“Who (Really) is Charlie?” French Cities with Lower Implicit Prejudice toward Arabs Demonstrated Larger Participation Rates in Charlie Hebdo Rallies <br/> [“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]
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.50Keywords:
Implicit Association Test, Implicit prejudice, Implicit social cognition, Group Behavior, Culture, Tâche d’Association Implicite, Préjugés implicites, cognition sociale implicite, Comportements collectifsAbstract
Following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack that happened on January 7th 2015, around 4 million people gathered all over France in a rally of national unity. Soon, however, critics argued that those who participated to the rallies publicly displayed antiracist attitudes, but were driven by implicit prejudice toward Muslims. Our study addresses the question of whether implicit prejudice measured at the city-level can predict participation rates observed in these cities. We used data from the French/Arab IAT of the Project Implicit collected from 2007 to 2014 on the French territory (n = 3365, 35 cities) and computed mean IAT scores for each city. We then tested whether the IAT scores predicted the participation rate observed in each city. In sharp contrast with the idea that Charlie Hebdo marchers were implicitly biased against Muslims, we found that cities implicitly biased against Arabs (as compared with French) participated less, and not more, to the Charlie Hebdo rallies. These results also show, for the first time, that the level of implicit prejudice measured at the city-level, sometime several years before an event (2007), can predict large scale social behaviors.
Résumé
Suite aux attentats de Charlie Hebdo du 7 janvier 2015, plus de 4 millions d’individus se sont rassemblés en France dans un élan d’unité nationale. Rapidement, des critiques ont émergé, soutenant que même si les manifestants ont affiché des attitudes ouvertement antiracistes, ils étaient en fait motivés par des préjugés implicites vis-à-vis de la population musulmane. Notre étude traite la question de savoir si les préjugés implicites mesurés au niveau d’une ville peuvent prédire les taux de participation aux manifestations dans chacune de ces villes. Pour cela, nous avons utilisé les données issues de l’IAT Français/Maghrébins du Project Implicit collectées en France entre 2007 et 2014 (N = 3365, 35 villes) et calculé un score IAT moyen pour chaque ville. Nous avons ensuite testé si ces scores IAT permettaient de prédire le taux de participation observé dans chaque ville. Contrairement à l’idée que les « manifestants Charlie Hebdo » aient été poussés par des préjugés implicites vis-à-vis des musulmans, nous avons observé que les villes les plus biaisées à l’encontre du groupe « Maghrébins » (en comparaison au groupe « Français ») ont moins, et non pas davantage, participé aux manifestations Charlie Hebdo. Ces résultats montrent également, pour la première fois, que le niveau de préjugés implicites mesuré au niveau de la ville, parfois plusieurs années avant le comportement cible (2007), permet de prédire des comportements de masse.
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