Religion and Intergroup Conflict

Abstract

How might religion shape intergroup conflict? We tested whether religious infusion—the extent to which religious rituals and discourse permeate the everyday activities of groups and their members—moderated the effects of two factors known to increase intergroup conflict: competition for limited resources and incompatibility of values held by potentially conflicting groups. We used data from the Global Group Relations Project to investigate 194 groups (e.g., ethnic, religious, national) at 97 sites around the world. When religion was infused in group life, groups were especially prejudiced against those groups that held incompatible values, and they were likely to discriminate against such groups. Moreover, whereas disadvantaged groups with low levels of religious infusion typically avoided directing aggression against their resource-rich and powerful counterparts, disadvantaged groups with high levels of religious infusion directed significant aggression against them—despite the significant tangible costs to the disadvantaged groups potentially posed by enacting such aggression. This research suggests mechanisms through which religion may increase intergroup conflict and introduces an innovative method for performing nuanced, cross-societal research.

Keywords

religion religious beliefs intergroup conflict intergroup dynamics prejudice values resources competition cross-cultural global methods cross-cultural differences violence

Consider Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, Muslims and Hindus in South Asia, the religious right and secularists in the United States: Religion certainly seems to contribute substantially to intergroup conflict.

Yet empirical knowledge about how religion might shape such conflict, and even whether it does, is elusive. Although some scholars view religion as a core cause of conflict (e.g., Huntington, 1993; Kaplan, 2007), other scholars view it as a mask for (or a post hoc justification of) conflict that would otherwise occur for pragmatic reasons (e.g., Berman, 2009; Fearon & Laitin, 2003). For instance, are the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians due to clashing religious values or to competition for limited resources between two groups that are also distinguishable by religion? Further complicating the issue, whereas research focusing on individual differences and prejudice shows that religious people tend to be more prejudiced than nonreligious people against out-group members (Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010), research exploring violent conflict between large groups suggests little evidence of direct, main effects of religion (e.g., Fox, 2004; Russett, Oneal, & Cox, 2000).

In the present research, we conducted a global study that begins to clarify the relationships between religion and intergroup conflict. We started with the knowledge that religion is more than just a set of beliefs; it also encompasses community practices, socialization functions, organizational structures, and a range of other features (e.g., Lincoln, 2003). The multifaceted nature of religion means that there is little reason to assume that all of its features relate to conflict in similar ways or even relate to conflict at all.

We focused on religious infusion—the extent to which religion permeates a group’s private and public life. Religious infusion is not tied to specific religions or sets of beliefs; any religion can be highly infused throughout a society, but infusion is not a necessary feature of any particular religion. For example, our data reveal that although religion is a highly dominant feature of life for Catholics in Nicaragua, it is not so for Catholics in Austria. Religious infusion is of special interest because of its potential to engage powerful group processes. For instance, frequent public practice of religion and engagement in religion-tinged events and discourse may make group norms (both descriptive and injunctive) especially salient, elicit strong commitments to the group, and enable especially effective intragroup communication and coordination. Such group processes may increase the likelihood that people will adopt and internalize predominant group prejudices (e.g., toward other groups). Such processes may also enhance collective motivation and a group’s capacity for collective action. Thus, groups with high levels of religious infusion may be particularly poised for and capable of effective intergroup conflict if circumstances seem to call for it.

What might such circumstances be? Two pathways to conflict have received much attention in psychology and the social sciences—incompatibility of values and competition over tangible resources. We propose that religious infusion modulates each pathway in ways that increase the likelihood of conflict.

