Abstract
The complex phenomenon of prejudice has been the focus of interest among social psychologists since the mid-20th century. The Intergroup Threat Theory (ITT) is one of the most efficient theoretical frameworks to identify the triggers of prejudice. In this study, using experimental design, we examined the effects of symbolic and realistic threats on prejudice that was measured by means of a modified social distance scale. The study participants were 611 undergraduate students from the country of Georgia. In addition to providing further support for ITT, the study showed that the level of religiosity moderated the effects between both types of threats and prejudice, although it had different indications for realistic and symbolic threats, while gender interacted only with symbolic threat. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Highlights
The differences between the mean scores of prejudice across realistic threat and control ("no threat") condition as well as symbolic threat and control ("no threat") condition were verified by the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)
The findings provide evidence that the manipulations of realistic and symbolic threats were successful and confirm that threats alone have a potential to account for an increase in prejudice, as has been shown by previous studies (e.g., Aberson & Gaffney, 2008; Riek et al, 2006; Stephan & Stephan, 1996; Stephan et al, 2002)
Along with realistic and symbolic threats, the level of religiosity significantly predicted both factors of prejudice, while gender emerged as a fourth predictor for the second factor
Summary
Considering the real-life relevance of threats (e.g., Quillian, 1995), the aim of the current study is to show that threat-evoking contexts elicit prejudice. Drawing upon ITT, we test the effects of both, symbolic and realistic threats on prejudice and by manipulating the two threatening situations through exposing the participants to information about fictitious out-groups, we examine whether they have different effects as compared to the situation where threat is absent (control condition). We explore the demographic variables that have been shown to be associated with prejudice. These variables include the participants’ gender and the level of religiosity. Expecting that both factors are related to prejudice, their interactions with threats are tested to examine whether any of the two moderates the relation between threats and prejudice and whether the interaction is different for realistic and symbolic threats. Given that symbolic threats are related to traditions, customs and values (Stephan et al, 2009), we assume that the interaction effect between religiousness and this type of threat will be stronger than for the realistic threat
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