Religious Involvement and Intergroup Attitude

By : Pramthesh Pandey

Page No: 1-9

Abstract
Society of India is unique in many spheres like caste system, religious matters, and having diverse ethnic and linguistic base. It is believed that religious belief of the person influences his beliefs, ideology, attitudes and behaviours and his perception of the world too. Because of the pressure exerted by the religion more often it is seen that clashes occurs between the religious groups. Therefore, Purpose of this study is to understand the role of religious involvement in intergroup attitude. Researcher hypothesized that more a person will be religiously involved more he will have favourable attitude of out group which was contrary to the prevailing prejudiced belief that religiosity leads to fanatic attitude and hence to act aggressively against out-group. A scale of religious involvement was improvised by the researcher itself, adjective check list comprised of five positive and five negative attitudes and Likert’s scale were used to determine the religious involvement of the sample and their intergroup attitude. 16 members (both males and females) of Hindu and 26 members (10 males and 16 females) of Muslim group were included in the study as a sample. In results it was found that when religious involvement was high the group had strong intergroup attitude (positive and negative both). Though the result was not statistically significant it is showing the positive side of this society which is continuously changing with the help of many factors (globalization, education etc.)

Author :
Pramthesh Pandey : Research Scholar, Department of Psychology, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, U.P. 211002