First, groups tend to be more prejudiced against and hostile toward groups that have incompatible values (e.g., Barker, Hurwitz, & Nelson, 2008; Biernat, Vescio, Theno, & Crandall, 1996; Garcia-Retamero, Müller, & Rousseau, 2012; Schwartz, Struch, & Bilsky, 1990). Values have tangible consequences; they shape norms, policies, laws, and all manner of individual and group decisions in ways that disadvantage people whose values are not in accord with those of the group, as when antiabortion values lead to restricted access to abortion even for those who value prochoice positions. Groups whose values are tightly woven into everyday activity—as is the case for groups with high levels of religious infusion—are thus likely to feel particularly threatened by groups holding incompatible values, given the relatively substantial changes to group life that could result if those contradictory values were to supersede their own. This sense of threat will be especially strong if the targeted values are seen as sacred and thus not readily compromised (Atran & Ginges, 2012)—and groups with higher levels of religious infusion may be more likely to view their values as sacred. Thus, the extent to which incompatible values lead to intergroup prejudices and hostility is likely to be greater for groups with high levels of religious infusion than for groups with low levels of religious infusion.

Second, intergroup prejudices and behavioral conflict can result from competition over resources and power (e.g., Campbell, 1965; Collier, Hoeffler, & Rohner, 2009; Fearon & Laitin, 2003). This can occur when two potentially competing groups possess relatively equal power and resources, as Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif (1961/1988) demonstrated in their classic Robbers Cave experiment. However, power and resources are often distributed unequally between potentially competing groups, and inclinations toward intergroup conflict may manifest differently for high- and low-power groups. Specifically, even when weak and powerful groups are similarly prejudiced against one another, powerful groups may more readily engage less powerful groups in behavioral conflict simply because they can—because the costs of doing so are low relative to the potential gain of additional resources (e.g., Hegre, 2008). Although low-power groups may also be highly motivated to engage in conflict to improve their lot—because of perceptions of unjust relative deprivation or actual need (e.g., Crosby, 1976; Walker & Smith, 2002)—the calculus of deterrence suggests that they will hesitate to do so because the benefits of potentially gaining those resources are likely to be outweighed by the costs imposed by the high-power group in response to the low-power group’s acts of aggression.

However, this calculus can be altered (Allen & Fordham, 2011; Arreguin-Toft, 2001). For example, groups with especially strong organizational structures may be capable of overcoming significant resource and power disadvantages (e.g., Iannaccone & Berman, 2006). One source of organizational strength may be religious infusion, which might strengthen intragroup trust and solidarity, enhance group coordination toward common goals, increase willingness to sacrifice for the group, and reduce member defection rates (e.g., Atran & Henrich, 2010; Ginges, Atran, Sachdeva, & Medin, 2011; Ginges, Hansen, & Norenzayan, 2009). Thus, disadvantaged groups that also have high levels of religious infusion may be less deterred than disadvantaged groups with low levels of religious infusion by the costs of conflict with high-power groups (Ginges & Atran, 2011; Toft, 2007) and hence more likely to engage in conflict.

We present findings from the Global Group Relations Project, a data-gathering system we designed to test theories about different forms of conflict between existing large groups. By taking advantage of research on accuracy in personality judgment (e.g., Funder & West, 1993) and on expertise (e.g., Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006; Sternberg & Horvath, 1999), we asked scholarly experts on societies in many locations around the world to use their explicit and tacit knowledge to provide parameter values for our studied variables. The use of experts for such purposes has been an accepted practice within political science (e.g., Cederman, Wimmer, & Min, 2010) and often yields better predictions of behavioral outcomes than does objective measurement (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita & Feng, 1997; Glasgow, Lewis, & Neiman, 2012; Hooghe et al., 2010). Our survey covered many sites and groups, including many groups not experiencing conflict (to provide sufficient variability and adequate comparisons), and quantitatively operationalized variables consistently across all groups and sites in ways designed a priori to capture our focal constructs.

Method

Site and group selection

One hundred study sites were selected at the country level (see the Supplemental Material available online for additional information on site and group selection and on recruitment of expert respondents). Because severe intergroup conflict is rare relative to the potential for it (Fearon & Laitin, 1996; Themnér & Wallensteen, 2012), we oversampled conflict by selecting 25 sites a priori on the basis of either recent past or current conflict between particular groups at those sites, which included, for example, Algeria (Islamists and secularists), Cyprus (Turks and Greeks), India (Muslims and Hindus), Northern Ireland (Catholics and Protestants), Rwanda (Hutu and Tutsi), and Sri Lanka (the state of Sri Lanka and the Tamil ethnic minority).

