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Psychology of ReligionPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpr20

Religious Ambivalence: Suppression

of Pro-Social Attitudes Toward Asylum

Seekers by Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Ryan Perrya, Yin Paradiesb & Anne Pedersenc

a Melbourne School of Population and Global Health University ofMelbourne, Australiab Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation Deakin University,Australiac School of Psychology Murdoch University, AustraliaAccepted author version posted online: 14 May 2014.Publishedonline: 14 May 2014.

To cite this article: Ryan Perry, Yin Paradies & Anne Pedersen (2014): Religious Ambivalence:Suppression of Pro-Social Attitudes Toward Asylum Seekers by Right-Wing Authoritarianism, TheInternational Journal for the Psychology of Religion, DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2014.921473

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2014.921473

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The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 0:1–17, 2015

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1050-8619 print/1532-7582 online

DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2014.921473

RESEARCH

Religious Ambivalence: Suppression ofPro-Social Attitudes Toward Asylum Seekers by

Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Ryan PerryMelbourne School of Population and Global Health

University of Melbourne, Australia

Yin ParadiesCentre for Citizenship and Globalisation

Deakin University, Australia

Anne PedersenSchool of Psychology

Murdoch University, Australia

A survey of 168 White Australian community members examined whether ambivalence toward

certain social groups by some religious individuals constituted a suppression effect in which

authoritarian motivated prejudice suppressed more pro-social attitudes toward asylum seekers.

Using mediation analysis, it was found that Christian religious identity was not significantly

associated with prejudice at a bivariate level. However, when Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)

was taken into account, Christians (compared with non-Christians) were less likely to hold negative

attitudes toward asylum seekers in Australia. Inclusion of acculturation ideologies (assimilation,

multiculturalism, and color-blindness) in the models indicated that the suppression effect was

specific to RWA rather than due to other intergroup attitudes. However, findings suggest that

multiculturalism may be one proximal indicator of Christian pro-sociality.

Correspondence should be sent to Ryan Perry, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of

Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. E-mail: ryan.perry@unimelb.edu.au

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandonline.com/hjpr.

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Does Christian religious identity predict pro-social or antisocial attitudes toward members ofmarginalized social groups? Previous research has found that both attitudes may coexist amongpeople with high levels of Christian religious identity (e.g., Blogowska, Lambert, & Saroglou,2013; Blogowska & Saroglou, 2011; Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010) and points to a number ofconditions that determine how religious people will respond toward different groups (Saroglou,2013). Researchers have in fact identified a paradox in which religions that tend to endorsenotions of “brotherhood” are those most associated with prejudice (Hall et al., 2010; Mavor,Louis, & Laythe, 2011). It is still unclear what drives such differing responses, although pre-vious research indicates a strong link between Christian religious identity and authoritarianism(e.g., Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Rowatt & Franklin, 2004), and authoritarianism is a keyconstruct that dictates antisocial or prejudicial responses (Altemeyer, 1981; Duckitt, 2001).

Authoritarianism is a major social attitude construct characterised by an ideological predilec-tion for security, conformity, and tradition (Duckitt, 2001; Duriez & Van Hiel, 2002). Evidencesupports a strong association between Christian religious identity and authoritarian ideology;however, such a link would also seem to conflict with pro-social norms shared across many, ifnot all, religions. Prejudice perpetrated by those high in authoritarianism, however, is directedonly at those groups seen as threatening to social stability and the security of the ingroup ormajority group (Duckitt, 2001; Duckitt & Sibley, 2007). The present study aims to examine therole of authoritarianism in shaping attitudes of Christian participants toward asylum seekers—specifically proposing a suppression effect in which authoritarian aspects of Christian religiousidentity cancel out pro-social attitudes toward this group.

CONCEPTUALIZING AUTHORITARIANISM

The possibility of a link between religion and prejudice has been acknowledged from atleast the 1950s (Allport, 1954; Allport & Ross, 1967; Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993),with many studies reporting positive associations between Christian religious identity andmeasures of prejudice (e.g., Hunsberger, 1996; Mavor et al., 2011; Wylie & Forest, 1992).Furthermore, priming Christian words has been shown to increase racial prejudice relative topriming neutral words (Johnson, Rowatt, & LaBouff, 2010), and still further research findsthat fundamentalist Christians are more prejudiced against both gays and lesbians and MuslimAustralians compared with other Christians who are more questioning of their belief systems(James, Griffiths, & Pedersen, 2011). Researchers, however, have not failed to notice thatreligions, somewhat paradoxically, tend to actively espouse positive values of love and equality.Among attempts to determine what aspects or types of religion are most likely to determineprejudice, the construct of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981) has emergedas an ideological determinant of particular importance (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Rowatt& Franklin, 2004; Wylie & Forest, 1992).

