Childhood Psiko 4

Religious Discrimination in Childhood and Adolescence
Author(s): Nastasya van der Straten Waillet and Isabelle Roskam

Source: Archiv für Religionspsychologie / Archive for the Psychology of Religion, Vol.
34, No. 2 (2012), pp. 215-242
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23919285
Accessed: 11-03-2020 04:00 UTC
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BRILL Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 brill.nl/arp
Religious Discrimination in Childhood

and Adolescence
Nastasya van der Straten Waillet*1 and Isabelle Roskam"

Psychological Science Research Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain,
Place Cardinal Mercier 10, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
nastasya.vanderstraten@uclouvain.be; isabelle.roskam@uclouvain.be
Received: 19 January 2012; revised: 23 May 2012; accepted: 2 June 2012
Summary
The aim of this study was to assess the links between religious discrimination and developmental
and contextual variables. Based on the assumption that discrimination results from the interplay
of prejudice and moral thinking, discriminatory behaviour was hypothesised to be linked to age,
school environment, minority or majority group membership, and parental religious socialisa
tion practices. The results indicate that discrimination is more frequent during childhood than
during pre-adolescence or adolescence, more common in homogeneous schools than in hetero
geneous schools, and more likely when parents frequently express messages promoting mistrust
of other religious groups. Participants from the minority group were more likely to discriminate
against their own ingroup than were those from the majority group. Further studies are needed
to determine whether these links are correlative or predictive, and to understand the underlying
processes of religious discrimination.
Keywords
religion, discrimination, social identity, development, environment
Introduction
Although not comparable to the wide and extensive research on intergroup

attitudes in adulthood, intergroup attitudes in childhood have attracted the
Ph.D. Student.
Professor.
" Acknowledgements: Both authors have participated in the design, execution, and analysis of
this article and have approved the final version. Neither of the authors had a conflict of interest
in connection with this article.
) Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/15736121-12341240
N. van der Straten Waillet et al. /
216 Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242
attention of the research community for decades. Since the well-known study
exploring young girls' preference for white or black dolls in the late 1940s
(Clark & Clark, 1947), several psychologists have explored the issue of preju
dice in children (see Aboud, 1988; Brown, 1995; Killen, Margie, & Sinno,
2006; Ruble, et ah, 2004 for reviews). While there is a large body of literature
devoted to gender and racial intergroup relations in childhood and adoles
cence (Barrett & Davis, 2008; Bennett & Sani, 2004; Killen, et al., 2006;
Nesdale, 2001; Ruble, et ah, 2004), surprisingly few studies have focused on
religious intergroup relations. This lack of scientific interest might mirror the
fact that politicians and theorists in secularized European countries have
tended to downgrade religious membership in the private sphere and to focus
multicultural politics on every kind of social identity except religious identity
(Modood & Ahmad, 2007).
This is regrettable for at least two reasons. First, intergroup processes during
childhood and adolescence are not necessarily the same, regardless of the type
of group (Killen & Rutland, 2011). When compared to other social identities
(such as race, ethnicity, gender, age or disability) which are given at birth,
religious identity is distinguished by the fact that it is also a matter of choice
(Bennett, 2011; Chaudhury &C Miller, 2008; Sani & Bennett, 2004). It is
therefore theoretically interesting to explore whether religious intergroup rela
tions involve the same kind of processes as those involved in other social iden
tities. Second, the reason why religious intergroup relations should be more
exhaustively studied is related to the fact that a better understanding of this
topic could give rise to efficient intervention programs to improve the current
climate of religious tensions. The intergroup perspective is indeed crucial in
the understanding—and also the regulation—of growing religious phenom
ena such as fundamentalism and terrorist attacks (Herriot, 2007).
According to the social identity perspective, intergroup attitudes are com
posed of three dimensions: stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination (Fiske,
1998). The first two components, stereotypes and prejudice, are almost always
present. Stereotypes are useful because they serve functional objectives (e.g.
Snyder & Miene, 1994), whereas prejudice is a normal and almost unavoid
able consequence of social categorization (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005). This is
due to the fact that social identity is a part of self-concept and that individuals
strive to maintain a positive self-concept in order to foster their self-esteem.
Therefore "the in-group must be perceived as positively different or distinct
from the relevant outgroups" (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, p. 40). However, some
people consciously control their behaviour because they have a moral motiva
tion to be fair, and they avoid discrimination by suppressing the expression of
their prejudice (Devine, Plant, & Buswell, 2000; Killen, McGlothlin, &
Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 217
Henning, 2008). Discriminative behaviour is a "differential behaviour directed

