Brother or Burden: An Experiment on Reducing Prejudice Toward Syrian Refugees in Turkey

2015/10/20 by Egor Sharma Lazarev, Kunaal Sharma · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Religion and Society Interactions #Religion, Society, and Development #Refugee #Prejudice (legal term) #Turkish #Syrian refugees #Social psychology #Political science #Armenian #Statement (logic) #Psychology #Law

paper · doi:10.1017/psrm.2015.57

openalex publication_date 2015/10/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11

Abstract

Can emphasis on shared religion reduce out-group prejudice? To explore this question, we conducted a survey experiment on the effect of religious primes on Turkish citizens’ attitudes and behavior toward Syrian refugees in Istanbul and Gaziantep. We used a factorial design to compare the independent and interactive effects of primes emphasizing refugees’ Sunni or Muslim identity and a factual statement on the economic cost of the refugees. We find that religious primes increase respondents’ level of donations to a charity supporting Syrian refugees and certain attitudinal measures of support for the refugees. We also uncovered a differential impact among the Sunni and Muslim primes and found that the statement of economic cost removed the pro-refugee effect of religious primes.

Citations

• Are Survey Experiments Externally Valid?
• Identity as a Source of Moral Motivation
• Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization
• Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects
• Salvation, Damnation, and Economic Incentives
• Refugees and the Spread of Civil War

Cited by

• Opposition to immigration [wikipedia]