Abstract
Following the March 15th Christchurch terrorist attack, members of our research team have been repeatedly asked to comment or provide summary statistics from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) on prejudice toward Muslims. As the curators of the NZAVS, we think that these findings should be in the public domain and accessible to as wide an audience as possible. In this article, we aim to provide a comprehensive summary of what we know from the NZAVS about attitudes toward Muslims and prejudice in New Zealand more generally. From 2012 onwards, the NZAVS included a feeling thermometer rating of people’s level of warmth toward Muslims. Here, we summarize what we know from the NZAVS about levels of warmth toward Muslims in the New Zealand population. We describe the distribution of thermometer ratings of warmth toward Muslims annually from 2012 onward, and compare these with thermometer ratings of a range of other groups that we also track. We present a regression model documenting the extent to which a broad range of demographics and aspects of personality are associated with low levels of warmth toward Muslims, and present a parallel model assessing warmth ratings toward immigrants as a comparison. Finally, we present a series of growth curve models outlining the relative level and rate of change over time in warmth toward Muslims and other groups from 2012- 2018. Results from these analyses indicate that over the 2012-2018 period, levels of warmth toward Muslims in New Zealand were comparatively low relative to warmth ratings of other groups. However, warmth toward Muslims has also been steadily but gradually increasing over time in New Zealand.
Important figures
Figure 1: The feeling (warmth) thermometer scale included in the Time 9 (2017) wave of the NZAVS questionnaire.
Figure 9: Latent growth curves representing the average rate of change in feeling thermometer rating toward Asians in general, Immigrants in general, Chinese, Indians and Muslims. Growth curves were estimated separately from ratings of each group, and the curves represent model-implied values based on the parameters reported in Tables 7-11.
Asians in general, Immigrants in general, Chinese, Indians and Muslims. Growth curves were estimated separately from ratings of each group, and the curves represent model-implied values based on the parameters reported in Tables 7-11.BibTeX citation
@article{sibley2020prejudice,
title={Prejudice toward Muslims in New Zealand: insights from the New Zealand attitudes and values study},
author={Sibley, CG and Afzali, MU and Satherley, N and Ejova, A and Stronge, S and Yogeeswaran, K and Grimshaw, M and Hawi, D and Mirnajafi, Z and Barlow, FK and Milojev, P and Greaves, LM and Kapeli, S and Zubielevitch, E and Hamley, L and Basabas, and Wu, MH and Howard, C and Lee, CH and Huang, Y and Lockhart, C and Bahamondes, J and Manuela, S and Milfont, TL and Perry, R and Sengupta, NK and Overall, NC and Shaver, JH and Troughten, G and Osborne, D and Blubulia, JA},
journal={New Zealand Journal of Psychology},
volume={49},
number={1},
pages={48--72},
year={2020}
}