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:

 

• Collabra Psychology
• International Review of Social Psychology
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Social Psychological Bulletin
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

 

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

 

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 image 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, Alnajjar et al. (2024) aim 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 to either reduce prejudice, or maintain and justify it.

 

The authors present a study design (including a three-way mixed ANOVA) in which they plan to self-affirm French participants (N=600) with differing internal representations of secularism. Across three self-affirmation conditions (i.e., self-affirmation on a threat-related value, a threat-unrelated value, and no self-affirmation), the authors will assess the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice towards Muslims. They will also assess their participants’ attitudes towards Christians and Muslims, to distinguish whether prejudice is specifically targeted against Muslims, rather than religious groups in general. In addition, the study setup considers desirability concerns and it employs multiple manipulation checks to increase robustness of results.

 

With this proposed plan, the manuscript presents a persuasive rationale that it taps into the wider concept of ‘ideological malleability’ that could be the underlying mechanism to explain a moderating effect of secularism on the effectiveness of self-affirmation in this French sample. By considering nuances of public opinion towards secularism in France specifically, the authors have identified a unique opportunity to investigate ideological malleability, which can be challenging to conceive and directly measure.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two experts who performed in-depth peer review across multiple rounds of revisions. The authors were very responsive in editing their manuscript based on the reviewers’ comments and dedicated much effort to increasing clarity and interpretability of their power analyses. Consequently, the revised manuscript was judged to meet the Stage 1 criteria and was awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

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 will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

 

1. Alnajjar, Y., Badea, C., & Sternberg, B. (2024). Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/f4wm6