Duckitt (2001) proposed a model of cognitive-motivational processes underlying generalisedprejudice that provides a theoretical framework for understanding why RWA and Christianreligious identity might be related in determining prejudice toward certain groups. The DualProcess Model (DPM) of ideology and prejudice suggests that RWA represents one of twoprincipal dimensions of ideological beliefs (the other being Social Dominance Orientation;SDO) that motivates prejudice as a means of maintaining social control and security in response

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RWA SUPPRESSES RELIGIOUS PRO-SOCIALITY 3

to perceptions of the social world as dangerous (Perry, Sibley, & Duckitt, 2013; Sibley, Wilson,& Duckitt, 2007). According to the DPM, specific combinations of personality traits and socialcontexts (including characteristics of target groups) jointly determine the manifestation of bothgeneralized prejudice and more specific political ideology indicators. According to the DPM,RWA and SDO reflect motivational goals stemming primarily from two distinct aspects ofpersonality—low Openness to Experience (as well as high Conscientiousness) in the case ofRWA and low Agreeableness in the case of SDO (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008). Individuals low inOpenness to Experience should value clear and unambiguous moral prescripts and rules thatmaintain the status quo (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008), and people low in Openness to Experience aretherefore sensitive to threats to their security and to social stability. Consequently, they shouldbecome increasingly motivated to seek group-based social cohesion, control, and collectivesecurity—motives that are indexed by RWA (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008). Religion arguablyprovides a RWA-relevant ideological framework by promoting and maintaining cohesion andsecurity (Hoverd & Sibley, 2010; Robertson, 2006).

RELIGIOUS AMBIVALENCE

Religion is certainly linked to authoritarianism, as well as to prejudice (Altemeyer & Huns-berger, 1992; Hunsberger, Owusu, & Duck, 1999; Laythe, Finkel, Bringle, & Kirkpatrick, 2002;Laythe, Finkel, & Kirkpatrick, 2001; Rowatt & Franklin, 2004; Wylie & Forest, 1992). Moulian(1979), for example, discussed the use of religion by authoritarian regimes to rally followersand to justify their actions, and RWA (but not SDO) has been shown to predict support forreligious education in public school curriculums (Perry & Sibley, 2013). Fundamentalism hasbeen described as the manifestation of RWA in religious ideology (Altemeyer & Hunsberger,2005; Hall et al., 2010), with Hall et al. (2010) demonstrating in a recent meta-analysis thatRWA fully mediates the association between religious fundamentalism and racist attitudes.

Recent research is beginning to explore more complex associations between religion, author-itarianism, and prejudice. Van Pachterbeke, Freyer, and Saroglou (2011), for example, showedthat priming religion leads authoritarians to favour impersonal social norms to the detrimentof interpersonal and care-based pro-sociality (see also Clobert & Saroglou, 2013). Pearte,Renk, and Negy (2013) reported that authoritarianism mediates associations of religiosity andconservatism with prejudice toward homosexuals, and this form of prejudice was perpetratedonly by religious fundamentalists to the extent that target groups were judged to threatentheir personally held values (Jackson & Esses, 1997). Likewise, Brandt and Reyna (2014)showed that authoritarianism mediated religious fundamentalism and prejudice toward AfricanAmericans, but only when prejudice was measured as symbolic racism that frames AfricanAmericans as violating social values (Brandt & Reyna, 2014). Religion, however, has not beenas consistently related to prejudice as might be expected from its close ties with RWA, andevidence also suggests Christian religious identity could be associated with reduced prejudice,or pro-social attitudes, once authoritarianism is adjusted for.

Hall et al. (2010) examined associations between racism and social-cognitive motivationsrelated to religion across 55 independent studies. In eight of these studies, the authors reporteda negative average association (random r D !:12), 95% confidence interval (CI) [!.19, !.04],between fundamentalism and prejudice when RWA was adjusted for, compared to a positive

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association when the effects of RWA were not adjusted for (random r D :17), 95% CI [.09,.25]. Hall et al. (2010) concluded that fundamentalism is thus the manifestation of RWA inreligion because “religious fundamentalism is associated with a rigid, dogmatic cognitive stylethat preferences one truth and one way of being over others and thereby promotes in-groupfavouritism and out-group derogation” (p. 134). This is consistent with definitions of RWA,which indexes deference to authorities, and conformity to traditional moral and religious normsand values (Altemeyer, 1981; Duckitt, 2001).

