Studying the Relationship between National Pride and Prejudice in Context

Abstract

Within the fields of (political) sociology, history, social psychology and educational and communication sciences there has been considerable interest over the relationship between various forms of collective ethnic, national or racial pride and ethnic, national or racial prejudice (e.g. Harnetz 2002; Kyriakides, Virdee and Modood 2009; Wagner et al. 2012). There is no agreement between social scientists in how to define related concepts such as prejudice, racism, stereotypes and discrimination. Sociologists usually fall back on Allport’s (1954) definition of prejudice (Quillian 2006), as something that consists of both an affective (antipathy or a negative emotion or feeling towards a particular group) and a cognitive dimension (a stereotype or a poorly founded beliefs about a particular out-group). Racism is then conceptualized as prejudice and/or discrimination, the latter representing a behavioural dimension. However, the socio-psychological ABC model of attitudes assumes that an attitude has three components: an affective (prejudice), a behavioural (discrimination) and a cognitive (stereotypes) component. Stereotypes are then perceived as a set of beliefs about the group or individual, which determine (rationalize) prejudice, or negative feeling towards a person or group based on their affiliation with a group (Dovidio et al. 1996).