IMPACT OF PARENTING STYLE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE IN ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

Religion is a set of organized beliefs, practices, and systems that most often relate to belief and worship of a controlling force such as a personal god or another supernatural being. While this is a basic definition, there are many different understandings of what religion is and not all religions are centred on a belief in a god, gods, or supernatural forces. The aim of the present study is to understand the impact of parenting style on the development of prejudice relating to religion among adolescents. Prejudice is an assumption or an opinion about someone simply based on that person's membership to a particular group. For example, people can be prejudiced against someone else of a different ethnicity, gender, or religion. Religion is a major influence on the lives of many parents, and therefore their belief system also plays very important role in the inculcation of prejudice in children. Nevertheless, influence of parenting style on prejudice development in adolescents is a very poorly researched area. In this study data was collected from 200 subjects which includes pairs of 100 parent and child. Data was gathered by using Religious discrimination scale developed by Allen et al., 2020, which is a 5-point Likert scale and included 11 items. Parenting style Questionnaire scale modified version based on work of Robinson et al., 1995 was used to understand the parenting style adopted by parents and its role in religious prejudice. Results indicate that parents and Adolescents religious prejudice correlate positively to some extent. Parents’ religious prejudice explains adolescents prejudice significantly but the predicted variance is lower and practicing a particular parenting style by parents to higher level have no effect on their religious prejudice and also to their child religious prejudice.