Hall et al. (2010), however, did not dwell on the implications of fundamentalism andprejudice being negatively correlated when RWA was adjusted for. This was only a weakeffect, and only eight of the 55 studies included in the meta-analysis provided adequate data;moreover, Mavor et al. (2011) were dubious that this negative association is meaningful, arguingthat some aspects of the RWA scale are too similar to the religious fundamentalism construct.No positive association was found in their own study when using the subdimension of RWAthat did not overlap with fundamentalism. However, the literature does suggests that Christianreligious identity confers ambiguous attitudes toward certain outgroups (Hall et al., 2010;Saroglou, 2013), and the possibility of a pro-social component of Christian religious identitythat emerges when the conditions of RWA are met warrants further investigation.

The findings of Hall et al. (2010) suggest a suppression effect of RWA on religious pro-socialvalues, in that religious people hold ambiguous attitudes toward certain social groups with theantisocial component of these attitudes being driven primarily by RWA-related motives foringroup security and social stability. The present study aims to formally test this suppressioneffect using mediation analysis. This research also investigates whether the meta-analytictrend is evident in Australia (compared to the more thoroughly researched United States)by assessing the suppression of pro-social attitudes toward asylum seekers as held by WhiteChristian Australians. The present study also employs a measure of religious identificationrather than fundamentalism, to mitigate spurious association with RWA (see Mavor et al.,2011).

Religion may be associated with prejudice or tolerance toward certain groups more sothan others, with these distinctions based on religious teachings (Batson et al., 1993; Herek,1987; Rowatt, LaBouff, Johnson, Froese, & Tsang, 2009). In Rowatt et al. (2009) for example,religiosity was strongly positively associated with prejudice toward homosexuals, but negligibly(ˇ D !:07, t D !2:46, p < :02) associated with general racism toward three historicallydisadvantaged ethnic groups in the United States. The authors proposed a selective intolerance

hypothesis, suggesting that homosexuals are targets of religiously motivated prejudice becausethis group violates Christian norms and teachings and are considered sinful (see also Bassettet al., 2000). This is consistent with Duckitt’s (2001) DPM, which suggests that RWA-motivatedprejudice is directed at groups seen as not only dangerous but also as deviant and in violationof mainstream social norms and mores (see Duckitt & Sibley, 2007).

Although not central to their study, Rowatt et al. (2009) reported a positive bivariateassociation between religion and racial prejudice that became negative in a multivariate modelincluding RWA, which is consistent with previous research (Laythe et al., 2001; Rowatt &Franklin, 2004; Tsang & Rowatt, 2007).These findings suggest a suppression effect of RWA onthe association between religion and positive racial attitudes. Specifically, religious individualsshould be motivated by religious teachings to engage in pro-social behaviour (e.g., Pichon,Boccato, & Saroglou, 2007; Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007) but also be motivated by authoritarian

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RWA SUPPRESSES RELIGIOUS PRO-SOCIALITY 5

values to engage in prejudice in order to maintain cohesion and security (Hall et al., 2010;Hoverd & Sibley, 2010).

We argue that acculturation attitudes may be one alternative source of attitudes that mediateChristian prejudice toward immigrant groups. Acculturation ideologies are being increasinglystudied internationally (Levin et al., 2012; Plaut, Thomas, & Goren, 2009; Rosenthal & Levy,2010; Vorauer & Sasaki, 2011), and three such ideologies common to the literature are multicul-turalism, colour-blindness, and assimilationist perspectives. Multicultural ideology refers to “abelief that differences among racial and ethnic groups should be recognized and appreciated,”colour-blind ideology refers to a belief that everybody should be “judged as individual humanbeings—without regard to race or ethnicity,” and assimilationist ideology refers “to the beliefthat the members of immigrant groups should conform to mainstream society” (Ryan, Hunt,Weible, Peterson, & Casas, 2007, p. 618). Assimilation is expected to be positively associatedwith prejudice, as this ideology favours prevailing social hierarchies, whereas colour-blindnessand multiculturalism should be negatively related with prejudice as these serve to attenuatehierarchy (Levin et al., 2012). By including measures of acculturation the present study aimsto examine whether the proposed suppression effect on pro-social Christian attitudes is specificto RWA or whether the effect generalises to other racism-related ideologies.