towards individuals or groups as a function of category membership" (Brewer,
1994, p. 317) while non-discriminative behaviour is considered as fair behav
iour, based on considerations of equity and equality (Schulman, 2002). Dis
crimination is of particular interest because, as Opotow (1990, p. 1) says,
discrimination is one of the mildest forms of moral exclusion which "occurs
when individuals or groups are perceived as outside the boundary in which
moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply". And when one indi
vidual considers that other individuals do not deserve as much fairness as s/he
does, then not only discrimination but also exploiting, harming and murder
ing become potentially justifiable (Opotow, 1990).
Discrimination is a complex phenomenon that fluctuates according to the
context. First, the expression of prejudice is related to the context. While
ingroup favouritism is conceptually different from outgroup prejudice, both
can lead to discriminative behaviour under specific circumstances (Aboud,
2003; Brewer, 1999; Cameron, Alvarez, Ruble, & Fuligni, 2001). Ingroup
favouritism (preferring the ingroup over the outgroup) may indeed lead to
discrimination in a context of scarce resources or limited choice, because one
chooses to favour or include an ingroup person at the expense of the other
groups. However, this may not occur in a context of free resources or large
choices, where it is possible to include all people whatever their origins. In
such a large context, only outgroup prejudice would lead to discrimination.
Similarly, moral reasoning about discrimination is related to the context
(Killen, et al., 2008). For example, children are more likely to consider dis
crimination as wrong if it is straightforward (an outgroup member is excluded
from an activity although it was possible to include him) and to consider it as
more legitimate when the context is more ambiguous (an outgroup member is
excluded because only one person could be included) (Killen, et al., 2008;
Killen, Pisacane, Lee-Kim, & Ardila-Rey, 2001). Research on discrimination
has therefore to pay attention to the context because the differentiation
between contexts is informative. A discriminative choice in a limited-choice
context (choosing one person) could occur because one wants to include a
member of one's own group rather than because one deliberately wants to
exclude someone. However, in a large-choice context, a discriminative behav
iour is more offensive in that one chooses to exclude people from the outgroup
although there was an opportunity to be fair.
As shown earlier, the understanding of religious intergroup process is impor
tant in the understanding of growing religious phenomena such as fundamen
talism and terrorist attacks (Herriot, 2007). Such an understanding is
interesting if one wants to regulate the rise of those phenomena. Given the fact
that national policies aimed at improving religious relations can target most
individuals of the next generations through schools, it makes sense to explore
religious intergroup attitudes during childhood and adolescence in the light of
possible regulation. This study therefore focused on religious discrimination in
children and adolescents, and developmental and contextual factors correlat
ing with it. The development of discriminative behaviours has not been exten
sively studied. The research that does exist mainly refers to perceived
discrimination and its consequences (e.g. Verkuyten, 2008) or to moral rea
soning about discriminative behaviour (e.g. Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, &
Stangor, 2002). Therefore, in developing our working hypotheses, we mainly
relied on work on prejudice and moral reasoning in children. Those two
domains of development are enlightening in that discrimination can be con
ceptualized as the expression of prejudice, resulting from the combination of
two factors: genuine prejudice, and the motivation to suppress this prejudice
(Devine, et al., 2000). Moreover, our hypotheses were mainly drawn from
work on ethnic prejudice in children. Ethnic identity was chosen as the basis
on which to build our hypothesis because it involves abstract features such as
values and customs (Quintana, 1998), as does religious identity. Therefore it is
theoretically closer to religious identity than are other social identities such as
gender or race, which are more closely related to physical features.
Based on the review of literature about ethnic intergroup relations, we made
hypotheses about the links between religious discrimination and several vari
ables. First, the possibility that religious discrimination developed with age
was examined. Programs aimed at improving intergroup relations in child
hood and adolescence should indeed be based on developmental research End
ings in order to be appropriate to children's level and in order to be effective
(Killen & Rutland, 2011). Next, the homogeneity of the school and the group
status were examined, since they are variables that are frequently related to
children's intergroup attitudes (see for examples Enesco, Guerrero, Callejas, &
Solbes, 2008; Tropp & Prenovost, 2008). Finally, parental influence was taken
into account. Even if the pervading assumption that children acquire their
intergroup attitudes from parents (Allport, 1954) has been nuanced by research
findings (Aboud & Doyle, 1996; Brown, 1995), parental influence is still con
sidered as being a component of what forms children's intergroup attitudes
(Killen & Rutland, 2011). Hypotheses about interactions between age and
contextual variables were not systematically addressed, but the interaction
between age and parental socialization was addressed, since parental socializa
tion is known in the ethnic literature to be different in childhood and in
adolescence.
Age
As explained earlier, discrimination can be conceptualized as the combination

of genuine prejudice and the motivation to suppress this prejudice. Therefore
we first considered the development of prejudice and then the development of
moral reasoning in order to construct our hypotheses about the development
of discrimination.
Prejudice among children is conceptualized as a "unified, stable and consis
tent tendency to respond in a negative way toward members of a particular
ethnic group" (Aboud, 1988, p. 6). Several studies have shown that prejudice
is related to age. Prejudice is very high at about 5 years of age. At this age,
thinking is pre-operational (Piaget, 1947, 1970; Thomas & Michel, 1994).
Whereas internal representations and simple logic are already acquired, some
other capabilities are not fully acquired yet, such as conservation skills (the
understanding that the internal state of a material is conserved despite any
external changes) or multiple classification skills (the understanding that
something or someone can be classified according to more than one dimen
sion). Later, during the concrete-operational period, thinking is enriched by
the capacity to resolve concrete problems through interiorized, reversible and
coordinated logical operations. As a result of this change, several new abilities
that potentially reduce prejudice are acquired by the child (Aboud &C Amato,
2001; Doyle & Aboud, 1995). For example, at the concrete-operational
period, multiple classification is positively associated to the memory of coun
ter-stereo typ ic stimuli (Bigler & Liben, 1993). In addition, the acquisition of
conservation skills is related to the flexibility of ethnic attitudes, i.e., the ten
dency to allocate positive and negative attributions to both the ingroup and
the outgroup (Doyle, Beaudet, & Aboud, 1988). To summarize, the develop
mental decline of prejudice in children is probably mainly due to fact that
children become increasingly able to consider members of a social group as
individuals who differ from each other and are similar to individuals in other
social groups (Aboud, 2008). It should be noted that while the age tradition
ally associated with the beginning of the concrete-operational stage is 7 years,
this does not mean that prejudice disappears at age 7. The cognitive abilities
acquired at new cognitive stages are not systematically applied to every aspect
of a child's life, a phenomenon Piaget (1947) called horizontal decalage. This
explains the fact that children reason according to the logic of the concrete
operational stage at age 7 for some tasks, but only when they have reached 8
or 9 for others. In the case of ethnic attitudes, the significant decrease of prej
udice, or the increase of counter-prejudice attitudes, has mainly been observed
220 Archive for the Psychology ofReligion 34 (2012) 215-242
at around 8, or even 9, years of age (Davey, 1983; Doyle & Aboud, 1995;
Powlishta, Serbin, Doyle, & White, 1994). Brown (1995), in a review of the
literature about prejudice in children, concluded that prejudice increases until
about 8 years of age and declines during the pre-adolescent period. During
adolescence, no systematic age-related changes in prejudice are observed, and
ethnic prejudice remains fairly stable (Hoover & Fishbein, 1999).
In addition to the fact that real prejudice fluctuates, the expression of this
prejudice is moderated by motivational forces, such as the moral value of fair
ness (Devine, 1989, 2001; Schulman, 2002). Yet moral reasoning evolves with
age (Killen & Stangor, 2001). Unlike the stage theory of moral development
(Kohlberg, 1969), the "domain" approach (Smetana, 2006) asserts that from
an early age children are already capable of reasoning according to moral con
cepts based on fairness and justice, which they distinguish from personal con
cerns or other concerns related to social-conventional issues such as customs,
culture and contextual rules (Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Smetana, 1981). Children
are therefore capable of reasoning according to concepts of justice. However,
even if the vast majority of children from 4 years of age evaluate straightfor
ward exclusion as wrong using a moral basis (Killen, et al., 2002; Killen &
Stangor, 2001), their evaluation of more ambiguous situations is not the same
at 6 or at 10. For example, from 6 to 10 years of age, the weight of the moral
transgressor's intention increases, while the weight of the consequences of the
moral transgression decreases in children's reasoning about moral events
(Helwig, Hildebrandt, & Turiel, 1995; Tisak & Turiel, 1984). Furthermore,
under 10 years of age, children are expected to be externally motivated to sup
press their ingroup bias, while older children are internally motivated to do so
(Rutland, Cameron, Milne, & McGeorge, 2005). Later, new cognitive skills
allow adolescents to think in a more complex way about the in- and out
groups, which give them the potential for tolerance, in the meaning of the
"recognition of differences between groups along with full acceptance of their
rights" (Robinson, Witenberg, & Sanson, 2001, p. 87). However, concerns of
justice are not necessarily preferred to social-conventional concerns during
adolescence. Indeed, late and early adolescents differ in that late adolescents
are more likely to judge exclusion as acceptable, based on social-conventional
and personal considerations (Killen, et al., 2002).
In view of previous research, we expected that children under 10 years
would discriminate more than pre-adolescents, either because of their higher
level of prejudice or because of their lack of internal motivation to suppress
their ingroup bias. This was expected to be particularly marked in the limited
choice context since, whatever the intention, the consequence is the same:
only one person can be chosen. Late adolescents were expected to discriminate
more than pre-adolescents because, even if they are not more prejudiced than
pre-adolescents, they are more likely to consider exclusion as acceptable. We
had no specific expectation about the difference between children and late
adolescents since, as far as we know, no previous studies have considered such
a wide age range.
Homogeneity of the School
According to Allport (1954), intergroup contact reduces prejudice, provided

