Islam as a Source of Symbolic Threat: Consequences on Beliefs About the Veil, Anti-Veil Attitudes, and Islamophobic Conspiracy Stereotypes

Details

Supervisors

Yzerbyt, Vincent ; Van Oost, Pascaline

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

Through wars and migration, for the past century, Islam has been part of the European history. Since “l’affaire du voile” or Islamic scarf controversy in France in 1989, religious veils worn by Muslim women have been subjected to legal bans in public spaces, becoming the center of attention, perceived as the symbol of Islam because of its visibility. In the present paper, we start by examining the European socio-political and cultural context regarding Islam and veils. We briefly address the questions of acculturation and diversity policies as well as their consequences on individual attitudes. Then, we take a closer look at the existing literature on intergroup relations which concerns beliefs and attitudes regarding veils as well as Islamophobic conspiracy stereotypes. Afterward, we link those subjects to the intergroup threat theory model, to social dominance orientation and to economic system justification. After this selective review of the literature, we present our study in which we randomly assigned participants to an experimental condition or a control condition. Participants had to read claims about Islam, threatening or neutral respectively. We measured three moderators: social dominance orientation, economic system justification and political orientation. We also measured three dependent variables: beliefs about the veil, anti-veil attitudes and Islamophobic conspiracy stereotypes. Due to a misconception of the threat manipulation, results are not interpretable. Yet we provide methodological advice and theoretical suggestions for future research such as resorting to right-wing authoritarianism as a moderating variable or considering other types or sub-types of intergroup threat as predictors.