PRESENT STUDY

The present study tests a hypothesised suppression effect of RWA on pro-social Christianattitudes toward asylum seekers in Australia. First, using multiple regression analysis weexamine the hypothesis that Christian identity is associated with less prejudice in a modelincluding RWA but not in a baseline model including only demographic variables. We alsoinclude measures of acculturation attitudes in the regression model at step 2 to test if RWAexplains variance in prejudice independently of acculturation beliefs. Using mediation models,we then formally test our suppression hypothesis that Christian religious identity should operateboth directly (and negatively) and indirectly (and positively) through RWA on prejudicedattitudes toward marginalised groups. In other words, RWA should suppress the negative effectof Christian religious identity on prejudice (i.e., the pro-social component of Christian religiousidentity). We further posit that there may be a significant indirect effect of Christian identity viamulticulturalism as this ideological belief could function as a proximal indicator of pro-socialChristian beliefs.

METHOD

Participants

A total of 168 people from Perth, Western Australia, participated in this study. The meanage of the sample was 40 years with a range from 18 to 78 years, and there were morefemale (55.7%) than male (44.3%) participants. All participants were from a White Europeanbackground, with 32.7% holding or currently completing bachelor’s degrees, whereas a further15.8% had achieved or were completing higher university degrees. Of those who stated their

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political orientation, 26.1% were left leaning, 34.8% were right leaning, and 33.3% werecentre. Slightly less than half of the participants (44%) reported being Christian, 49% reportedno religion, and 7.2% reported other religions.

Procedure

Using a snowball/convenience sample with six people collecting the data (see the Acknowledg-ments section), participants were drawn from the Perth metropolitan area in Western Australiaduring June and July 2012. Participants read brief information about the study requirementsand then completed sociodemographic measures followed by the ideological attitude scales andprejudice measure.

Measures

For all measures, participants indicated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed witha number of statements on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly

agree). Items measuring each construct were averaged to derive a scale score, with higherscores indicating higher levels of each construct.

Support for assimilation was measured using seven items devised for the present studybased on our reading of previous research (e.g., Berry & Kalin, 1995; Khan, 2009; Paradies& Cunningham, 2008; Turoy-Smith, 2009), for example, “If immigrants expect to live andwork among us, then they are the ones who should change to fit into our culture.” Threeitems indexing support for multiculturalism items were devised for the present study basedon previous research (Berry & Kalin, 1995; Kleinpenning & Hagendoorn, 1993; Turoy-Smith,2009), for example, “Accepting cultural and racial diversity is a fundamental characteristic ofAustralian society.” Three items indexing support for colour-blindness were devised for thepresent study based on previous research (e.g., Levin et al., 2012). We note that in Australiathe term “cultural background” is often used to indicate race, ethnicity, and/or religion (Waltonet al., 2014).

Prejudice toward asylum seekers was measured using 18 items measuring attitudes towardasylum seekers taken from Pedersen, Attwell, and Heveli (2005), for example, “Asylum seekersare holding Australia to ransom by resorting to violence such as rioting.”

Right-Wing Authoritarianism was measured using a shortened eight-item version of Alte-meyer’s (1981) original scale, adapted by Perry and Sibley (2012), for example, “The onlyway our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, putsome tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.”

Reliability for all scales was satisfactory for the RWA (Altemeyer, 1981), assimilation andmulticultural scales, and for the scales measuring attitudes toward asylum seekers (between˛ D 0.78–0.93). Reliability was low, however, for the colour-blind scale .˛ D 0:61/, whichis under the usually accepted minimum alpha of 0.70 (Bernardi, 1994). Deleting items wouldnot have increased reliability. Descriptive statistics and Cronbach’s alpha reliability scores areprovided in Table 1.

Religious identification. Participants were also asked their religion (if any). Response cat-egories were provided for Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and no religion.

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TABLE 1Bivariate Correlations and Descriptive Statistics for All Variables

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

1. Prejudice !.472** !.251** .718** .411** !.061 .150 !.124 .358** !.416**

2. Multiculturalism .337** !.486** !.096 .162* .098 .113 !.095 .236**

3. Colour-blind !.212** .012 !.023 .101 .194* !.067 .059

4. Assimilation .416** .043 .235** !.200** .307** !.399**

5. RWA .367** .295** !.022 .450** !.262**

6. Christian identity .167* !.091 .316** .138

7. Age .022 .254** !.094

8. Female !.090 .002

9. Conservative !.189*

10. Education

M 3.91 5.30 4.83 4.42 2.97 0.44 39.96 1.56 3.07 3.85

SD 1.21 1.38 1.33 1.35 1.10 0.51 15.26 0.50 1.03 1.66

Cronbach’s ˛ 0.91 0.82 0.61 0.89 0.78 — — — — —

Note. RWA D Right-Wing Authoritarianism.