that certain conditions are encountered in the contact situation: equal status
between the groups, the support of authorities, common goals and coopera
tion. Reviews of hundreds of studies have tested this contact theory empiri
cally and concluded that contact effectively reduces prejudice (Pettigrew &
Tropp, 2000, 2006). Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) suggest that this theory can
be extended to other social groups than the ethnic groups usually studied.
Tropp and Prenevost (2008) concluded that intergroup contact in a school
context reduces prejudice, particularly if the supportive conditions are avail
able in the school environment. In a religious intergroup context, Verkuyten
and Thijs (2010) showed that religiously heterogeneous classrooms promoted
more positive feelings towards religious outgroups. It has also been shown that
intergroup contact in a heterogeneous school setting increases the probability
of potential intergroup friendships being positively evaluated (McGlothlin &
Killen, 2005), and the likelihood of real intergroup friendships existing
(Edmonds & Killen, 2009). Intergroup friendship involves conditions similar
to those suggested by Allport and is highly associated with a decrease in preju
dice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000). Moreover, pre-adolescents and adolescents
experiencing intergroup contact are more likely to consider exclusion as mor
ally wrong (Crystal, Killen, & Ruck, 2008).
Therefore, we expected that children and adolescents in heterogeneous
schools would discriminate less than children and adolescents in homogeneous
schools, irrespective of whether this was because greater contact reduces preju
dice or because it increases the probability of using moral reasoning about
exclusion.
Group Status
Minority and majority groups show different patterns of attitudes towards the
development of prejudice. Several reviews of the literature (Aboud, 1988;
Aboud & Amato, 2001; Brown, 1995; Ruble, et al., 2004) have summarized
studies showing that, while majority children display clear ingroup favourit
ism from 3 to 7 years of age, minority children are more ambiguous. Although
they often display ingroup favouritism, they also display outgroup favouritism
until the age of 7 years to a greater extent than majority children do. Over
7 years of age, however, minority children's preference patterns are similar to
those of majority children. During adulthood, studies suggest that minority
groups may show outgroup hostility when they feel that the majority group
has rejected them because of prejudice (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey,
1999). Children from the minority religious group may therefore either still
have some outgroup bias (as they tended to before the age of 7), they may
experience the same prejudices as majority children and adolescents, or they
may display outgroup prejudice (as some minority adults do).
The development of moral reasoning seems to be mixed. Children from
minority groups may evaluate social exclusion as less wrong (Crystal, et al.,
2008), or as equally or even more wrong (Enesco, et al., 2008) than majority
children do. It seems that majority and minority students consider social
exclusion as equally wrong, based on concerns about fairness, but that minor
ity children may differ in the way they justify the unfairness of exclusion
(Killen, et al., 2002). Given the contradictory nature of the evidence on preju
dice and moral reasoning in minority children, we did not formulate specific
hypotheses for the present study about whether minority children would
discriminate against the outgroup to the same, a greater, or a lesser extent
than the majority group, or even if they would discriminate against their
own group.
Notes about the Context of the Study
Having introduced the hypotheses about group status, two important points
must be made about the context of this study. The study was conducted in the
French-speaking part of Belgium. The participants were from three religious
groups: Christians, Muslims and Non-Believers. Belgium is now characterized
by secularization, but the Christian tradition is still widespread. Overall it can
be said that in the Belgian context Christians and Non-Believers benefit from
equality of social status and that neither of them can be describe as the major
ity or minority group. On the contrary, the number of Muslims in Belgium is
clearly smaller and their social status is lower. Therefore Christians and Non
Believers were further referred as the majority group, while Muslims were
referred as the minority group. No distinctions were made in our analysis
between Christians and Non-Believers because our intention was to differenti

ate majority and minority religious groups rather than to differentiate religious
groups per se. However, in order to verify that it was correct to place Chris
tians and Non-Believers in the same category, the three religious groups were
entered in the statistical model of this study to see if there was any significant
difference between Christians and Non-Believers.
Another feature of the Belgian context that has to be taken into account in
the analysis of the influence of group status is the fact that Muslims in Bel
gium mostly consist of people who have immigrated since the 1950s, for polit
ical or economic reasons, and their descendents. Even today their average
socio-economic status and educational level is lower than that of indigenous
Belgians. Any differential behaviour expressed by children from the minority
religious group may therefore be partly related to their family's less favourable
sociocultural condition rather than to their religious social status. For exam
ple, the level of education is negatively related to prejudice in adults (Dunn &
McDonald, 2001). This implies that parents from the religious minority group
(who are usually less well-educated than those from the majority group) may
express more negative messages about other religious groups than parents from
the majority group. And this negative parental religious socialization may
influence the religious attitude of the children. In order to take this factor into
account, parents' educational level was measured and used as a control variable
in our analyses. Moreover, parental messages related to religious socialization
were measured.
Parental Socialization
Another possible influence on children's religious discrimination is the way

