Experiment Reveals Americans Favor Christian Refugees
From Professors Joannie Tremblay-Boire and Aseem Prakash
We – two professors who study nongovernmental organizations – conducted an experiment. We modeled how likely Americans would be to say they would donate US$20 to a charity that runs refugee camps abroad if they were told, directly or indirectly, that most of the refugees in the camps were Muslims.
In the first of two parts of this survey, the participants saw information about a charity and responded to questions about it and about whether they would donate to it. In the second part, they answered questions about themselves, such as their gender, educational background, income, religion and political affiliations. . .
First, people who believed the refugees were mostly Christian were slightly more willing to give $20 to the charity than those who were told it helped refugees of all faiths. This finding became stronger when we noted that the refugee camps were in the Middle East.
For example, if an average person saw our most vague profile of Refugee Helpers, which did not specify the religion of the refugees or the location of the refugee camps, the probability that they would say “yes, I am willing to give Refugee Helpers 20 bucks” would be about 44%. But if the same average person thought that the refugees it assists were mostly Christians and that the camps were in the Middle East, the probability that this person would be willing to give jumps by 11 percentage points to 55%.
We don’t believe Islamophobia caused this disparity. Instead, we believe this supports what’s known as a “persecuted minority” syndrome. Americans are prone to be more willing to help Christian refugees in the Middle East because, in the Middle East, minorities such as Christians and Kurds are seen as facing oppression from the Islamic State Group.
Christians were also more apt to say they’d support the charity if they thought it aided Christian refugees, rather than Muslims. Specifically, the probability of Christian participants being willing to give went up in this instance by 9 percentage points, to 57% from 48%.
We don’t blame Islamophobia for that either. In most religions, people tend to favor people who share their faith over those who don’t.
The third instance was when we told survey participants that Muslims ran the charity. When we did that, participants were less likely to say they were willing to donate than the people who were told about it being a secular nonprofit. Believing that Refugee Helpers is an Islamic organization, rather than secular, reduces the probability that an average person would be willing to give by 11 percentage points from 44% to 33%.
Our findings indicate that Islamophobia may affect charitable giving, but only in a specific context. People in the U.S. do not seem less willing to donate to secular groups that help Muslims. But they do appear to be much more cautious about giving to a charity that identifies as Islamic, even if it serves people of all faiths. Read more…