*p < .05, **p < .01.

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There was also a box where they could provide information regarding another religion notspecified here. These data were coded as 1 D Christian, 0 D not Christian.

Sociodemographic information concerning participants’ gender (1 D male; 2 D female),age in years, education level (1 D did not complete secondary school to 6 D higher degree)and their political orientation (1 D strongly left through to 5 D strongly right; 6 D don’t care)was also collected. Previous research has suggested that these sociodemographic variables arerelated to prejudice. In particular, prejudice has been linked with low levels of education andright-wing/conservative political affiliation (Pedersen & Griffiths, 2012).

RESULTS

As shown in Table 1, there were moderate to high bivariate associations of prejudice with allthree acculturation ideologies and with RWA. Participants who scored high on prejudice weremore likely to have lower levels of formal education and to be politically right-wing. There was,crucially, no bivariate association between prejudice and Christian religious identity however.Next, political position, education and Christian religious identity were entered in a multivariateregression model predicting prejudice, with RWA and the three acculturation ideologies enteredin the model at Step 2.

As shown in Table 2, lower levels of education and a conservative political orientationpredicted more prejudice toward asylum seekers at Step 1. At Step 2, RWA and all threeacculturation scales were entered in the full model to examine the extent that these ideologyvariables explained variance in prejudice beyond Christian religious identity (while adjustingfor the other demographic variables). In the full model, education and political orientationwere no longer related to prejudice; however, consistent with a suppression effect, Christianreligious identity became negatively associated (i.e., Christian religious identity predicted lowerprejudice toward asylum seekers). The two-step model also allowed us to examine whetherChristian religious identity predicted less prejudice when RWA was adjusted for, consistent with

TABLE 2Hierarchical Regression Predicting Prejudice Toward Asylum Seekers

Step 1

b

Step 2

b R2

Step 1

Conservative .354** .148

Education !.253** !.080

Christian identity !.106 !.334* .237**

Step 2

RWA .218**

Multiculturalism !.157*

Colour-blindness !.103

Assimilation .417** .584**

Note. RWA D Right-Wing Authoritarianism.

*p < .05, **p < .01.

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RWA SUPPRESSES RELIGIOUS PRO-SOCIALITY 9

a suppression effect. In the full model, RWA and assimilation predicted more prejudice towardasylum seekers, whereas multiculturalism predicted less. A significant amount of variance inprejudice toward asylum seekers was explained by the demographic variables .R2

D :237/ atStep 1 as well as by the full model at Step 2 .R2

D :584/.

RWA Mediates Religion

We formally examined the hypothesised suppression effect of RWA on the association betweenChristian religious identity and prejudice toward asylum seekers using a bootstrap methodfor testing mediation (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). Suppression is said to occur when the re-lationship between an independent and dependent variable increases when a third variable issimultaneously entered in the model (MacKinnon, Krull, & Lockwood, 2000). Suppression canbe examined using techniques for formally testing mediation (MacKinnon et al., 2000), andhere we employed a 5,000 bootstrap resampling procedure that does not rely on an assumptionof normality, unlike previous approaches for examining mediation (Preacher & Hayes, 2008).If suppression occurs, the direct effect of the independent variable on the dependent variableshould be larger than the total effect when the indirect effect of the independent variable(through the suppressor variable) is taken into account.

As shown in Figure 1, the total effect (not controlling for RWA) of Christian religious identityon prejudice toward asylum seekers was nonsignificant (ˇ D !:122, SE D :156, p D :436).However, the direct effect (i.e., adjusting for RWA) of Christian religious identity on prejudicetoward asylum seekers was significant (ˇ D !:484, SE D :150, p D :001). A significantindirect effect (calculated by multiplying the effect of Christian religious identity on RWAby the effect of RWA on prejudice) suggests that RWA is a significant mediator/suppressorof the relationship between Christian religious identity and prejudice toward asylum seekers(ˇ D :363, SE D :100), 95% CI [.196, .593]. A negative direct effect of Christian identity onprejudice was observed only once the indirect effect via RWA was taken into account. Thissupports our hypothesis that positive Christian attitudes toward asylum seekers are suppressedby opposing (i.e., negative) effects of RWA.