their parents talk about their own and other religious groups. Allport (1954)
thought that parents were amongst the most important influences on the
development of prejudice, mainly through imitation. However, studies inves
tigating the relationship between parental and child ethnic attitudes have
reached mixed conclusions. While parent-child prejudices are correlated in
adolescence (White & Gleitzman, 2006), small or non-significant correlations
have been found in childhood (Aboud & Doyle, 1996; Branch & Newcombe,
1986; Carlson & Iovini, 1985).
The weakness of the relationship for children (compared to adolescents)
could be due to their cognitive limitations that lead them to misinterpret their
parents' attitudes (Aboud & Doyle, 1996). Few parents explicitly discuss eth
nicity with their children (Aboud & Amato, 2001), and because of this
children may wrongly infer their parents' attitudes and develop attitudes in
accordance with their misinterpretations (Aboud & Doyle, 1996). It has
indeed been shown that children's ethnic attitudes are correlated with their
perception of their parents' ethnic attitudes (Aboud & Doyle, 1996; Carlson &
Iovini, 1985). In families who directly address the matter of ethnicity, how
ever, the correlation between children's and parents' attitudes is higher than in
families which do not discuss the matter (Katz & Kofkin, 1997). This is par
ticularly true when ethnic socialization is overtly negative (Bar-Tal, 1996).
Given that the perception of parental attitudes, rather than the actual atti
tudes themselves, has more influence on children's prejudice, and the fact that
we are concerned in this study with explicit discriminatory behaviours, we
decided to focus on parents' overt messages about religious groups. Three
kinds of religious socialization messages were assessed, adapted from the work
of Hughes and colleagues (Hughes & Johnson, 2001; Hughes, et al., 2006) on
ethnic socialization: (a) Religious socialization, or teaching about the family's
religion; (b) Pluralism, or insistence on diversity and awareness of other reli
gious groups; and (c) Promotion of mistrust, or emphasizing wariness and dis
trust other religious groups. More precisely, it was expected that parents'
pluralist messages would be negatively related to their children's discrimina
tory behaviour, while parental promotion of mistrust would be positively
related to children's discriminatory behaviour. Interaction with age was also
expected in that young children's discriminative behaviour was expected to be
less related to their parents' religious messages than was discriminative adoles
cent behaviour.
Hypotheses
The factors which we hypothesized as influencing discriminative behaviour

based on religion were age, religious heterogeneity of the school, religious
group's status in society, and parental religious socialization. It was expected
that: (a) young children would discriminate more than pre-adolescents, espe
cially in the limited-choice context, and that adolescents would discriminate
more than pre-adolescents; (b) children from religiously homogeneous schools
would discriminate more than those from religiously heterogeneous schools;
(c) children from the religious minority group would behave differently from
children from the religious majority group (although we did not predict how
this difference would be expressed); and (d) parents' religious socialization
messages would influence their children's discriminatory behaviour, especially
in adolescence.
Method
Participants and Procedure
Our sample was composed of 297 children and adolescents (55.6% female),
aged from 6 to 18 years, with an average of 25 individuals per grade. They
were attending either religiously homogeneous schools (i.e., two schools with
more than 80% (n = 102) from the majority groups, and four schools with
more that 80% (n = 90) from the minority group) or heterogeneous schools
(i.e., three schools with mixed populations of Christians (n = 29), Muslims
(n - 39), and Non-Believers (n = 37)). All belonged to the French-speaking
community of Belgium. Parental consent was secured in advance of all testing
(±25% acceptation). Questionnaires were sent to these parents to assess their
religious socialization and educational levels. In order to retain the maximum
number of participants in our sample, the questionnaires were available in
Turkish and Arabic as well as in French.
Participants were individually met to assess their religious awareness and
religious discriminatory behaviours. They were told that there were no correct
answers, that everything said in the room was confidential, and that the inter
est was to understand how they had really made their choice, and not to hear
them say what they thought they ought to say.
We then checked that participants were aware of religious social categories.
Participants were asked to recognize as many religions as possible from cards
representing characters of the same gender as the participant, from five "reli
gious" groups: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Non-Believers.
Drawings, rather than photographs, were used so as to avoid the participants
being influenced by other features such as attractiveness or ethnicity. The char
acters were praying in different ways or wearing different religious symbols (or
no symbol for the Non-Believers). If the participants could not recognize the
religion, they were asked what religions they knew and shown cards represent
ing those religions. The aim was not to assess participants' knowledge of reli
gious symbols but rather to have a material way of assessing religious
discrimination. Only spontaneously recognized or recalled religious groups
(number x) were used in the rest of the experiment. The participants were then
asked to pick the character which they most resembled, as a way of specifying
their religious identification. Awareness of religious categorization was related
to age, diversity of the school and group status. A detailed report of the results
is beyond the scope of this article but can be found elsewhere (van der Straten
Waillet & Roskam, 2012).
Measures
Religious Discrimination
The participants were presented with x cards (x being the number of religious
groups they had previously correctly identified) representing x characters (one
character by religion/conviction), and were asked to complete two tasks. The
first task represented a limited-choice context and the second task represented
a large-choice context.
Limited-choice context. In the limited-choice context, the instruction was:

