Do social psychology publications of Muslim populations reflect Orientalist and colonial themes? A Content Analysis and reflection on decolonization

This research advances the argument that references to Muslim populations in social psychological research tend to reproduce aspects of Western coloniality. A content analysis of the top ranked social psychology and psychology of religion journals was conducted, resulting in a final database of 231 publications. Content analysis revealed that implicit colonial themes were reflected in a large body of these publications. These themes were: (1) belief that Muslims have inherent tendencies towards radicalization; (2) belief that Muslims are Arab/Middle Eastern; (3) belief that Muslims are foreign; (4) identification of Muslims using external visible markers; and, (5) use of Western comparative samples against Muslim samples. The most prevalent theme reflected the belief that Muslims are foreign. Analyses of citation counts revealed that North American publications were most frequently cited accounting for over 60% of citations. Geocoded analysis of the corresponding author’s university affiliation revealed that implicit colonial themes were reflected in publications from North America and Europe, two regions where Muslims are a demographic minority. To our knowledge, this is among the first empirical study demonstrating empirical linkages between coloniality of knowledge about Muslims and references to Muslims in contemporary publications.