FIGURE 1 Standardised regression coefficients for indirect effect analysis .n D 166/. Note. The value in

parentheses represents the direct effect of Christian religious identity on prejudice toward asylum seekers while

adjusting for the indirect effect via Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; also adjusting for indirect effects via

multiculturalism, assimilation, and colour-blindness). ATAS D attitudes toward asylum seekers. **p < .01.

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We also examined a multiple mediation model in which RWA and all three acculturationideologies were entered simultaneously as mediators. The coefficients in the RWA pathway didnot change substantially suggesting that the component of Christian prejudice that is motivatedby authoritarian ideology is distinct from beliefs about acculturation. Of the three acculturationideologies, only multiculturalism produced a significant indirect effect which was negative andsmall (ˇ D !:055, SE D :034), 95% CI [!.140, !.006]. Therefore multiculturalism mayfunction as a proximal, albeit inexact, indicator of pro-social Christian attitudes toward asylumseekers.

DISCUSSION

Allport (1954; see also Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) described acontradiction between endorsement of pro-social religious norms, including humanitarianismand equality, with an apparently simultaneous endorsement of prejudice. In more than halfa century of research investigating religiously motivated prejudice, particular social-cognitiveconstructs have emerged that seem to motivate religious identity, as well as racism. Suchideological motives include social conformity, dogmatism, and respect for tradition, whichare captured by the broader ideological dimension of RWA (Altemeyer, 1981; Duckitt, 2001).Another set of more pro-social religious motives should mitigate prejudice. Although researchis beginning to explore these more complicated connections between Christian religious identityand prejudice, the present study is the first to formally test a suppression effect in which RWA-based prejudice and pro-social attitudes suppress one another at the bivariate level for thoseidentifying as Christian. As summarized next, we showed that suppression occurs because RWAmediates the negative effect of Christian religious identity on prejudice toward asylum seekersin Australia.

In the present study, RWA significantly and consistently predicted prejudice in line withprevious research with respect to other social groups seen as dangerous and threatening to thestatus quo (Duckitt & Sibley, 2007, 2010; Pedersen & Walker, 1997). Acculturation ideologiesalso predicted variance in prejudice toward asylum seekers independently of RWA. AlthoughChristian religious identity was not associated with prejudice toward asylum seekers at thebivariate level, Christian participants were less prejudiced toward asylum seekers than non-Christians once the effect of RWA was taken into account using multivariate regression. As wepredicted, Christian religious identity does not correlate with prejudice when antisocial (RWA-driven) and pro-social components of Christian religious identity operate in combination.

Mediation models supported our hypothesised suppression effect as Christian religiousidentity operated both directly on prejudice and indirectly through RWA in opposing directions.In other words, the antisocial RWA component of Christian religious identity suppressed a pro-social component in determining prejudice. Our findings also indicated that acculturation beliefscharacterised by multiculturalism may be one example of these prosocial beliefs as Christianidentity was indirectly associated with less prejudice via this construct. As we will discuss,there is a need for follow-up studies to examine other alternative pro-social attitude variablesas mediators that might better capture Christian or religious pro-sociality.

Christians may be motivated by conflicting pro-social and antisocial authoritarian valuestoward certain social groups. We argue that asylum seekers may constitute such a group as

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refugees in Australia are portrayed as vulnerable and in need of help (Hartley, Pedersen, Fleay,& Hoffman, 2013) as well as culturally different and perhaps unpredictable and threatening(Suhnan, Pedersen, & Hartley, 2012). It is quite possible that Christians hold conflictingopinions about asylum seekers—on one hand (RWA-driven) that they are dangerous andthreatening to social cohesion and security, and on the other hand (pro-social Christian-principles driven) that they should be welcomed and aided (e.g., Batson et al., 1993; Herek,1987), particularly in accordance with a multiculturalism approach to acculturation.

Demographic Differences and Acculturation

The findings also suggested a number of demographic and acculturation-ideology differencespredicting prejudice toward asylum seekers. Politically right-wing participants were more preju-diced toward asylum seekers, consistent with previous research that finds a relationship betweenprejudice and right-wing political orientation (e.g., Suhnan et al., 2012) and which indicatesthat the asylum seeker debate is highly politicised (McKay, Thomas, & Kneebone, 2012).This association was no longer significant in the full model adjusting for the effects of RWA(and the acculturation ideologies), however, which suggests that political opposition or supportfor asylum seekers is divided along an RWA dimension. In other words, conservatives areprejudiced toward asylum seekers because they are higher in RWA (and probably also SDO; see,e.g., Perry & Sibley’s 2013 findings regarding attitudes toward immigrants in New Zealand).

