Date of Award

Summer 8-16-2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Advisor

Jordan P. LaBouff

Second Committee Member

Thane Fremouw

Third Committee Member

Shannon McCoy

Additional Committee Members

Benjamin Guenther, Melanie Nyhof, Renate Ysseldyk

Abstract

Religious leaders and peace-building organizations rely on interreligious dialogue as a method to foster religious tolerance and minimize bias, conflict, and inequity (Cornille, 2013; Patel, 2018). However, programs that rely on interfaith encounters to promote peace may fall short of their potential for several reasons. First, little empirical evidence supports the claim that interreligious dialogue promotes peace which hinders the uptake of interventions (Paluck et al., 2021). Further, for interreligious dialogue to have a positive impact, people must first be willing to participate. To address these limitations, I conduct a broad scientific investigation on interreligious dialogue with a sample of Christians in the United States reporting on Christian-Muslim encounters to (1) describe how psychological components vary in types of interreligious dialogue, (2) predict individual willingness to participate in such encounters, and (3) test the efficacy of interventions that vary those psychological components and control for predictors of willingness to participate in future interreligious dialogue interventions. By identifying and measuring the components of interventions that lead to success, the results can contribute to the impact of interventions to create social change.

First, 5 types of interreligious dialogue are identified: General Secular, General Religious, Interfaith/Prayer Worship, Christian support, and Protect/Extend Religion. Participants are most willing to participate in secular types of interreligious dialogue and types that focus on religion as a shared community (like caring for those in need) but not that engage more deeply with religious practice. These preferences indicate a trend towards secular, inclusive, and practical dialogue forms that emphasize shared community values over activities that orient around religion. Across 6 studies (2 correlational and 4 experimental, where the components of interreligious dialogue are varied), religious self-concept predicts willingness to participate in interreligious dialogue, and perceived threat predicts unwillingness. High religious self-concept buffers the negative effect of threat. Overall analyses suggest that the most appealing types of interreligious dialogue may be ineffective. For interventions to be effective, they must balance engagement with comfort in participating. I discuss areas for future research and application to create appealing and effective interreligious dialogue interventions to promote peace.

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