The remaining 75 cases were sampled randomly, without replacement, from a list of United Nations member states. Countries were eligible for inclusion if their population exceeded 0.01% of the world population (thereby increasing our chances of finding relevant experts). In all, the 100 sites spanned five continents, and the countries included accounted for approximately 79% of the world’s population.

Because we were interested in whether certain factors would emerge as predictors of conflict across different kinds of groups, we randomly assigned each of the 75 randomly selected sites to represent one of six common forms of intergroup relations—ethnic-ethnic, religious-religious, secular-religious, state-state, state-ethnic minority, or state-religious minority. Relevant groups were identified within each site on the basis of population sizes. Two groups within each site were randomly selected for study; for the state-state cases, multiple bordering countries were identified, and one was randomly selected for inclusion. Examples of the six forms include ethnic-ethnic (e.g., the Gogo and Sukuma ethnic groups in Tanzania), religious-religious (e.g., Christians and Sunni Muslims in Pakistan), secular-religious (e.g., secularists and Protestants in Argentina), state-state (e.g., Laos and Thailand), state-ethnic minority (e.g., the state of Moldova and Ukrainians), or state-religious minority (e.g., the state of Malaysia and Buddhists); see Table S1 in the Supplemental Material for a list of the 100 sites and groups.

Identification and recruitment of expert respondents

We identified and recruited an international network of English-speaking researchers with expertise in the selected sites, as determined by scholarly visibility (e.g., published peer-reviewed articles about the site), and each informant provided data for only one site and the two groups therein. Expert informants responded by completing an Internet survey, and 471 of them provided data for at least one of the measured variables presented here. Together, informants provided data for 97 of the 100 sites; the remaining 3 sites were dropped. Expert informants reported having spent an average of 20.75 years studying their sites (range = 2–60 years), and 75% self-identified as political scientists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, or economists.

Measures

From midsummer through late fall 2009, each expert informant provided information about the two groups within his or her assigned site on a wide range of social, political, religious, and psychological variables, all of which were presented in standardized form across sites and groups. The survey instructions were intended to focus respondents on providing information that would be coherent within the site (i.e., would capture any existing differences between the two groups) and make sense across sites (i.e., would take into consideration the comparative global standings of given sites and groups on each given variable). Informants were not asked for their beliefs about how these variables were associated with one another (i.e., this was not a survey of the experts’ own hypotheses or theories), and they were not informed of our hypotheses during recruitment or survey instruction. Rather, for each site and for each of the groups within it, informants made estimates on 9-point scales for our variables of interest.

Religious infusion was operationalized at the group level—that is, informants provided scores for each group within a site—and was calculated as the mean of three survey items: “To what extent, on average, is religious ritual infused into the social/public life of [members of the group]?” “To what extent do [members of the group] use religious values, narratives, and reasoning in public discourse?” and “To what extent, overall, does religion play a dominant role in the everyday lives of [members of the group]?” (Group A: α = .86; Group B: α = .93).

Value incompatibility was operationalized at the site level and assessed by a single item: “To what extent are the set of values held by [members of one group] and [members of the other group] actually incompatible with one another?”

Resource-power differential was created at the site level from responses to group-level items. To compute this composite, we collected data from informants on the extent to which each group actually confronted scarce resources and political power by averaging responses to two items: “To what extent do [members of the group], on average, actually lack access to sufficient food, water, and/or land?” and “To what extent do [members of the group], on average, actually lack access to political power and educational and economic opportunities?” Next, within each site, a difference score was created such that the group with the greater scarcity (i.e., relatively fewer resources and less power) had a negative resource-power-differential score; the group with less scarcity (i.e., relatively greater resources and power) received a positive resource-power-differential score. Thus, within each site, the two groups had resource-power-differential scores equal in magnitude but with opposite signs, potentially ranging from −8 to +8. A resource-power-differential score of zero meant that the two groups had equal access to resources and held equal power.

