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.