Kteily et al, 2016;Owuamalam et al, 2014;Putra & Wagner, 2017). On the other hand, believing that an outgroup has a positive image of an ingroup (i.e., a positive meta-stereotype) has been found to facilitate positive expectations about intergroup contact (Vezzali, 2017).…”

“…Felt liking involves beliefs about an outgroup's views of an ingroup, but differs crucially from felt understanding because it does not address the ingroup's own perspectives in the eyes of the outgroup. A challenge in testing the specific effect of felt understanding is therefore in ensuring that an effect of a felt understanding manipulation is not simply due to felt liking, which would also be predicted to affect intergroup orientations (e.g., Owuamalam et al, 2014;Putra & Wagner, 2017). Likewise, a critical test of the role of felt understanding is whether feeling that an ingroup's perspectives are understood has positive effects over and above the positive effects of simply feeling that an ingroup is liked, which does not necessarily require third-order intentionality or second-order theory of mind.…”

Positive essentialization reduces prejudice: Reminding participants of a positive human nature alleviates the stigma of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) descent

“…As we have described in the introduction and in the section on the history of communism in Indonesia, the PKI stigma can impact the lives of people of various ages and in different settings in a very negative way. In our empirical studies we will focus on those expressions of prejudice that could occur nowadays in Indonesia (Putra, 2014;Putra & Wagner, 2017), such as a withdrawal of support for a political candidate or the devaluation of a student's scholarly achievements. In both cases, we assume that merely alleging PKI descent is enough to solicit prejudice towards a person.…”