Acceptance and Rejection as a Function of Ethnicity and Belief Intensity

Abstract

Summary One hundred forty-two white tenth-grade high school students served as Ss in a study designed to investigate the race-belief question with a Canadian analogue of black-white relations in the United States. In addition to ethnicity, the relative importance of belief to the respondent was examined. It was found that a minority group member was more accepted by the white majority than his majority group counterpart when they both expressed high intensity beliefs similar to those of the majority and that a minority group member was less rejected by the majority than a majority group member when they both expressed high intensity beliefs dissimilar to those of the majority. These findings were discussed in light of a number of other studies that suggest that disconfirmation of expectations is the crucial variable in altering social distance.