From the special collection of the International Review of Social Psychology on
the social and political psychology of terrorism
Many tags as “We are Charlie”, “Never again”, “Freedom
of speech”, “All united” could be read during the gathering of 4 million people
all over France to mark the horror of January’s terrorist attacks—on the French
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Paris Hyper Casher supermarket—that left
17 people
dead. It was the largest French demonstration of national unity since World War
II.
Soon, however, some doubts about the ‘real’ motivations of the Charlies in the streets began to emerge. Were they “good citizens" marching again racism, defending tolerance, and republican values? Or, were they rather implicitly demonstrating their rejection of Islam and Muslims, as suggested by the demographer Emmanuel Todd (2015)?
Soon, however, some doubts about the ‘real’ motivations of the Charlies in the streets began to emerge. Were they “good citizens" marching again racism, defending tolerance, and republican values? Or, were they rather implicitly demonstrating their rejection of Islam and Muslims, as suggested by the demographer Emmanuel Todd (2015)?
In his book “Who is Charlie? Sociology of a Religious
Crisis”, Emmanuel Todd (2015) argued that the rallies were not what they appeared
to be. Far from corresponding to the image of people standing together conveyed
by the media, Todd thinks that the deeper motivations of the Charlies in the
streets were islamophobic—although they publicly displayed antiracist attitudes.
His massively contested and controversial book instantly became a bestseller,
with more than 60 000 copies sold worldwide.
A special collection
on the social and political psychology of terrorism was recently published in
the International Review of Social Psychology (IRSP), with two articles
focusing on what drove Charlie Hebdo’s marchers.
The Charlie Hebdo marchers explicitly displayed egalitarian values
The article of Nonna
Mayer and Vincent Tiberj (“Who were the
« Charlie » in the streets? A socio-political approach of the January
11 rallies”) analyzed the socio-cultural, political, and ideological
profile of the participants to the Charlie rallies through a large national
survey. The research was conducted between March, 3 and 11, 2015, on a representative
sample of 1040 French people. The results showed that those who participated in
the rallies were mostly young, urban, educated, and leftwing citizens—which
does not reflect the MAZ bloc (“Middle class, Aged and Zombies”; i.e., culturally catholic)
described by Todd. The most inclined to join the Charlie Hebdo rallies were
those with the lowest declared scores of islamophobia and xenophobia. In other
words, those who had negative explicit attitudes toward Muslims and Islam
participated less than those who had not.
There was no dissociation between implicit and explicit
In the same vein, Oulmann
Zerhouni, Marine Rougier, and Dominique Muller (“"Who (really) is Charlie?" French cities with lower implicit
prejudice toward Arabs demonstrated larger participation rates in Charlie Hebdo
rallies ») questioned Todd’s assumption about the deeper motivations
of the Charlie Hebdo’s marchers. Indeed, Todd’s hypothesis leads one to think
that even if those marchers would publicly display antiracist attitudes, they
were ultimately driven by islamophobic implicit
attitudes (i.e., that were not part of their conscious experience), deriving
from the Catholic background of the cities involved. Through the use of data on
the French/Arab Implicit Association Test (IAT)—able to reveal subtle or implicit
level of prejudice toward an outgroup—they tested whether implicit prejudice,
measured at a city-level, could predict the participation rate observed in
these same French cities. Their results showed that cities implicitly biased
against Arabs (as compared with French) participated less, and not more, to the
rallies. Importantly, highly culturally catholic cities did not provide higher
IAT scores compared to cities with less or small Catholic background, which
means that the larger participation observed in these cities cannot be
attributed to anti-Arab prejudice.
In sum, in contrast
to Todd’s claim, these two studies showed that those who participated to the
rallies publicly displayed egalitarian values on the one hand, and that the cities
who participated the most to the rallies showed less implicit xenophobic
attitudes, not more, on the other hand. Thus, it seems that Todd’s argument
about the “unconscious” drive deriving from historical and religious traditions
of the people who joined the rallies is, one more time, being challenged.
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References
Mayer, N., &
Tiberj, V. (2016). Who were the «Charlie» in the Streets? A Socio-Political Approach of the January 11
Rallies [Qui étaient Les “Charlie” dans la rue? Approche Socio-Politique des
Rassemblements du 11 Janvier]. International Review of Social Psychology, 29(1).
Todd, E. (2015). Who is Charlie? Sociology of a
Religious Crisis [Qui
est Charlie?: Sociologie d’une crise religieuse]. Paris: Seuil.
Zerhouni, O., Rougier,
M., & Muller, D. (2016). “Who (Really) is Charlie?” French Cities with
Lower Implicit Prejudice toward Arabs Demonstrated Larger Participation Rates
in Charlie Hebdo Rallies [“Qui est (Vraiment) Charlie?” Les Villes Françaises à plus Faible niveau de
Préjugés Implicites envers les Maghrébins ont davantage Participé aux
rassemblements de Charlie Hebdo]. International Review of Social Psychology, 29(1).
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Read the summery of the
special collection and download these (open-access) articles here: http://psysoc-bullhorn.blogspot.fr/2016/09/international-review-of-social.html#.V-puTjLpN1M
Learn more about the
IRSP on the IRSP's website (http://www.rips-irsp.com) and blog (http://psysoc-bullhorn.blogspot.fr).
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