Living under threat: Mutual threat perception drives anti‐Muslim and anti‐Western hostility in the age of terrorism

Abstract

This research demonstrates a common psychology of outgroup hostility driven by perceived intergroup threat among three groups and seven cultural contexts: non‐Muslim Westerners, Muslims in Western societies, and Muslims in the Middle East. In Study 1, symbolic, but not realistic and terroristic threats, predicted non‐Muslim Norwegians' intentions to join anti‐Islamic movements. In Study 2, symbolic and realistic, but not terroristic threat, predicted non‐Muslim Americans' willingness to persecute Muslims. In Studies 3 and 4, symbolic threat predicted support and behavioral intentions against the West among Swedish and Turkish Muslims. Finally, in Study 5, a comparison demonstrated that symbolic and realistic threats had the same effects on violent intentions among non‐Muslim and Muslim Danes, and Muslims in Afghanistan. Meta‐analysis showed that symbolic threat was most strongly associated with intergroup hostility. Across studies, participants with high religious group identification experienced higher levels of threat. Implications for intergroup research and prejudice reduction are discussed.

What is threatening about refugees? Identifying different types of threat and their association with emotional responses and attitudes towards refugee migration

“…Hence, we merged threat from terrorism with the more general safety threat category. Previous research has shown that terrorist threat is strongly associated with prejudice (e.g., Cohrs et al., ; Doosje et al., ; Obaidi et al., ; Uenal, ). However, explicit concerns about terrorism seem to play only a minor role in the current context of refugee migration.…”

“…Perceived threat predicts prejudice better than objective measures of threat (Stephan, Ybarra, & Rios Morrison, 2009). The threat types outlined above (e.g., symbolic, realistic, and safety threat) predict attitudes towards out-groups to a similar extent (e.g., Doosje et al, 2009;Esses et al, 2013;Obaidi et al, 2018;Riek et al, 2006;Uenal, 2016;Yitmen & Verkuyten, 2018). Yet, research points to differences between individual threats (e.g., threat to one's own job) and group-based threats (e.g., threat to the economy that affects the whole in-group): Groupbased threats tend to be more strongly associated with prejudice and discrimination (Maoz & McCauley, 2005;Onraet, Van Hiel, Dhont, & Pattyn, 2013) for those who strongly identify with their in-group (Bizman & Yinon, 2001;Tausch, Hewstone, Kenworthy, Cairns, & Christ, 2007).…”

“…Research has further identified concerns about criminal behavior that pose a threat to one's safety (i.e., safety threat), infectious diseases (i.e., health threat), social cohesion and functioning (i.e., threat to social coordination), personal freedom and rights (i.e., rights threat) (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005), terrorist attacks (i.e., terrorist threat; Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, & Moschner, 2005), and the distinctiveness of one's own group compared to other groups (i.e., distinctiveness threat; Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999). These threat types differ from symbolic and realistic threat and predict negative attitudes towards out-group members (Cottrell, Richards, & Nichols, 2010;Doosje, Zimmermann, Küpper, Zick, & Meertens, 2009;Esses, Medianu, & Lawson, 2013;Jetten, Spears, & Postmes, 2004;Obaidi, Kunst, Kteily, Thomsen, & Sidanius, 2018;Tartakovsky & Walsh, 2016;Uenal, 2016).…”

Advancing the social psychology of rapid societal change

“…As social, political, and technological changes in our societies have apparently accelerated in recent years, there has been a corresponding increase in research that aims to understand social change (see Figure 1). For example, social psychological science has made good progress in explaining why people engage in social change-related behaviours such as collective action (see van Zomeren, Kutlaca, & Turner-Zwinkels, 2018); intergroup conflict (e.g., Obaidi, Kunst, Kteily, Thomsen, & Sidanius, 2018;Tajfel & Turner, 1979); the contestation of unequal status relations (e.g., Brown-Iannuzzi, Lundberg, Kay, & Payne, 2015;Haslam & Reicher, 2006); and recovery from conflict (e.g., Iqbal & Bilali, 2018;McKeown & Taylor, 2018) and/or disaster (Drury, Brown, Gonz alez, & Miranda, 2016). However, there has been much less research in psychology that aims to explain the origins and consequences of change at a macro, societal level (Figure 1).…”

Empirical Perspectives on Religion and Violence

“…An analysis of perceptions of threat among Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Muslims in the United States suggested that greater perception of threats toward one's religious identity was linked to more negative outgroup attitudes among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews (Pasek and Cook, 2018). Threats from Muslims toward Norwegian and American Christian identities have been linked to support for collective action against Muslim immigrants (Study 1 and Study 2; Obaidi et al, 2018) and threats toward Muslim identity were associated with anti-Western hostilities (Study 3 and 4; Obaidi et al, 2018). Similar results were found in a study assessing reactions to threats towards one's gender and national identities (Fischer et al, 2010), suggesting that this process is not an inherent aspect of religion, but an aspect of social identities in general.…”