PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

In this chapter, we consider the problem that many measures of religiosity and prejudice are at risk to be affected by socially desirable responding. Indi-rect measurement procedures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) provide an opportunity to assess also pre-reflective, impulsive parts of attitudes avoiding the risk of socially desirable responding. Hence, three Single-Category IATs (SC-IATs) have been used in the Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in order to assess implicit attitudes toward the three Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam among a subsample of N = 272 persons. Participants on average displayed a slightly positive implicit attitude toward Christianity while Judaism and Islam were evaluated almost completely neutrally. While there are significant implicit-explicit correlations for attitudes toward Christianity and Islam, there is no such association for Judaism; maybe because Judaism has been a less salient category among the predominantly Christian, but partly also Muslim participants. While some measures of religiosity (centrality of religiosity and the religious schemata ttt and ftr) showed to be correlated with social desirability, the religious schema xenos showed no association with social desirable responding, but turned out to be a significant predictor of lower Islamophobic prejudice both on the ex-plicit and implicit level of cognition. Consequences and limitations of the described findings are discussed.