Does religion matter? Swedish Majority attitudes towards Muslim and Christian Immigrants’ acculturation preferences

Research has shown that different minorities are subject to different acculturation expectations by members of the majority. However, the significance of immigrants’ religion in determining these different expectations has not been verified experimentally. This seems important given reports of widespread associations of Muslims minorities with threat across Europe. Thus, we examined the effects of acculturation strategies perceived to be endorsed by immigrants (of two different religions) on intergroup attitudes in Sweden in 2014, using a 2x2x2 design. Swedish majority participants (N = 147) who identified as Christian, read interviews with Iraqi immigrants in which the immigrants’ religion (Muslim vs. Christian), desired level of contact with the host society (high vs. low) and desire to maintain their own culture (high vs. low) were manipulated. Immigrants who were perceived to favour contact elicited more favourable intergroup attitudes. However, this effect was moderated by the immigrants’ perceived desire for culture maintenance and their perceived religion: majority members favoured Christians who ‘integrated’ but there was no such clear pattern for Muslims. In 2016, we replicated the study (N = 301). Analyses revealed a different pattern in the data: Swedish majority participants showed no particular preference for Christian immigrants who ‘integrate’. These findings may be attributed to individual differences in the majority groups from the respective studies, as participants in the 2nd study rated themselves as more religious. Thus, questions remain concerning the significance of religion to majority members and the importance of immigrants’ religion when determining intergroup relations across samples and over time.