"Imagine you can choose who to sit with in class. Pick out the person you
would choose". Having done this, they were asked "How did you make your
choice?". The answers were coded as followed: (a) non-discrimination-, choos
ing by pure chance (e.g., with eyes closed), refusing to choose because "reli
gious group is not a criterion for choosing / it is unfair / religion does not
make a friend or an enemy" or choosing an outgroup character "because it is
interesting to find out about other people"; (b) outgroup discrimination-, choos
ing a character of the same religion because it is preferred or because the others
are disliked; and (c) ingroup discrimination-, choosing an outgroup character
because it is preferred or the ingroup is disliked.
Large-choice context. In the large-choice context, each religious group was rep
resented by three people (represented by three identical drawings). The num
ber of cards presented to the participants was therefore x * 3 and the whole
group of cards was described as "your new classmates you don't know yet". The
children aged 6-11 were then given x fake candies and asked to "Pretend you
have x candies to give to them. Show me who you would give them to", where
x was the number of religious groups represented. The adolescents aged 12-18
were told "You are organizing a party and you can invite x people. Pick out
who you want to invite. Do it as you would in real life, not how you think you
should do it". The participants had to answer with an action (i.e., giving fake
candies to the characters or picking out the characters they invited) rather
than answering orally. Afterwards, they were asked to explain how they had
made their choice. The answers were coded as followed: (a) non-discrimination:
choosing by pure chance, refusing to choose between cards because "religious
group is not a criteria helping to choosing / it is unfair / religion does not make
a friend or an enemy" or choosing one character from each religious group;
(b) outgroup discrimination-, not giving any candy to / not inviting any
Archive for the Psychology ofReligion 34 (2012) 215-242 227
character from one (or more) religious outgroup(s); and (c) ingroup discrimi
nation: not giving any candy to / not inviting any character from the religious
ingroup.
Combination of answers. Finally, the answers in the limited- and large-choice

contexts were assembled and the religious discrimination variable was coded
into four categories: 1. Non-Discrimination (n = 118) for participants who
made non-discriminative choices in both contexts; 2. Discrimination in a lim
ited-choice context only (n = 86) for participants who made discriminative
choices in the limited-choice context but a non-discriminative choice in a
large-choice context where it was clearly possible to be fair; 3. Discrimination
in a large-choice context (n = 70) for participants who made discriminative
choices in a large-choice context, irrespective of their decision in the limited
choice context (because a non-discriminatory choice in the limited-choice
context was considered to be influenced by social desirability); 4. Ingroup dis
crimination (n = 23) for participants who expressed discrimination against
their own ingroup, either in the limited- or the large-choice context (distin
guishing the contexts would have made this group too small occurrences to
draw any statistical conclusions).
Parents' Religious Socialization Messages
The instrument used to measure parents' religious socialization messages was

inspired by the Parents' Racial Socialization Practices (Hughes & Johnson,
2001). This was modified to adapt it to the religious context and to apply to
individuals from the majority group (the original measure assessed the prac
tices of parents from the minority group) (Hughes, et al., 2006). The items of
the religious socialization subscale were adapted such as they could make sense
for the Non-Believers. Like the original, the items in our measure focused on
parents' explicit socialization practices. Parents were asked how often they
communicated specific religious socialization messages to their child on a 1-5
scale. Construct validity was evaluated by a maximum likelihood factor analy
sis with varimax rotation (N = 521). Only items loading above .50 on one
factor and under .30 on the other factors were retained for the subscales. Nine
items were kept out of the eighteen presented. A three-factor structure emerged,
which explained 56.3% of variance. The first factor, Promotion of Mistrust,
explained 20.69% of the variance with four items ('We tell our child that
people from other religions/convictions are different from us'; 'We tell our
child that people from other religions/convictions behave badly'; 'We tell our
child to stick with people from our religion/conviction; 'We tell our child to
trust only people from our religion/conviction ; a = .76). The second factor,
Religious Socialization, explained 18.67% of variance with two items
('We talk about the God of our religion to our child/We talk about the fact
that we don't believe to our child'; 'We talk about the sacred texts of our reli
gion to our child / We talk about the reasons why we don't believe to our
child'; a = .89).2 The third factor, Pluralism, explained 17.03% of variance
with three items ('We encourage our children to discover the existence of other
religions'; 'We talk about the holy texts of other religions to our child'; 'We
talk about the rituals of other religions to our child'; a = .75).
Parents Educational Level
The educational level of the parents was assessed via questionnaires. Parents
were asked to identify the highest educational level achieved by either parent:
less than a high school diploma (32%), high school diploma (22.9%), or col
lege degree and beyond (43.8%). About 1.3% of the data was missing.
Results
Preliminary Analysis
The variables of interest in this study were assessed in real-world conditions

rather than in a laboratory. Some of the variables were correlated. To take this
into account, we analyzed the links that could have affected our interpreta
tions and conclusions. We found that parents' messages of mistrust were sig
nificantly more frequent for young people attending homogeneous schools
(M = 1.44, SD = .77) than for those at heterogeneous schools (M = 1.24,
SD = .39), (r[293.28] = 2.86, p > .01). However there were no significant dif
ferences between parents' religious socialization or pluralist messages in the
two types of school. Moreover, parents' educational level was significantly
related to group: young people from the majority group had better educated
parents {M = 3.53, SD = .81) than those from the minority group (M = 2.36,
21 The construct validity of the scale had previously been evaluated separately for Believers and
Non-Believers in order to check that the items of the subscale 'socialization' loaded on one factor
and only on this factor, for the Believer sample and for the Non-Believer sample. It was the
case.
SD = .87), (4291] = 11.79, p < .001). The frequency of messages promoting

mistrust (but not religious socialization or pluralism) was significantly related
to parents' educational level (F[2, 289] = 9.05, p < .001). According to Bon
ferroni'spost-hoc test, parents who had not attained a secondary school diploma
expressed significantly more messages promoting mistrust (M = 1.56,
SD = .85) than those whose had graduated from college (M = 1.2, SD = .33),
(p < .001). However there were no significant differences between parents with
a high school diploma (M = 1.37, SD = .65) and those with either higher or
lower educational qualifications. These links between variables are discussed
further below.
Statistical Procedures
Multinomial logistic regression analyses were carried out to compare the out
come categories. The baseline category for the dependent variable (religious
discrimination) was taken to be the modal one (i.e., non-discrimination). The
results of the multinomial logistic regression indicate, inter alia, the odds ratio
(OR: the proportionate change in the odds). This is an indicator of the change
in the likelihood that participants exhibit a particular type of discrimination
(i.e., discrimination in a limited-choice context, discrimination in a large
choice context, and ingroup discrimination) rather than not discriminating,
when there is a unit change in the independent variable.
The independent variables considered here were categorical (age, homoge
neity of the school, status) and some were continuous (parents' religious
socialization subscales). The participants' age was trichotomized as follows,
according to the theoretical considerations discussed above: late childhood
(6-9 years old, n = 50), pre-adolescence (10-13 years old, n = 113) and adoles
cence (14-18 years old, n = 134).
In this Results section, we sometimes use the term 'predictor' for the inde
pendent variables, since they are used statistically as predictors. However in
our conclusions we emphasize that the relationships between religious dis
crimination and the other factors we have studied here are purely correlative
and that their predictive status has still to be explored.
Analysis
Fig. 1 illustrates the percentages of children, pre-adolescents and adolescents

