Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes听
By:听Ala Alrababah,听William Marble, Salma Mousa,听Alexandra Siegel
听
Abstract:听Can exposure to celebrities from a stigmatized group reduce prejudice toward that group writ large? We estimate the causal effect of Mohammed Salah鈥攁 visibly Muslim soccer player鈥� joining Liverpool Football Club on Islamophobia, using hate crime reports throughout England, 15 million tweets from British soccer fans, and a survey experiment of Liverpool F.C. fans. We find that hate crimes in Merseyside (home to Liverpool F.C.) dropped by 16% compared to a synthetic control, and Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other top-flight clubs. Our survey experiment suggests that the salience of Salah鈥檚 Muslim identity enabled positive feelings toward Salah to generalize to Muslims more broadly. Providing real- world behavioral measures of prejudice reduction and experimental evidence from a naturalistic setting, our findings provide support for the parasocial contact hypothesis, indicating that positive exposure to outgroup celebrities can reduce prejudice.
Read More:听