Religiosity, compassion and attitudes toward refugees

Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je ispitati odnos religioznosti, suosjećanja i stavova prema izbjeglicama kod studenata te ispitati razlikuju li se mladići i djevojke u navedenim varijablama. Mjerenje je provedeno na prigodnom uzorku od 166 studenata Medicinskog fakulteta u Osijeku. Osim Sociodemografskog upitnika, za procjenu religioznosti korišten je Upitnik religioznosti (Ljubotina, 2015), za mjerenje suosjećanja koristila se Skala suosjećanja (Pommier, 2010), a za ispitivanje stavova prema izbjeglicama korišteni su Upitnik stavova prema izbjeglicama (Bošnjak, Grgić, Lovaković, Marković, Mataja i Stojak, 2016) i Skala socijalne distance (Bogardus, 1933). Djevojke su pokazivale veći stupanj suosjećanja i religijskih vjerovanja od mladića. Spolne razlike nisu utvrđene na drugim dimenzijama i ukupnom rezultatu religioznosti, stavovima prema izbjeglicama i socijalnoj distanci. Utvrđena je pozitivna povezanost suosjećanja i religioznosti te pozitivnih stavova prema izbjeglicama. S druge strane, nije pronađena povezanost suosjećanja i socijalne distance, kao ni religioznosti i stavova prema izbjeglicama te socijalne distance. Provedenom hijerarhijskom regresijskom analizom dobiveno je kako je jedino suosjećanje značajan prediktor stavova prema izbjeglicama, što znači da sudionici s većim stupnjem suosjećanja imaju pozitivnije stavove.The aim of this study was to examine relationship between religiosity, compassion and attitudes towards refugees and gender differences between them. The study was conducted on convenient sample of 166 students of Faculty of Medicine in Osijek. Beside the Sociodemographic Questionaire, The Religiosity Questionaire (Ljubotina, 2015) was used to measure the level of religiosity, The Compassion scale to measure level of compassion, The Attitudes Towards Refugees Questionaire (Bošnjak, Grgić, Lovaković, Marković, Mataja i Stojak, 2016) to measure attittudes towards refugees as well as Social Distance Scale (Bogardus, 1933). The results suggest that young women showed higher level of compassion and religious beliefes than men. No gender differences were found with respect to other dimensions of religiosity, attitudes towards refugees and social distance. Futher, compassion was statistically significant positively related to religiosity and positive attitudes towards refugees. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant relation between compassion and social distance, as well as religiosity and attitudes towards refugees and social distance. The results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that compassion was sole significant predictor of attitudes towards refugees, meaning that participants with higher level of compassion had more positive attitudes