“It Just Always Seemed Like it Wasn't a Big Deal,Yet I Know for Some People They Really Struggle with It”: LGBT Religious Identities in Context

Scholarly examinations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) religious identities have typically focused on “identity reconciliation,” which assumes that being both LGBT and religious is a “contradiction,” and posits a “coherent” identity as a desired end goal. The present research draws on a qualitative study of three LGBT‐identified congregations to demonstrate that there are a variety of ways in which LGBT religious people approach the connection between their LGBT identity and their religion. While some participants of the study did feel a need to reconcile these aspects of their self, others report never feeling a strong conflict between their LGBT identity and faith. The differences in these understandings of LGBT identity emerge out of the sociotemporal contexts the interviewees exist in, suggesting that different contexts provide divergent resources for identity performances. Through these findings, I contribute to our understanding of the intersection of religious agency, religious identities, and religion as a quality of social spaces.     

Identity Conflict or Compatibility: A Comparison of Muslim Minorities in Five European Cities

Drawing on large‐scale comparative surveys across nine sociopolitical contexts, we address the question when and why ethno‐religious and city or national identities of European‐born Muslims are in conflict. We argue that the sociopolitical context makes the difference between identity compatibility or conflict and that conflict arises from perceived discrimination and related negative feelings towards the national majority. Using multigroup structural equation modelling, we examine how Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in five European cities combine their civic membership of the city and country of residence—as common identities shared with the national majority—with distinct ethnic and religious identities. In all sociopolitical contexts, participants combined significant city and national identities with strong ethnic and religious identifications. Yet, identification patterns varied between contexts from conflict (negatively correlated minority and civic identities) over compartmentalization (zero correlations) to compatibility (positive correlations). Muslims who perceived more personal discrimination were more committed to their ethnic and religious identities while simultaneously dis‐identifying from their country and city. Across cities, discrimination experiences and negative majority‐group evaluations explained away identity conflict.     

The effect of self‐identity alongside perceived importance within the theory of planned behaviour

Self‐identity often predicts behavioural intentions after standard theory of planned behaviour (TPB) components are accounted for. However, it has been claimed this is due to conceptual similarity between self‐identity and perceived importance of the behaviour. We examined this claim within the context of recycling food waste. Participants (N = 113) completed questionnaires assessing intentions, attitude, perceived behavioural control, perceived norms, perceived importance, self‐identity, and past behaviour. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that self‐identity and perceived importance were distinct constructs. Further, after accounting for TPB components and perceived importance, self‐identity explained a significant amount of additional variance in intentions. The present findings therefore do not support this particular argument against the predictive utility of self‐identity.     

The Mistreatment of My People: Victimization by Proxy and Behavioral Intentions to Commit Violence Among Muslims in Denmark

Islamist extremism is often explained by the suffering endured by Muslims in Islamic countries as a result of Western‐led wars. However, many terrorist attacks have been carried out by European Muslims with no personal experiences of war. Across two studies among Danish Muslims, we tested if what we call “victimization‐by‐proxy processes” motivate behavioral intentions to commit acts of violence. We used Muslim identification, perceived injustice of Western foreign policies, and group‐based anger to predict violent and nonviolent behavioral intentions. More importantly, we compared path models of Danish Muslims from conflict zones with those without direct personal experience of Western‐led occupation. We found similar effects among the participants in each category, that is, vicarious psychological responses mimicked those of personally experienced adversity. In fact, participants born in Western Europe were, on average, more strongly identified with Muslims, more likely to perceive Western foreign policy as more unjust, reported greater group‐based anger, and were more inclined to help Muslims both by nonviolent and violent means.     

