Appraisal of Out-group in the Context of Intergroup Relations: Role of Personal and Collective Identity

This study was done to explore the manner in which two important groups in India, namely Hindus and Muslims appraise themselves and others in the context, where if seen at the national level Hindus are in a majority position, but when seen at the local level Muslims constitute the majority group. The sample comprised 150 college going students, of whom 85 were Muslims and 65 were Hindus. For assessing personal identity and collective identity; the Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, Schooler, Schoenback, Rosenberg, 1995) and Collective Self-Esteem Scale (Luhtanen Crocker, 1992) were used respectively. The other measures used were the Religious Prejudice Scale (Singh, 1981) and Adjective Rating Scale (Ghosh, Kumar, Tripathi, 1992). The main findings showed that both Hindus and Muslims exhibited ethnocentric attitude and appraisal of out-group were different for both the groups. In case of Muslims, religious prejudice and collective self-esteem were important predictors of out-group appraisal; however these were not important for Hindus.Results also indicated that Hindus who appraised themselves negatively also appraised the Muslims in a negative manner but Muslims who appraised themselves negatively appraised the Hindus positively.