The independent associations of multiculturalism and assimilation with prejudice in thepresent study support the argument that these constructs are not simply opposite ends of asingle dimension of acculturation ideology. Indeed, within Berry’s widely utilised acculturationmodel, integration involves both retaining one’s own migrant culture (i.e., multiculturalism) aswell as adopting (i.e., assimilating) into a new host culture (Berry & Kalin, 1995; Van deVijver, Breugelmans, & Schalk-Soekar, 2008).

Limitations and Concluding Comments

Mavor et al. (2011) argued that a failure to recognise the complexities of the RWA constructhas been problematic for research investigating Christian religious identity and prejudice,asserting that RWA is a composite construct and its components relate differently to aspectsof religion and prejudice. They also argued that supposedly independent constructs, includingreligious fundamentalism, are measured within the RWA scale raising the possibility of spuriousvariance explained by this overlapping scale content, rather than by a genuine associationbetween religiosity and RWA as independent constructs. In particular, the conventionalismcomponent of RWA is more strongly associated with religious fundamentalism than it is withthe aggression/submission component, which in turn is more strongly correlated with racismthan with the conventionalism component (Mavor et al., 2011).

As Mavor et al. (2011; see also Mavor, MacLeod, Boal, & Louis, 2009) pointed out,this is particularly problematic in cases where fundamentalism appears to be associated withpro-sociality when RWA is taken into account because prejudice may be related to onecomponent of RWA, whereas fundamentalism is related to another (Mavor et al., 2011). Intheir own study, fundamentalism was negatively associated with racial prejudice when thefull RWA scale was included in the model, but this association was nonsignificant when only

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the aggression/submission component of RWA was included. They argued that the pro-socialdirection of effects observed in Hall et al.’s (2010) meta-analysis are due to content overlapand that “at best this effect is not a significant one but in many cases fundamentalism will besignificantly associated with prejudice even after controlling for the component of RWA thatis most associated with prejudice” (Mavor et al., 2011, p. 38).

Including this aggression/submission component of RWA reduced the negative associationbetween fundamentalism and racism to nonsignificance but did not reverse the effect in Mavoret al.’s (2011) own findings. Moreover, the present study demonstrated that a small positiveeffect of Christian religious identity is still apparent when measuring the independent variable asreligious identification (Christian or otherwise) rather than fundamentalism. Given that Christianreligious identity is a multivalent construct that should ideally be measured with multiple items,future research should seek to replicate this finding with more sophisticated measures. However,asking participants whether they identify as Christian or otherwise is qualitatively distinct fromthe ideological content of the RWA scale, as identity can be considered a descriptive beliefabout oneself, which is distinct from prescriptive ideological beliefs (about the way thingsshould be) such as RWA (see Perry & Sibley, 2010). Moreover, identity and ideology arequalitatively distinct because the former does not require a value judgment (as is the case withproblematic measures of fundamentalism); thus the issue of content overlap that Mavor et al.(2011) identified when using indexes of fundamentalism is avoided.

In the present article, multiculturalism operated as a possible indirect pathway of pro-social Christian attitudes, although this effect was weak and therefore it is important toexamine alternative proxies of pro-social Christian attitudes. Religiosity has been associated,for example, with increased empathy, although not across the board. For example, religiousparticipants who believed in a merciful God were higher in empathy and those who believein a God of justice were lower (Francis, Croft, & Pyke, 2012). Duriez (2004) has also shownthat empathy and most of its subdimensions are associated with symbolic (vs. literal) styles ofreligiosity but was not associated with simply identifying as religious. A more recent meta-analysis of 75 samples indicated that Christian religiosity is associated with a motivation forself-enhancement (measured as social desirable responding), particularly in cultural contextsthat place a higher value on religion (Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010). Presumably, includinga precise indicator of pro-social attitudes would fully mediate the direct effect of Christianidentity on prejudice.

Pro-social Christian attitudes toward asylum seekers may therefore be mediated by differ-ences in a more general motivational goal for self-enhancement rather than trait differences suchas empathy. RWA is also considered an indicator of underlying motivational goals—in this casefor security and social stability—and it is possible to see how these differing goals could beconflicted, with Christians motivated, on one hand, by social threat and, on the other, by high so-cial desirability demands. It is clear that subsequent research should examine self-enhancementas a mediator of the pro-social effect of Christian identity on attitudes toward asylum seekers;however, these studies could further examine competing motivating pathways by manipulating(a) the ostensible value placed on religion in the society and (b) the socially threatening char-acteristics of a given asylum seeker group. The former should increase the strength of the pro-social self-enhancement pathway and the latter should increase the anti-social RWA pathway.

