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Is Subjective Ill-Being Related to Islamophobia in Germany? In Search for Moderators

  • M. Joseph SirgyEmail author
  • Min Young Kim
  • Mohsen Joshanloo
  • Michael Bosnjak
Research Paper
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Abstract

Is subjective ill-being, defined as the inverse of subjective well-being, related to Islamophobia in Germany? We conducted a study guided by two goals to answer this question. The first goal was to test the hypothesis that subjective ill-being is associated with Islamophobia. The second goal, contingent on the results of testing for the association between subjective ill-being and Islamophobia, was to test a set of variables presumed to moderate this relationship—positive and negative contact with Muslims, right-wing political views, political participation, the importance of political life, and cultural diversity orientation. Data from the GESIS Panel, a probability-based panel representative of the German-speaking population aged between 18 and 70 years permanently residing in Germany, were used to test the study hypotheses. The data provided support for the hypothesis that subjective ill-being is indeed associated with Islamophobia in Germany (r = .12, p < .01). The data provided support for only one of the moderator hypothesis, namely cultural diversity orientation. Specifically, the data showed that the relationship between subjective ill-being and Islamophobia is stronger for those who have low (rather than high) cultural diversity orientation.

Keywords

Islamophobia subjective well-being National well-being Prejudice against Muslim immigrants Discrimination against Muslim immigrants Islam 
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Copyright information

© Springer Nature B.V. 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Pamplin College of Business, Department of Marketing (USA)Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)BlacksburgUSA
  2. 2.Department of PsychologyKeimyung UniversityDaeguSouth Korea
  3. 3.University of Trier, ZPID-Leibniz Institute for Psychology InformationTrierGermany

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