behaving in a discriminative and non-discriminative way, and allows seeing
that the modal behaviour in childhood is discrimination in the limited
choice context, while the modal choice in pre-adolescence and adolescence is
Religious discrimination
rnDiscr. in a large
choice context
en Disc in a limited
choice context only
□ Non-discrimination
"i+++++i+4+i+j+i.H 13 Ingroup discrimination
[+++++++++++++++J)
lTiTltj.TltiTlTiTj
+&«4+i+;+;+Ji
+i+K+++i+++J+J"
e+iH&i+i+iH&S +;+;++w+v
+t+t+t+t+t+t+t«
^K+i+i+i+;+?
'l'l WW
++ + + + + ■+-4
+++++++
i->$+>8+++?
iTjTjTjTjTjTjTvr. +^gSS±SSi
++++ + ++ 1
-r,-rijrr.T.TiTvi
SHfiSBffiK&J r+Tf+f+x+x+f+x*
+++++++ 4
f+p&+^ +++++++
lTj7xTi.Ti.TiTxTi
T4-TiTjTiTiTV+T4?
ei+l+S+j+i+i
E+>i+X+i+;+?
+J+I+j+i+;+J?+5
rnTrnT^T^TjTjTj
+I+I+I+I+I+++I+5
pEMfflSSS
QTjTj?jTj?jTjT+'
K+&+++K4+5
+J+i+j+;+i+5?+Jt
j-Wimuw.
late childhood preadolescence adolescence

Age range
Fig. 1. Percentages of children, pre-adolescents and adolescents displaying

each type of religious discrimination.
non-discrimination. The percentage of participants discriminating in the

large-choice context went from 20% to 30% of participants through all age
ranges. The percentage of participants displaying ingroup discrimination
turned around 10%, which is marginal.
The model was tested using a stepwise method. Several non-significant pre
dictors were dropped from the model: parental educational level, gender and
religious group (control variables), religious socialization subscale, pluralism
subscale, and the three interactions between age and the three subscales of the
parents' religious socialization scale.
The remaining variables (age, homogeneity of the school, group status, and
promotion of mistrust) were all significant predictors of religious discrimina
tion (x2 [15, N = 297] = 76.45, p < .001). The model had a good pseudo-Ä2
(Nagelkerke's R2n= .25), and the classification table indicated that it correctly
predicted the outcome in 51% of cases. The influences of every factor are
detailed in Table 1 for categorical factors and in Table 2 for continuous ones.
N. van der Straten WailLet et al. /
Archive for the Psychology ofReligion 34 (2012) 215-242 231
Results in Tables 1 and 2 indicate the proportionate change in odds or Odds

Ratio (OR), i.e., the change in odds that participants discriminate (i.e., dis
crimination in a limited-choice context, discrimination in a large-choice con
text, and ingroup discrimination) rather than they do not discriminate,
compared to the reference category of a categorical factor or resulting from a
unit change in a continuous factor. Results in Table 1 should be interpreted as
Table 1. The Odds Ratio for Choosing One of the Three Discriminative
Behaviors Rather than Non-discriminative Behavior for Each Category of the
Predictor, Compared to the Reference Category {OR = 1.00)
Discrimination
Limited-choice Large-choiceIngroup
context context
Age (years)
Late childhood (6—9) 8.28*** 5.19** 1.58
Pre-adolescence (10-13) 1.00 1.00 1.00
Adolescence (14-18) .88 1.87 1.19

Homogeneity of the school
Homogeneous 1.75 2.67** .58
Heterogeneous 1.00 1.00 1.00
Group status
Minority group 1.09 1.29 5.30***
Majority group 1.00 1.00 1.00
Note: *p< .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
Table 2. The Odds Ratio for Choosing One of the Three Discriminative
Behaviors Rather than Non-discriminative Behavior Resulting from a Unit
Change in the Predictor
Discrimination
Limited-choice Large-choice Ingroup

context context
Parents' religious
socialization
Mistrust messages .95 2.09** 1.26
Note: *p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
follows: children from 6 to 9 years of age are respectively 8.28 times and 5.19
times more likely to discriminate in a limited-choice context or to discrimi
nate in a large-choice context than to not discriminate, compared to pre
adolescents from 10 to 13 years of age. Adolescents from 14 to 18 years of age
do not behave significantly differently than pre-adolescents. Ingroup discrimi
nation does not seem to be related to age. Considering the results about the
school, the odds for someone from a homogeneous school to discriminate in
a large-choice context rather than to not discriminate are 2.67 times higher
than for someone from a heterogeneous school. Finally, children from minor
ity group are 5.3 times more likely to discriminate at the expense of their own
ingroup rather than not discriminate compared to children from a majority
group. Considering continuous variables, the odds of discriminating in a
large-choice context rather than not discriminating are 2.09 times greater as
the score of the subscale Promotion of mistrust increases of one unit.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to explore whether the developmental and contex
tual factors which have been shown to be related to ethnic attitudes are also
related to religious attitudes, and more precisely, to religious discrimination.
Given the lack of research on religious discrimination in children and adoles
cents, our hypotheses were mainly derived from the literature on ethnic preju
dice, and moral reasoning on ethnic exclusion in children. This focus on
prejudice and moral reasoning was relevant, in that prejudice can be concep
tualized as a result of two factors: automatically activated prejudice, and the
desire to reduce the expression of this prejudice (Devine, et al., 2000). Our
data supported most of our hypotheses, in that age, homogeneity of the school,
group status, and parents' religious socialization practices were related to reli
gious discriminative behaviour in children and adolescents from 6 to 18 years
of age.
As expected, children under 10 years of age discriminated significantly more
than pre-adolescents. No differences were found, however, between the behav
iour of pre-adolescents and adolescents. While discrimination in a limited
choice context is most frequent in childhood, non-discrimination prevails in
pre-adolescence and adolescence. This observation is consistent with the fact
that children acquire abilities that potentially reduce prejudice (Aboud &
Amato, 2001; Doyle & Aboud, 1995) and that prejudice continues to decline
until the pre-adolescent period (Brown, 1995). Besides, children 10 years of

