A research paper sponsored by CIMB Foundation said government programmes such as 1Malaysia, which is aimed at promoting integration, may have unintended consequences.

This is because the paper, titled ‘Attitudes and ethnoreligious integration: Meeting the challenge and maximising the promise of multicultural Malaysia’, found that the concept of 1Malaysia carried different meanings for different races.

Conducted by Oxford University researchers Ananthi Al Ramiah, Miles Hewstone and Ralf Wolfer, the paper found that high levels of national identification (identifying as Malaysian) was more effective in promoting positive attitudes towards other races amongst non-Malays compared to Malays.