The conflict measures were each operationalized by a single item for each group on a scale ranging from 1 (very little/not at all) to 9 (to a great extent). Prejudice was assessed by asking “To what extent do [members of one group], on average, hold negative prejudices against [members of the other group]?” Interpersonal discrimination was measured with the question “To what extent do [members of one group], on average, interpersonally discriminate against [members of the other group] (e.g., by avoiding cross-group friendships, romantic relationships, work relationships)?” We assessed symbolic aggression by asking “To what extent do [members of one group] perpetrate symbolic acts of aggression against [members of the other group] (e.g., by desecrating graves, bombing symbolically important sites)?” Individual violence was assessed with the question “To what extent do [members of one group] perpetrate violent acts of physical aggression against [members of the other group], such as assaults, murders, or rapes?” Finally, to assess collective violence, we asked “To what extent do [members of one group] perpetrate violent acts of physical aggression against [members of the other group], such as riots or police/military actions?” We aggregated responses on all variables across informants within each site; the median number of informants per site was three or four, depending on the measure.

Results

We used structural equation modeling to create an interchangeable dyadic model that controlled for the dependency between groups within each site (Kenny, 1996; Olsen & Kenny, 2006).¹ First, our three predictors—resource-power differential, value incompatibility, and religious infusion—were not significantly associated with one another (ps > .20), which is consistent with the viewpoint that these are indeed conceptually independent variables.

Second, there were independent linear effects of both resource-power differential and value incompatibility on many of the conflict measures, which replicates results from past research in which different methods were used (e.g., Biernat et al., 1996; Katz & Hass, 1988; Russett et al., 2000; Schwartz et al., 1990) and thereby validates our methodology (i.e., the use of expert informants): Groups with power and resource advantages engaged in significantly more conflict with their counterparts than did less advantaged groups (prejudice: β = 0.169, p < .001; interpersonal discrimination: β = 0.126, p < .01; collective violence: β = 0.080, p < .05), and groups whose values were more incompatible with one another exhibited more prejudice (β = 0.394, p < . 01) and interpersonal discrimination (β = 0.367, p < .01).²

Religious infusion was also an independent predictor of all forms of conflict; it significantly predicted increased prejudice (β = 0.170, p < .05), interpersonal discrimination (β = 0.243, p < .01), individual violence (β = 0.143, p < .05), and collective violence (β = 0.122, p < .05), and it marginally predicted increased symbolic aggression (β = 0.097, p < .10). Qualifying all these main effects, however, and supporting our hypotheses, results showed that religious infusion interacted with both resource-power differential and value-incompatibility to predict several forms of conflict.

As depicted in Figure 1, the extent to which value incompatibility predicted prejudice and interpersonal discrimination was moderated by level of religious infusion (prejudice: β = 0.086, p = .049; interpersonal discrimination: β = 0.095, p = .030). When religious infusion was high, value incompatibility strongly predicted prejudice and interpersonal discrimination; when religious infusion was low, it did not.

Fig. 1.

Scatter plots showing mean ratings of (a) prejudice and (b) interpersonal discrimination as a function of the level of incompatibility of each group’s values with the counterpart group’s values and the degree to which religion is infused throughout each group. For prejudice and interpersonal discrimination, a rating of 1 indicated the lowest level, and 9 indicated the highest level. Lines for religious infusion were generated from estimates from the structural equation models and are plotted at low (1 SD below the mean), medium (mean), and high (1 SD above the mean), and the religious-infusion level of the counterpart group was held constant at the grand mean. Data points represent 194 groups nested within 97 sites.

