Does ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?

Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes

doi:10.24072/pci.rr.100886

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Does ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?

Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes based on reviews by Zoltan Dienes and Pete Harris

A recommendation of:

STAGE 2

Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability

Yara Alnajjar, Constantina Badea and Béatrice Sternberg https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/63RNQ version https://osf.io/st47h

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Abstract

Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability

Self-affirmation has shown mixed findings when used as a prejudice reduction technique, sometimes diminishing prejudice while sometimes increasing it or having no significant effect. In a Registered Report experiment with a French representative sample (N = 602), we tested whether ideological malleability (participants’ representation of secularism) influences the effectiveness of the self-affirmation procedure in reducing prejudice against religious groups. After reporting their representation of secularism, participants were either asked to self-affirm on a threat-related value (secularism), or to self-affirm on a threat-unrelated value (humor), or were assigned to a control condition. Finally, affective and behavioral prejudice against religious groups (Muslims and Christians) were measured.

Results show that participants who reported a “new” representation of secularism exhibited more prejudice towards religious groups than those who endorsed a “historical” representation of secularism. This difference was higher concerning prejudice towards Muslims as compared to Christians. We failed to find empirical evidence showing that the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice depends on ideological malleability, for either affective or behavioral dimensions. Contrary to our hypothesis, self-affirmation on secularism decreased affective prejudice compared to the other conditions. We discuss this result based on an exploratory content analysis of participants’ writings in the self-affirmation task.

This study adds to the literature by clearly demonstrating that new vs. historical representations of secularism are associated with different levels of prejudice against religious groups, particularly Muslims. Future research should develop better interventions based on self-affirmation theory. All materials, data, and code are available on: OSF.

self-affirmation, ideological malleability, prejudice, religious groups

Submission: posted 30 July 2024
Recommendation: posted 02 December 2024, validated 20 December 2024

Cite this recommendation as:
Fürtjes, A. (2024) Does ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?. Peer Community in Registered Reports, 100886. 10.24072/pci.rr.100886

This is a stage 2 based on:

Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability
Yara Alnajjar, Constantina Badea and Béatrice Sternberg
https://osf.io/qv5dw

Recommendation

Self-affirmation may be an effective tool to reduce prejudice and discrimination against minority groups. Its hypothesised mechanism is that prejudice is a defensive act that can be reduced by reinforcing a positive imagine of the self. Such a reinforced self-image is meant to weaken perceived threat to one’s social identity that may be posed by minority groups, such as Muslims in majority Christian countries.

To address mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation across the literature, this Registered Report (RR) was designed to elucidate conditions under which self-affirmation may reduce prejudice and discrimination. Whether self-affirmation has the desired effect may be moderated by an individual’s internal representation of secularism. That is, as a reaction to self-affirmation, people may flexibly endorse their feelings towards secularism (‘ideological malleability’) to either reduce prejudice, or maintain and justify it. This study is the first to consider whether this effect depends on a participant’s attitude that French citizens should be able to practice their religion in public places (‘historical’ secularism), or that they should hide it in public (‘new’ secularism).

Alnajjar et al. present a study design (i.e., three-way mixed ANOVA) in which they self-affirmed French participants (N=602) with differing internal representations of secularism. Study results demonstrated that a historical representation of secularism is associated with less effective and behavioural prejudice towards religious groups compared to a new representation of secularism. Participants’ prejudiced attitudes were larger against Muslims than against Christians. It was unexpected that new secularism was linked to negative attitudes towards religious minority groups given that the French government mandated by law that religion should not be practiced in public. Across three self-affirmation conditions (i.e., self-affirmation on a threat-related value, a threat-unrelated value, and no self-affirmation), the authors found no evidence that self-affirmation affected prejudice against religious groups, and there was no evidence that the effectiveness of self-affirmation depended on a participants representation of secularism, which contradicted their pre-registered hypotheses. This paper adds conclusive and sufficiently-powered results to a body of literature with mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation.

It increased the robustness of this study that the design considered desirability concerns and employed multiple manipulation checks. By considering nuances of public opinion towards secularism in France specifically, the authors identified a unique opportunity to investigate ideological malleability, which can be challenging to conceive and directly measure.

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated by two experts who performed in-depth peer review across one round of revisions. There were no substantial changes to the introduction or the methods, the analyses were conducted as planned and additional analyses were labelled as exploratory. The revised manuscript was judged to meet the Stage 2 criteria and was awarded a positive recommendation.

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/f4wm6

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that was used to answer the research question was generated until after IPA.

List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

References

1. Alnajjar, Y., Badea, C., & Sternberg, B. (2024). Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/st47h

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Conflict of interest:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.

Reviews

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Evaluation round #1

DOI or URL of the report: https://osf.io/prk72

Version of the report: 1

Author's Reply, 28 Nov 2024

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Decision by Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes, posted 25 Nov 2024, validated 25 Nov 2024

Dear Yara Alnajjar,

Thank you for submitting your Stage 2 submission of “Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability”.

I sincerely apologize for the delay on this. It has been exceptionally difficult to secure reviewers over the summer. I have now received responses from two expert reviewers. Out of these two, only one reviewer who originally evaluated your Stage 1 submission, kindly returned. Their feedback was positive and confirmed that the requirements of a Stage 2 submission were met. However, I would like to ask you respond to the remarks by the first returning reviewer who raises some interesting discussion points.

I look forward to receiving your response, and would like to once again apologise for the delay on this.

Best wishes,

Anna Fürtjes

Reviewed by Pete Harris, 17 Sep 2024

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Reviewed by Zoltan Dienes, 23 Nov 2024

I checked the requirements of a Stage 2 were met: There were no substantial changes to the introduction or method, the planned analyses were those conducted, additional analyses were labelled as exploratory, and the discussion is reasonable given the results, focusing on the planned analyses (as does the abstract). This paper makes an important contribution to understanding the role of self affirmation to prejudice reduction in failing to support what sounded like a perfectly reasonable hypothesis concerning mixed findings in the literature.