@article{ref1,
title="Beyond anti-Muslim sentiment: opposing the Ground Zero mosque as a means to pursuing a stronger America",
journal="Psychological science",
year="2011",
author="Jia, Lile and Karpen, Samuel C. and Hirt, Edward R.",
volume="22",
number="10",
pages="1327-1335",
abstract="Americans' opposition toward building an Islamic community center at Ground Zero has been attributed solely to a general anti-Muslim sentiment. We hypothesized that some Americans' negative reaction was also due to their motivation to symbolically pursue a positive U.S. group identity, which had suffered from a concurrent economic and political downturn. Indeed, when participants perceived that the United States was suffering from lowered international status, those who identified strongly with the country, as evidenced especially by a high respect or deference for group symbols, reported a stronger opposition to the &quot;Ground Zero mosque&quot; than participants who identified weakly with the country did. Furthermore, participants who identified strongly with the country also showed a greater preference for buildings that were symbolically congruent than for buildings that were symbolically incongruent with the significance of Ground Zero, and they represented Ground Zero with a larger symbolic size. These findings suggest that identifying group members' underlying motivations provides unusual insights for understanding intergroup conflict.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0956-7976",
doi="10.1177/0956797611417256",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417256"
}