The issue of religious prejudice rarely has been examined when compared to other forms of prejudice. In addition, the bulk of research has been focused on the Christian religion and neglects other religions. This research will assess religious prejudice among several religious groups (Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Non-Believers) toward one another. In addition, it will assess underlying attitudes such as openness to contact with diverse others, self-acceptance, empathy, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. Because the preponderance of participants in this study (over 800 in total) were mostly Christians, followed by Non-Believers (Agnostics and Atheists), my analyses focused on these two groups exclusively. It was found that Christians and Non- Believers were significantly more positive about their own respective group compared to the other group. Also, Non-Believers reported perceiving themselves to be victims of discriminations significantly more than Christians. Christians, on average, expressed significantly higher interest in insulating themselves from dissimilar others, relative to Non-Believers. Increased exposure to the other group ( e.g., to Non-Believers by Christians, and vice versa) was linked significantly with more favorable attitudes towards the individuals in the other group. However, among Christians, more exposure to Non- Believers was inversely linked to less positive views of Non-Believers in general (this latter finding was not observed among Non-Believers). Finally, as expected, using data from all participants combined, increased levels of openness to diversity and empathy were associated significantly with less religious bigotry, whereas increases in authoritarianism and social dominance orientation correlated significantly and positively with religious bigotry. Self-acceptance did not correlate significantly with religious bigotry.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-1934 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Creators | Khaledpour, Sara |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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