age are internally motivated to suppress their ingroup bias (Rutland, et ah,
2005) and are better than younger children at evaluating the relationship
between an actor's intention and the consequences of his or her action (Helwig,
et ah, 1995; Tisak &Turiel, 1984). This might explain why they discriminate
less in the limited-choice context. We expected late adolescents to discriminate
more than pre-adolescents since they are more likely to justify exclusion based
on social-conventional and personal consideration (Killen, et al., 2002). How
ever, our results did not support this hypothesis and this question should be
explored further in the future.
Religious discrimination was not only related to age. This is consistent with
previous findings that several external factors influence the development of
prejudice and discrimination (Aboud, 2005; Bar-Tal, 1997; Bigler & Liben,
2007; Nesdale, 2004). Although this study could not test all the factors
potentially playing a role in the development of religious discrimination, some
of them were considered and indeed found to be related to religious discrimi
nation. Specifically, these were the homogeneity of the school, whether
the child came from the minority or majority group, and parents' religious
socialization.
First, as expected, participants attending heterogeneous schools discrimi

nated less than those attending homogeneous schools. This is in line with
studies of intergroup ethnic discrimination, which have shown that heteroge
neous schooling reduces prejudice (Tropp & Prenovost, 2008). This could be
due to the fact that heterogeneous schools increase the likelihood of inter
group friendship (Edmonds & Killen, 2009), which is a particularly good
intergroup contact situation for reducing prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000).
In addition, Verkuyten and Thijs (2010) showed that increased opportunities
for intergroup religious contact in school were related to more positive feelings
about other religious groups. Moreover, it has been shown that pre-adolescents
and adolescents experiencing intergroup ethnic contact are more likely to
evaluate exclusion situations as wrong, based on moral concerns (Crystal,
et ah, 2008). Therefore, the fact that the heterogeneity of the school is linked
to a reduction in religious discrimination makes sense and suggests that the
processes prevailing in intergroup religious relations are similar to those at
work in intergroup ethnic relations.
The only significant effect of group status on religious discrimination
was that participants from the minority group were more prone to discrimi
nate against their own group than participants from the majority group. This
supports earlier findings that children from the minority group more often
show outgroup favouritism than children from the majority group (although
this difference is usually observed between 3 and 7 years of age, with older
children from both groups showing similar patterns) (Aboud, 1988; Aboud &
Amato, 2001; Brown, 1995; Ruble, et al., 2004). Another surprising result is
that group status was not related to the likelihood of expressing religious dis
crimination. It was indeed expected since adult members of minority groups
have been found to express outgroup hostility when behaviours of rejection
expressed by the majority group are attributed to prejudice (Branscombe,
et al., 1999). It should be noted that this study considered Non-Believers and
Christians as being from the majority group, while Muslims were considered
as the minority group. We believe that this grouping made sense both concep
tually and empirically. First, considering the first two groups as the majority
group is due to the specific features of the Belgian context, as detailed above.
Second, the statistical analysis took account of religious groups separately in
the model, as a control variable, and there was no difference between Non
Believers and Christians.
Parents' socialization messages, and more precisely the frequency of explicit
messages emphasizing wariness and distrust of other religious groups (promo
tion of mistrust messages), were positively related to the likelihood of dis
crimination in a large-choice context. This link between explicit parental
messages and children's behaviour supports the idea that, although most stud
ies show that parent-child attitudes are generally weakly related or even unre
lated, parents' explicit socialization about intergroup relations is better
correlated with children's attitudes than parents' actual intergroup attitudes
(Aboud, 2008). No relation was found, however, between discrimination and
parents' religious socialization (i.e., teaching about their own religion) or plu
ralism (i.e., promoting diversity and awareness of other religious groups). This
pattern of relationships makes sense in that the attitudes of parents and chil
dren have previously been shown to be more strongly related when ethnic
socialization is overtly negative (Bar-Tal, 1996). None of the interactional
effect between age and parent socialization subscales was found to be signifi
cant. An interaction was expected because previous studies generally found
stronger links between adolescents' intergroup attitudes and their parents' atti
tudes than between children's intergroup attitudes and their parents' attitudes,
a difference that could be related to children's cognitive limitations (Aboud &
Doyle, 1996). We should, however, remain cautious about results in this study
concerning parental socialization. Even if the instrument was built in order to
measure parents' explicit messages, it relied on a self-reporting measure that is
not exempt from social desirability. This socialization scale should be further
validated by measuring the correlation with actual parent behaviours.
The present study is exploratory; it should be followed up by research focus
ing on the exact contribution of the various factors, detailing the implications
of prejudice and moral reasoning, and investigating the differences between
explicit and implicit processes. It is particularly important to determine
whether the links between different factors, and those between the factors and
religious discrimination, are correlative or predictive. For example, does the
heterogeneity of the school cause a diminution of religious discrimination, or
is the association between these variables due to a third factor? Given that
parents' religious socialization messages are related to the homogeneity of the
school, it is quite likely that more pluralist parents have chosen heterogeneous
school while parents promoting mistrust have chosen homogeneous schools.
Therefore the relation between the homogeneity of the school and religious
discrimination could be due to parents' characteristics.
Another link that needs further exploration is that between religious dis
crimination and group status. As mentioned above, children from the majority
group have parents with higher average educational qualifications than chil
dren from the minority group. The discrimination against their ingroup
expressed by some participants from the minority group may therefore be due
to the fact that they view members of the majority group as enjoying better
socio-economic conditions, rather than being based on religion. Parental edu
cational level is negatively related to the frequency of messages promoting
mistrust, which is consistent with the fact that education is negatively related
to prejudice (Dunn & McDonald, 2001). Since group status is related to
parental education, children from the minority group may not experience the
same religious socialization as children from the majority group.
Some limitations to this study should be noted. First, since very few studies
had addressed the issue of religious intergroup relations, a theoretical basis had
to be chosen in order to construct our hypothesis. The decision was made to
rely on the comparison with ethnic intergroup relations since ethnic and reli
gious social identities are closely related, in that they both include abstract
features (like customs, values, shared meaning, etc.). However, the specificity
of religious identity is that it is also (but not entirely) a matter of choice (Ben
nett, 2011; Chaudhury & Miller, 2008; Sani & Bennett, 2004). While this
study underlines the commonalities between religious and ethnic intergroup
relations, further studies should explore whether religious and ethnic inter
group relations are differentiated by specific features. Next, the influence of
other micro- and macro-level factors such as the media, peers or societal
236 Archive for the Psychology of Religion 3d (2012) 215-242
representations should be further explored in a fuller study of intergroup rela