Another more minor limitation of the study was the use of Australia-specific terminologyin our scale items measuring colour-blindness, which may not generalise across contexts or

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disciplines in which colour-blindness is measured specifically as attitudes toward race or skincolour. Whether cultural background equates race is a vexed question. Some authors (e.g., Main,2012) maintain that “culture is not race” (p. 662). Yet others argue that cultural background isconstrued as an intersection of colour, ethnicity, and race in Australia (Walton et al., 2014). Wemeasured cultural background rather than specifically referring to race in line with previousresearch items (e.g., Levin et al., 2012), and although participants are likely to have answeredour questions thinking of race, we emphasise the need for future research to develop andemploy standardised measures of acculturation that can be implemented internationally andwill enable our findings to be extended across different contexts.

Consistent with recent perspectives on religiously motivated prejudice (e.g., Hall et al.,2010; Saroglou, 2013), religious individuals appear to hold ambivalent attitudes toward certainsocial groups. The present study suggests that negative attitudes are driven by authoritarianaspects of Christian religious identity, here captured by RWA. Previous research (Hall et al.,2010) has indicated that religious individuals may also hold higher pro-social attitudes towardmarginalised groups relative to nonreligious individuals but that such attitudes are weaker andthus overshadowed by authoritarian motivated prejudice. Using mediation models, this studyhas demonstrated formally for the first time that white Christian Australians have pro-socialattitudes toward asylum seekers that are suppressed by these participants’ high levels of RWA.This pro-sociality may be due to Christian-specific motivations driven by multicultural values,or, as discussed, possibly higher levels of empathy or motivations for self-enhancement.

The present findings have important implications for addressing Christianity-based preju-dices. Religious identity consists of ambivalent attitudes toward certain social groups, and pro-social aspects of this identity appear to combat authoritarian motivations that drive prejudice.However, in practice these processes are intertwined and cancel one another out so that Christianidentification is not clearly associated with prejudice. The justification-suppression model ofprejudice suggests that expressions of prejudice depend on motivations to suppress prejudiceand that ideologies such as RWA facilitate prejudice by reducing the motivation to suppress,therefore justifying the expression of prejudice (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). In other words,ideologies and other individual differences are not so much causes of prejudice but “releasers”of existing latent prejudice (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). Therefore, focusing Christians’attention on aspects of disadvantaged social groups that do not conflict with RWA motivationsfor social security and stability would theoretically facilitate their pro-social suppression ofexisting prejudices. For example, religious fundamentalists showed tolerance toward AfricanAmericans when prejudice toward this group was framed as less justified, but when prejudicewas justified (i.e., African Americans were presented as violating values), fundamentalists weremore prejudiced (Brandt & Reyna, 2014). Emphasising pro-social motivational goals such asself-enhancement and a multicultural society may also be useful avenues for reducing (or atleast redirecting) prejudice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Alexandra Ballantyne, Tamra Eastough, Natalie Jarvie, Deanne Moseley, and DeborahSilva for collecting and inputting the data. We also thank Brian Griffiths and Naomi Priest fortheir useful comments on an earlier draft.

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APPENDIX

Acculturation Scale Items

Support for Assimilation

(1) If immigrants expect to live and work among us, then they are the ones who shouldchange to fit into our culture.

(2) I am concerned that Australia is giving away too much to ensure people of all culturesare not offended by our customs, religion, and way of life.

(3) Australia is weakened by people of different ethnic origins sticking to their old ways.(4) Migrants to Australia should dress and behave like Australians rather than trying to

change Australian customs, values and our lifestyle.(5) There are too many people from different cultures who don’t want to fit in to Australian

standards and laws.(6) Ethnic minorities in Australia should be free to maintain their own way of life (reversed).(7) Recent immigrants should have as much say about the future of Australia as people

who were born and raised here (reversed).

Support for Multiculturalism

(1) Accepting cultural and racial diversity is a fundamental characteristic of Australiansociety.

(2) Over the years, it has been shown that migrant cultures combine with mainstream cultureto make Australia a better place.

(3) People of all nationalities have all worked together to create Australia as it is today.

Support for Colour-Blindness

(1) People are basically the same, regardless of their cultural background.(2) I never really notice the cultural background of other people.(3) Everyone should be treated the same, regardless of their cultural background.

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