Avoiding cultural contamination: Intergroup disgust sensitivity and religious identification as predictors of interfaith threat, faith-based policies, and islamophobia

Article history: Received 9 November 2015 Received in revised form 1 February 2016 Accepted 5 February 2016 Available online 18 February 2016 In three samples of Christian undergraduate students (n=43, n=115, n=73), we investigated the relative influence of Christian religious identification and intergroup disgust sensitivity (ITG-DS; an affect-laden individual difference variable reflecting reactivity to disgust and revulsion reactions toward outgroups) on several religious variables: Perceived threat of religious outgroups, attitudes toward faith-based schooling, intercultural child adoption, banning of religious symbols, and Islamophobia. Results revealed that religious identification and ITG-DS are both relevant to interfaith prejudices, but in different ways. With respect to unique predictive effects, ITG-DS emerged as the stronger andmore consistent predictor.Meta-analytic integration confirmed that ITG-DS, but not religious identification, robustly predicts Islamophobia. Implications for understanding correlates of religious outgroup prejudices are considered. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.