Changing Identities to Change the World: Identity Motives in Lifestyle Politics and Its Link to Collective Action

In this article, we assume an interdisciplinary approach to the study of why and how people transpose political considerations to their lifestyles. Our aims are threefold: to understand the meanings and perceptions of people engaged in lifestyle politics and collective action; to examine the motives guiding individual change; and to explore the linkage processes between lifestyle politics and collective action. Identity process theory is considered as a lens to examine the processes and the motives of identity via a thematic analysis of 22 interviews. This study combined interviews with people seeking social change through their lifestyles with interviews with members of action groups and social movements. We found that each participant's identity is guided by identity motives such as distinctiveness, continuity, and psychological coherence. Besides, lifestyle politics is evaluated as an effective way to bring about social change, depending on the individual experience of perceived power to bring about change through collective action. Overall, lifestyle politics states the way in which the participants decided to live, to construct their identities, and to represent their beliefs about the right thing to do. Lifestyle politics complements collective action as a strategy to increase the potential of bringing about social change. The implications of this research are discussed in relation to the importance of understanding the processes of identity and lifestyle change in the context of social, environmental, and political change.     

群际接触减少偏见的机制：一项整合的研究

以321名少数民族大学生为被试,考察了民族接触（与汉族）、交往态度、民族认同、民族本质论、民族刻板印象和群际焦虑等变量,以整合的视角探讨了民族接触促进民族交往的机制问题。研究结果表明：民族接触通过降低群际焦虑和民族认同、减弱消极刻板印象和民族本质论而间接促进了民族交往,民族认同在民族接触和民族本质论之间、消极刻板印象在民族接触和群际焦虑之间存在中介作用。这项整合的研究理论上丰富了群际接触减少偏见的机制研究,发现了新的中介变量,对促进民族交往的实践具有指导意义。     

Corralling the Ingroup: Deviant Derogation and Perception of Group Variability

ABSTRACT

Two experiments investigated the relationship between the evaluation of a deviant group member and the perceived group variability among participants with varying degrees of ingroup identification. In Experiment 1 (N?=?79) ingroup identification was negatively associated with perceived ingroup variability following the presentation of a deviant ingroup member. This relationship was mediated by ratings of the deviant: the stronger the identification, the more negatively the deviant was evaluated, and the more homogeneous the ingroup was perceived. These effects were replicated in Experiment 2 (N?=?169), which also showed that there was no association between ingroup identification and the representation of the outgroup following exposure to a deviant outgroup member. The findings suggest that deviant derogation may serve to isolate undesirable members from the rest of the ingroup and protect the group's identity.     

Compassion and purity: the ethics and boundary-making of Christian evangelicals

The paper explores the ethical attitude of Christian evangelicals in a church in Britain and how it affects boundary-making of their community. Evangelicals in the case study seek to be accepting of the person and to refrain from being judgemental. The paper distinguishes between the person-centred ‘ethic of compassion’ and the norm-centred ‘ethic of purity’. The ethic of compassion consists in accepting another and recognising the dignity of another based on shared humanity. It is a frame of mind that combines moral intention with the emotions of empathy and sympathy. In contrast, the ethic of purity privileges adherence to the moral order of the group over considerations for the person. The ‘compassionate’ frame of mind weakens boundaries, while the ‘pure’ frame of mind reinforces them. The boundaries of a community result from the interplay of the two ethics.     

Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One's Actions on Moral Cleansing

Individuals engage in moral cleansing, a compensatory process to reaffirm one's moral identity, when one's moral self-concept is threatened. However, too much moral cleansing can license individuals to engage in future unethical acts. This study examined the effects of incentives and consequences of one's actions on cheating behavior and moral cleansing. Results found that incentives and consequences interacted such that unethical thoughts were especially threatening, resulting in more moral cleansing, when large incentives to cheat were present and cheating explicitly harmed others. Implications are discussed in terms of ethics training, using incentives as motivators, and the depersonalized norms of science.     

How to endure presentism

Presentism and endurantism are natural bedfellows: arguments have been mounted from endurantism to presentism and vice versa. I generalise an argument against the compatibility between presentism and endurantism offered recently by Tallant (forthcoming. “Presentism, Persistence and Trans-temporal Dependence.” Philosophical Studies). I then show how to reformulate endurantism so that it is compatible with presentism. I demonstrate that this reformulated version of endurantism can do the same work with respect to the problem of temporary intrinsics as can standard definitions.