Measuring fear specifically captures anti-Muslim prejudice better than general prejudice scales do

Evidence

As Islamophobia is defined in terms of fear, the theoretical basis and assessment of this construct should be focused on the emotion of fear and not broader constructs, such as preferences and prejudices, even though they are all conceptually related. Measurement that focuses on fear is expected to provide unique insights into people’s reactions to Muslims and the religion of Islam because emotions have been shown to exert specific influences on intergroup reactions (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005; Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2003; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000). … In addition to not focusing on emotion, a major limitation of some of the instruments previously discussed is that they often confound the Arab ethnicity with the Islamic faith. Because a large proportion of Muslims are not Arab (Gottschalk & Greenberg, 2008), those measures only apply to a minority of Muslims and not to the Islamic faith and Muslim people as a whole. — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 18

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames Islamophobia operationally as fear rather than as preference or prejudice, which determines what a valid instrument must measure.
• XREF: Connects to intergroup-emotion research (Cottrell & Neuberg; Mackie, Devos & Smith) and to the problem of conflating Arab ethnicity with Muslim faith.