Children's perceptions of their own and one other religious group

Abstract

This poster reports an investigation of children’s perceptions of their own and one other religious group. 242 5- to 11-year-old children living in south-east England took part in the study. The children came from two religious groups, Muslim and Christian. The children were questioned in order to elicit their descriptions of members of the two religious groups, and to assess the perceived variability attributed to members of both groups. The subjective importance of the child’s own religious group membership was also measured. It was found that: religion became more important with age; the positivity of the children’s descriptions of the outgroup increased as a function of age; the ingroup was described in a more positive way than the outgroup at all ages; the variability attributed to both the ingroup and outgroup increased as a function of age; and the outgroup was seen as being more variable than the ingroup at all ages. The findings are discussed in relationship to predictions made by Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorisation Theory.

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