Poster #51 - Religiosity and Social-Emotional Adjustment: Do Religious Minority Youth Have to go Along to get Along?

• In Event: Poster Session 05

Abstract

Previous research has often found religiosity (a combination of internal religious experiences/beliefs and external religious practices; Allport, 1966) in youth to be largely adaptive, predicting higher prosocial and lower problem behaviours, higher self-regulation, and higher self-esteem, among other outcomes (French et al., 2008). However, most of this research has been done with youth who were members of the majority faith (e.g., Christians in America, Muslims in Indonesia). Social identity theory suggests that the experience of religiosity and an individual’s subsequent outcomes likely differ as a function of their minority status (Hogg & Reid, 2006; Tajfel et al., 1979).

We examined whether religious experiences and practices would predict some of the same adaptive outcomes for religious minorities in a sample of 15 to 18-year-old Muslim youth (N = 271) in Canada. We also investigated whether these relations were moderated by the strength of their religious identification, self-reported identifiability as a Muslim, the influence of social norms, and their experiences with discrimination. Youth completed questionnaires assessing religious experiences and practices (adapted from French et al., 2008 and Sallquist et al., 2010), self-regulation (Capaldi & Rothbart, 2016), prosocial behaviour (Goodman et al., 2010), problem behaviours (adapted from Elliot et al., 1985), self-esteem (Wichstraum, 1995), discrimination (Pew Research Center, 2011), religious identification (adapted from Scottham et al., 2008), and social norms (based on Ford & Hill, 2012). Religious identifiability was assessed using an original measure. Regression analyses with PROCESS were used to test moderations (Hayes, 2022).

Higher religious experiences and practices were associated with more adaptive adjustment outcomes. Each moderator was significant, although results were highly dependent upon type of adjustment outcome, aspect of religiosity, and gender. In particular, boys with higher religious experiences reported more prosocial behaviour, but only if they felt Canadians disapproved of their religious social identity (b=.13, p <.01). Girls who were more religiously practicing had less problem behaviour, but only if they felt highly identifiable as a Muslim (b=-2.69, p <.001). Girls with higher religious experiences had higher self-regulation, but only if they identified less with their religious group (b=.32, p <.001). Finally, girls who were more religiously practicing had higher self-esteem, but only if they had not experienced discrimination (b=.22, p=.02). Conversely, for girls who had experienced high amounts of discrimination, increased religious experience seemed to have a negative effect on their self-esteem (b=-.22, p=.045).

Findings demonstrate that religiosity is still generally protective for religious minority youth. However, the interactive effects suggest that beyond the surface-level similarities between the influence of minorities’ and majorities’ religiosity on positive adjustment outcomes, the religious experience as a Muslim minority in Canada very much depends on social-psychological processes that can increase, decrease, or reverse the positive impact of religiosity. These results are discussed in relation to social identity (Hogg & Reid, 2006; Tajfel et al., 1979) and cultural fit theory (Cheung & Yeung, 2010), whereby the apparent benefit of a behaviour performed within a sociocultural context may be relative to the endorsement of members of society.

Authors

• Danah Elsayed, University of Guelph
  Presenting Author

• Lynda M. Ashbourne, University of Guelph

• Christopher Quinn-Nilas, Memorial University of Newfoundland