آزمون تاثیر حجاب اسلامی بر نگرش بین گروهی و جهت گیری های نقل و انتقال فرهنگ جامعه میزبان نسبت به مسلمانان عرب

Two studies were conducted to examine the impact of the Islamic veil on ethnic attitudes and acculturation orientations toward Arab Muslims. Using computer-generated photos, study 1 investigated Quebec Francophone (N = 76) attitudes toward the Islamic veil. Results revealed that undergraduates had the least favorable attitudes toward a woman wearing a niqab followed by one wearing the hijab, while favorable attitudes were held toward a woman dressed in western clothing. In Study 2, the same female experimenter distributed survey questionnaires to Quebec Francophone undergraduates in the following experimental conditions: (1) control condition, experimenter wearing western clothing with Francophone name (n = 86); (2) experimenter with an Arab Muslim name wearing western clothing (n = 83); (3) experimenter wearing a hijab with an Arab Muslim name (n = 81); and (4) experimenter wearing a niqab with an Arab Muslim name (n = 95). Attitudes toward Arab Muslims were affected by the dress code of the experimenter, but not in the expected direction. Participants expressed more favorable attitudes toward Arab Muslims in the niqab condition than in the control condition, a result partially accounted by a counterstereotype effect. Results showed that the four experimental conditions did not affect endorsement of five out of six acculturation orientations toward Arab Muslims suggesting the stability of host community acculturation orientations under religious prime manipulations.

Contrary to our first hypothesis, Study 2 results showed that Quebec Francophone attitudes toward a face-to-face Muslim experimenter wearing either a hijab or a niqab were as favorable as those held toward the experimenter wearing western clothing in the control and Arab conditions. Participants rated the experimenter in their classroom to be equally competent, intelligent, and trustworthy regardless of the ethnic/religious conditions. Emotional feelings aroused by the presence of the experimenter were also similar regardless of the experimental conditions. In contrast, results obtained in Study 1 showed that Quebec Francophones endorsed less positive ratings of women wearing the hijab and especially the niqab relative to the woman dressed in western clothing. These results suggest that when individuals are asked to rate a depersonalized representative of a devalued religious outgroup (photos), their explicitly negative attitudes toward this group can be quite concordant with prejudices held against such groups within the community, in public opinion polls, and the media. However, these explicit negative attitudes are attenuated when respondents anonymously rate an actual individual member of the devalued religious outgroup who is in their physical presence within the classroom (Study 2). As was shown in both Studies 1 and 2, Quebec Francophones have little daily contact with women who wear the Islamic veil. It is thus likely that participants relied on their prejudices to rate photos of the fictitious veiled women. However, when rating an actual veiled experimenter, respondents used individualizing information within the classroom setting rather than prevailing prejudices against veiled women. The female experimenter wearing the hijab and the niqab did not prime a strong feeling of symbolic threat for participants. Quebec Francophones felt as unafraid and unthreatened in the presence of the experimenter wearing the niqab as they did in the presence of the experimenter dressed in western clothing portrayed as a Quebec Francophone. Likewise, Quebec Francophones felt as culturally, linguistically, politically, and economically secure in the presence of the experimenter regardless of the ethnic/religious experimental manipulations. Interestingly, undergraduates felt their identity as Quebec Francophones was even less threatened by Arab Muslims in the niqab condition than in the control and Arab conditions. Taken together these results suggest that the hijab and niqab dress code manipulation did not arouse a feeling of threat or cultural insecurity. Study 2 results replicated previous acculturation studies: Integrationism and Individualism were the preferred acculturation orientations of undergraduates, whereas Assimilationism and Exclusionism were the least preferred orientations (Bourhis et al., 2010 and Bourhis et al., 2009). Endorsement of Segregationism was stronger than results obtained with Quebec Francophones in earlier studies (Bourhis et al., 2008, Montreuil and Bourhis, 2001 and Montreuil and Bourhis, 2004). Stronger endorsement of Segregationism reflects increasingly intolerant views of Arab Muslim religious differences in Quebec society as shown in public opinion surveys and as portrayed in the mass media during the last decade. Hypothesis 3 proposed that acculturation orientations toward Arab Muslims would be more rejecting in the hijab and niqab conditions than in the control and Arab conditions. Disconfirming this expectation, results showed that our ethnic/religious prime manipulations did not affect the endorsement of acculturation orientations toward Arab Muslims. Despite our effective hijab and niqab religious dress code manipulations, both welcoming and unwelcoming acculturation orientations toward Arab Muslims remained stable. One exception to this pattern emerged in the case of Individualism which was more strongly endorsed in the niqab condition than in the hijab, Arab, and control conditions. Given the uniquely distinguishing features of the niqab dress code, respondents in this condition may have been made more attuned to the value of endorsing individualism in the plural organizational setting of the university. Given that respondents did not feel more threatened by the presence of the experimenter in the veiled conditions than in the control condition, it is difficult to suggest that acculturation orientations are more stable because they are more deeply embedded cognitively and emotionally than ethnic attitudes. Future longitudinal studies of host majority acculturation orientations toward devalued groups are needed to address this issue. In Study 2, attitudes toward Arab Muslim immigrants were affected by