tions among young people (Bar-Tal, 1997; Barrett & Davis, 2008; Bigler &
Liben, 2007). Peer influence in particular should be further analyzed since
peers form a primarily psychologically significant group for modern children
in developed societies (Harris, 2011). While peer influence is a variable that is
not easy to measure, a further study should measure both parental and peer
influence in order to compare their relative influence. Finally, this study and
its conclusions rely on a dual-factor model of prejudice, according to which
the expression of prejudice results from the interaction of emotional prejudice
and a wish to suppress this expression (Devine, et al., 2000). However, we
made no attempt in our methodology to distinguish the origins of this moti
vation, which can be internal (self-imposed, personal) and/or external (other
imposed, normative) (Plant & Devine, 1998). This is not a big problem, since
our aim was to observe whether children and adolescents applied the moral
norm according to which no one should be treated differently because of their
membership of a social category. Participants' behaviour could have been due
either to their emotional prejudice, or to their internal or even external moti
vation. Despite this, our measure was interesting because, even if the suppres
sion of prejudice was motivated by social pressure, this may in the long run
become an internal motivation, as individuals tend to internalize the values
and norms of the groups with which they identify (Crandall, Eshleman, &
O'Brien, 2002).
Conclusions
To the best of our knowledge, no previous work has specifically focused on

religious discrimination from childhood to adulthood and explored its links
with developmental and contextual factors. More precisely, our results show
that discriminatory behaviour in a limited-choice context is more frequent
during childhood than during pre-adolescence and adolescence, and that reli
gious discrimination in a large-choice context is more common in homoge
neous schools and more likely when parents frequently express messages
promoting mistrust of other religious groups. In addition, participants from
the minority group are more likely than those from the majority group to
discriminate against their own ingroup.
Further research is needed to build a full model of the development of reli
gious discrimination. However, we have taken a significant first step, suggesting
that it makes sense to utilize the extensive literature on ethnic intergroup atti
tudes and the reduction of ethnic bias to explore how intervention programs
intended to increase religious tolerance—defined as the recognition that mem
bers of other religious groups are different from me, but that they should be
included within the boundaries in which moral values, rules, and the consid
erations of fairness apply—can best be designed and implemented.
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Religious Discrimination in Childhood and Adolescence

Author(s): Nastasya van der Straten Waillet and Isabelle Roskam

Religious Discrimination in Childhood

Nastasya van der Straten Waillet*1 and Isabelle Roskam"

Received: 19 January 2012; revised: 23 May 2012; accepted: 2 June 2012

Although not comparable to the wide and extensive research on intergroup

) Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/15736121-12341240

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 217

Henning, 2008). Discriminative behaviour is a "differential behaviour directed

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 219

As explained earlier, discrimination can be conceptualized as the combination

Homogeneity of the School

According to Allport (1954), intergroup contact reduces prejudice, provided

Notes about the Context of the Study

between Christians and Non-Believers because our intention was to differenti

Another possible influence on children's religious discrimination is the way

The factors which we hypothesized as influencing discriminative behaviour

Participants and Procedure

Limited-choice context. In the limited-choice context, the instruction was:

Archive for the Psychology ofReligion 34 (2012) 215-242 227

Combination of answers. Finally, the answers in the limited- and large-choice

Parents' Religious Socialization Messages

The instrument used to measure parents' religious socialization messages was

Parents Educational Level

The variables of interest in this study were assessed in real-world conditions

SD = .87), (4291] = 11.79, p < .001). The frequency of messages promoting

Fig. 1 illustrates the percentages of children, pre-adolescents and adolescents

late childhood preadolescence adolescence

Fig. 1. Percentages of children, pre-adolescents and adolescents displaying

non-discrimination. The percentage of participants discriminating in the

Archive for the Psychology ofReligion 34 (2012) 215-242 231

Results in Tables 1 and 2 indicate the proportionate change in odds or Odds

Adolescence (14-18) .88 1.87 1.19

Note: *p< .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

Limited-choice Large-choice Ingroup

Note: *p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 233

until the pre-adolescent period (Brown, 1995). Besides, children 10 years of

First, as expected, participants attending heterogeneous schools discrimi

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 235

representations should be further explored in a fuller study of intergroup rela

To the best of our knowledge, no previous work has specifically focused on

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 237

Aboud, F. E. (1988). Children and prejudice. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Aboud, F. E. (2005). The development of prejudice in childhood and adolescence. In J. F. Dovi

Aboud, F. E. (2008). A social-cognitive developmental theory of prejudice. In S. M. Quintana &

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Davey, A. G. (1983). Learning to be prejudiced: Growing up in mutti-ethnic Britain. London:

Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske &

Herriot, R (2007). Religious fundamentalism and social identity. Hove: Routledge.

Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence : the cognitive-developmental approach to socializa

McGlothlin, H„ & Killen, M. (2005). Children's perceptions of intergroup and intragroup

Modood, X, & Ahmad, F. (2007). British Muslim perspectives on multiculturalism. Theory,

Nesdale, D. (2001). The development of prejudice in children. In M. Augoustinos & K. Reyn

Piaget, J. (1947). La psychologie de l'intelligence. Oxford England: Armand Colin.

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 34 (2012) 215-242 241

Quintana, S. M. (1998). Children's developmental understanding of ethnicity and race. Applied

Smetana, J. G. (2006). Social-cognitive domain theory: consistencies and variations in children's

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. W.

Verkuyten, M. (2008). Perceived discrimination, ethnic minority identity, and self-esteem. In

White, F. A., & Gleitzman, M. (2006). An examination of family socialisation processes as

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Note: p< .05; p < .01; p < .001.

Note: p < .05; p < .01; p < .001.