Religious infusion also moderated the way in which resource-power differential predicted symbolic aggression (β = −0.067, p = .022), individual violence (β = −0.081, p = .005), and collective violence (β = −0.105, p = .001). Specifically, whereas disadvantaged groups with low levels of religious infusion tended to avoid extreme acts of aggression, disadvantaged groups for whom religion was a dominant aspect of everyday life exhibited much less reticence (Fig. 2). That is, even if there was a significant disadvantage in terms of resources and political power, groups with high levels of religious infusion were likely to be aggressive toward other groups. This finding suggests that the actions of groups with high levels of religious infusion may be relatively insensitive to the tangible costs potentially imposed by more powerful groups.

Fig. 2.

Scatter plots showing mean ratings of (a) symbolic aggression, (b) individual violence, and (c) collective violence as a function of the extent to which each group faced resource and power advantage or disadvantage and the degree to which religion is infused throughout each group. For symbolic aggression, individual violence, and collective violence, a rating of 1 indicated the lowest level, and 9 indicated the highest level. Resource-power differential ranged from highly disadvantaged (−6) to highly advantaged (+6). Lines for religious infusion were generated from the structural equation models and are plotted at low (1 SD below the mean), medium (mean), and high (1 SD above the mean), and the religious-infusion level of the partner group was held constant at the grand mean. Data points represent 190 groups nested within 95 sites.

Discussion

The findings of the present study demonstrate several ways in which religion may shape intergroup conflict. Using a novel methodology to facilitate cross-societal investigation, we found that religious infusion enhanced the extent to which incompatible values predict intergroup conflict: Among groups with high levels of religious infusion, those with value incompatibilities were more likely to be prejudiced and to interpersonally discriminate against one another. Religious infusion also altered the manner in which relative group disadvantage predicts conflict: Disadvantaged groups with low levels of religious infusion tended to avoid acting aggressively toward their advantaged counterparts, a strategy consistent with a rational analysis of the deterrent capacity of powerful groups to impose great costs on less powerful groups. In contrast, disadvantaged groups with high levels of religious infusion showed less evidence of being deterred, tending instead to engage powerful groups with symbolic, individual, and collective aggression. Religious infusion appears to increase the willingness of otherwise weak groups to endure costly confrontation.

These findings agree with those of research focusing on individual-level mechanisms through which religion may shape intergroup conflict (e.g., Ginges & Atran, 2011; Ginges et al., 2009; Sheikh, Ginges, Coman, & Atran, 2012). For instance, to the extent that people view certain resources or territories as sacred (e.g., Israelis’ and Palestinians’ views of Jerusalem), they are more likely to be insulted by tangible offers for them (Ginges et al., 2011). Such mechanisms likely complement (and are complemented by) and reinforce (and are reinforced by) the mechanisms giving rise to the large-scale religious-conflict phenomena assessed in our data.

Are other forms of infusion (e.g., infusions of political ideologies or ethnic identities) associated with similar outcomes? Such forms of infusion may also engender the types of psychological and social processes discussed earlier (e.g., norm salience, effective intragroup communication, trust and solidarity, group coordination toward common goals, willingness to sacrifice for the group), thereby facilitating a group’s movement toward intergroup conflict when faced with value incompatibilities and resource disadvantages. Moreover, even nonreligious groups can define places, objects, or values as sacred and thus worth fighting for (Atran & Ginges, 2012; Hassner, 2009). That said, religions that have monitoring and rewarding/punishing deities or that offer eternally rewarding afterlives may be especially effective at garnering commitment from and shaping the behaviors of adherents (Juergensmeyer, 2003; Toft, 2007). It may be, then, that religious infusion is particularly able to reduce the apparent costs of intergroup aggression for its group members.

Our findings point to the value of assessing conflict at multiple scales and intensity. Specifically, religious infusion predicted multiple forms of conflict, but each form of conflict was predicted by a different mechanism. Whereas religious infusion interacted with value incompatibility to predict levels of prejudice and interpersonal discrimination—but not symbolic aggression, individual violence, or collective violence—it interacted with resource-power differential to predict levels of symbolic aggression, individual violence, and collective violence—but not prejudice or interpersonal discrimination. Different forms of conflict were predicted by different patterns of variables, and this seems worthy of further conceptual and empirical work.