the ethnic/religious background of the experimenter, but not in the expected direction proposed in hypothesis 2. Attitudes toward Arab Muslims were least favorable in the control and the hijab conditions while they were only somewhat negative in the Arab and niqab conditions. Quebec Francophones had less favorable attitudes toward and wanted less social proximity with Arab Muslims in the control intragroup condition with the ingroup experimenter depicted as a French Canadian and dressed in western clothing than in the explicit intergroup condition with the outgroup experimenter dressed with the niqab with an Arab name. Negative attitudes toward Arab Muslims obtained in the intragroup control condition in Study 2 are concordant with negative attitudes held against Arab Muslims obtained in Study 1, also conducted in an intragroup situation with an ingroup Quebec Francophone experimenter. Thus, the use of a French Canadian experimenter in Study 1 and in the control condition of Study 2 created an intragroup experimental environment in which Quebec Francophones could candidly express negative attitudes against Arab Muslims, reflecting negative attitudes against this outgroup obtained in public opinion polls in Quebec. In Study 2, why were attitudes toward Arab Muslims less negative in the niqab condition than in the control condition? Some alternative explanations need to be considered. First, the niqab condition fostered a salient intergroup contact situation which may have made explicitly expressed negative attitudes toward Arab Muslims less socially desirable compared to the control condition conducted by the ingroup French Canadian experimenter. However, as results in Study 2 revealed, the social desirability scale results were not significantly different across the dress code conditions. Thus, social desirability considerations do not help account for the above results. In the niqab condition, correlations between social desirability, attitudes toward Arab Muslims, and desire for social proximity with Arab Muslims were negative. The more Quebec Francophones were concerned with social desirability, the less favorably they rated Arab Muslims (r(342) = −.21, p = .045) and the less they wanted proximal relations with Arab Muslims (r(342) = −.25, p = .017). These results suggest that when primed with the experimenter wearing the religiously contentious niqab, Quebec Francophones may consider the endorsement of negative attitudes toward Arab Muslims as the socially desirable norm. It is noteworthy that Study 2 was conducted while the issue of Muslim women wearing the niqab in public settings had reached peak antipathy in public opinion polls with Quebec Francophones while the French media demonized the religious activities of Arab Muslims in the province. Second, could the less negative ratings of Arab Muslims obtained in the niqab condition than in the control condition obtained in Study 2 reflect an experimenter counterstereotype effect (Richeson & Ambady, 2003)? Study 1 showed that Francophone undergraduates perceived the woman wearing the niqab as less intelligent, competent, trustworthy, and friendly than the woman portrayed in the western dress code. In Study 2, the female experimenter in each experimental condition was a woman who spoke fluent French, who was highly educated at the Masters level, and was confident and competent as she conducted the survey study on her own in University classrooms. The discrepancy between the prevailing negative image of women wearing the niqab and the real-life presence of a competent and autonomous experimenter wearing the niqab may have fostered a counterstereotype effect benefitting the experimenter in the niqab condition. For Quebec Francophones, this ‘niqab effect’ may have generalized to less negative ratings of Arab Muslims as an outgroup in the province. This ‘niqab effect’ can be compared to results of an American study which showed that being exposed to counterstereotypic positive Black individuals produced weaker automatic negativity toward Blacks relative to Whites, compared to participants who had been exposed only to negatively stereotypic group members (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001; see also, Lowery, Hardin, & Sinclair, 2001). In line with this possible counterstereotype effect, t-tests1 comparing attitudes of participants in Study 1 toward the woman wearing the niqab in the photo and participant attitudes in Study 2 toward the experimenter wearing the niqab revealed the following: undergraduates rated the experimenter as more competent, attractive, trustworthy, intelligent, and less threatening in Study 2 than the woman wearing the niqab in Study 1. Though these results provide some support for a counterstereotype interpretation, future studies could further explore the effect by systematically varying the role status of the niqab experimenter (Richeson & Ambady, 2003). Our two studies show that Quebec Francophones have few face-to-face contacts with Arab Muslims. Our results suggest that by allowing majority group members to have direct interpersonal contact with a devalued minority holding a counterstereotypical position of authority, may be a first step toward changing negative attitudes toward such devalued minorities. Allowing competent Arab Muslim women who wear the niqab to hold more valued role positions could produce the counterstereotype effect needed to improve general attitudes toward disparaged Arab Muslims. However, as found in Study 1 and in recent Quebec public opinion polls there is a growing backlash against Arab Muslims and especially veiled women using the niqab. For security, secular, gender, and symbolic reasons, dominant majority public policy decisions have moved toward banning face veils in public settings such as the work place, education, health care, in commerce, and on the street. Though laws banning the Islamic face veil have been adopted in Egypt and Turkey in the past, similar laws are now being proposed or adopted in Francophone western democracies such as France, Belgium, and Quebec (Welch, 2007). Such laws are being decried by Muslims and civil rights advocates as stigmatizing and segregationist, undermining the integration of both Arab and non-Arab Muslims established in the western world.