Interreligious education in the context of social psychology research on attitudes and prejudice

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, interreligious education has become an integral component of the religious education debate. Regardless of the affective level that interreligious education seeks to provide, the desired changes in attitude and prejudice require one to take into account a diversity of research on attitude and prejudice. Accordingly, the goal of the present article is to encourage the adoption of psychological theories of prejudice with a view to the prospects they offer to interreligious education. However, because the field of psychological prejudice research is complex, we will only be discussing those theories that, firstly, reflect the present state of prejudice psychology and, secondly, are of particular relevance to interreligious education; these are cognitive theories (accentuation theory, illusory correlation theory, attribution theory), the social identity theory, and social learning theory. Emanating from this review, the article will go on to reflect different strategies of attitude change for interreligious learning.