Our sample included a diversity of group types (e.g., ethnic, religious, national), and the 194 groups differed from one another in many other ways. One should not be surprised, then, that our findings are of modest magnitude. That we were able to identify clear patterns in the face of such global diversity and variability suggests that the processes underlying these patterns may be particularly robust. Our findings also raise the possibility that such processes may be part of a common, near-universal suite of forces that form a foundation for much intergroup conflict. However, we are not suggesting that potentially unique, society-specific forces are unimportant. Indeed, much may be learned from cases that depart significantly from our models’ predictions. For instance, not all groups with high levels of religious infusion and low power engaged in the more aggressive forms of conflict. Identifying factors that distinguish these cases will have significant implications for theory and may also have important practical implications related to reducing violent intergroup conflict.

This study also makes an important methodological contribution to cross-societal research. If one is interested in the behaviors of individuals, one can acquire participant samples from many societies and run them through identical procedures. This approach can be quite expensive and introduces a host of conceptual and practical challenges associated with cross-cultural research. If one is interested in comparing, contrasting, and explaining more complex social and community-level processes in which many people interact, these challenges multiply and the costs become prohibitive. This explains why scholars interested in empirically exploring such phenomena so often cobble together existing data sets and make conceptual and operationalization compromises in the process. Our expert-informant method addresses many of these challenges: It combines the strengths of case-study investigations (providing a richness of expert knowledge from which to glean data) and large-sample quantitative analysis (providing many sites for study with great variability on the constructs of interest). It provides consistent operationalizations of theoretically driven constructs across many sites. Because the survey is intended to be used by expert scholars, the constructs can be operationalized with some degree of conceptual nuance. In addition, the method is (relatively) financially inexpensive.

That said, the method is not without its challenges. It is possible that some of our experts lacked specific knowledge regarding the variables of focus, which could lead to missing data or decreased reliability—both of which work against the ability to detect true associations among variables. It is also possible that the expert responders were biased by theory-based preconceptions, although it is hard to conceive of how any such biases could generate the interactive findings presented here. Each expert provided responses for only 1 of 97 sites, and they were not queried on their beliefs about how variables relate to one another. Moreover, respondents generally represented disciplines in which theory about religion and conflict lacks consensus and for which our interactive hypotheses (and findings) were novel. In all, we believe the strengths of the expert-informant method outweigh its weaknesses, especially when one is investigating social-level hypotheses of the sort explored here.

Studying the relationship between religious infusion and intergroup conflict in existing groups requires correlational designs. Inferences of causality are thus unwarranted, and we have taken care to avoid causal language.³ Other designs might usefully complement our cross-sectional design. Additional longitudinal data on these sites would enable the exploration of the causal direction of effects with additional confidence. Laboratory simulations in which religious infusion, resource-power differentials, and value incompatibility are experimentally primed and manipulated in groups of religious people could also serve as a useful complement to the current approach.

Conclusion

We used an innovative methodology in which 194 groups nested within 97 countries were sampled, and we learned that religious infusion, interacting with value incompatibility and resource-power differential, predicted multiple forms of large-scale intergroup conflict. Such findings advance our theoretical understanding of complex conflict processes and thereby suggest strategies for reducing the often staggering costs of intergroup conflict.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank David Siroky, Timothy Byne, Douglas Kenrick, Deborah Hall, and the participants of the Arizona State University Social Psychology Research Institute and the Arizona State University Center for Law and Global Affairs colloquium for their helpful comments on this work. The data reported in this article are available from S. L. Neuberg.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Funding

This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant 0729516 (to S. L. Neuberg, C. M. Warner, R. E. Millsap, G. Thomas, M. Winkelman, B. J. Broome, T. J. Taylor, J. Schober, and D. Schaefer), the Arizona State University Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and the Arizona State University Institute for Social Science Research.

Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information may be found at

Notes

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