Levels Of Prejudice Research Articles

Association between perceived discrimination and food insecurity among sexual minority men.

Background: Despite numerous studies focusing on the burden of food insecurity, few have assessed its impact among sexual minority (LGB) populations. Sexual minority individuals are subject to chronic levels of stress, including stigma, prejudice, and discrimination as a result of their sexual orientation identity. While few studies have documented food insecurity among sexual minorities, the relationship between food insecurity and discrimination among this stigmatized population remains unclear. Aim: This study aimed to assess the toll of food insecurity among a sample of sexual minority men (i.e. bisexual and gay men) in the U.S. Guided by the Minority Stress Theory, the study also assessed the relationship between food insecurity and perceived discrimination. Methods: Researchers disseminated an online survey and recruited gay and bisexual men in the U.S. The survey collected participants' demographic information, perceived discrimination, and food insecurity. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to examine the association between perceived discrimination and food insecurity. Results: A total of 504 sexual minority men (49.2% bisexual and 50.8% gay) completed the survey. Results from logistic regression models suggest perceived discrimination was significantly associated with food insecurity (OR = 1.14, CI: 1.11-1.18). Those living with a partner demonstrated lower odds of food insecurity (OR = 0.38, CI: 0.18-0.71). Conclusion: The present study found a significant association between perceived discrimination and food insecurity among sexual minority men. The findings need to be replicated and further explored through additional research, including qualitative methods, to better elucidate how discrimination is related to experiences with food insecurity among gay and bisexual men.

Antilocution and trust in the workplace: Perceptions of higher education trained police recruits in England and Wales

Abstract This study seeks to examine the relationship between antilocution and trust in the workplace by reflecting on the perceptions of police officers who are undertaking the new Higher Education (HE) pathway into the policing profession in England and Wales. This relationship is considered through Allport (1979). ‘The Nature of Prejudice. New York, NY: Perseus’ concept of antilocution and the lens of trust in the workplace, to understand how new police students think they are regarded by their policing colleagues and its impact on practice. Utilizing a survey of police students from five different forces in England and Wales, indicative results suggest that, whilst broadly supportive of new police officers, there may be some division regarding their education and training pathway through higher education, engendering levels of prejudice and bias towards the new recruits. Police student responses indicate that many of them feel that more is expected of them and that they are under closer supervision because they have undertaken the Higher Education route. Arguably, this prejudice and bias have an adverse effect on trust within the workplace, a concept which is front and centre of policing which ultimately can have a negative impact on public safety and security. The results of this study indicate that the interaction between new recruits (out-group) and established colleagues (in-group) is complex and not straightforward, and suggested implications for police practice are presented.

Barriers to the right to HIV prevention health care for men who have sex with men (MSM) in Barbados: an examination of anti-gay prejudice

PurposeA consensus in the literature is that anti-gay prejudice has a negative impact on HIV programming for men who have sex with men (MSM). This paper aims to analyse the prevalence and predictors of anti-gay prejudice in Barbados, an island in the Caribbean, and possible impacts on the full recognition of the right to health care.Design/methodology/approachThe study used nationally representative data obtained from the Caribbean Development Research Services capturing anti-gay prejudice in Barbados in 2004, 2013 and 2019. The data were analysed using logit models and ordinary least squares regression.FindingsThe share of persons who expressed feelings of hatred towards gays and lesbians did not change significantly over the period. Social distance attitudes improved between 2004 and 2013 but have not changed since. Men generally expressed more prejudice than women and male sexual prejudice could be localised to three groups – men without tertiary education, men under 51 and members of non-Christian religions. Meanwhile, there was little consistency in the predictors of women’s attitudes over the period.Originality/valueThis study provides insights into the trends in attitudes towards sexual minorities in a developing country. The main conclusion is that although health care is provided as a universal right to all Barbadians, a strictly medical approach to HIV prevention among MSM in countries with high levels of anti-gay prejudice is insufficient.

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

"Economic support? They don't really need it". Prejudice towards Latin American immigrants in Argentina.

In recent years the percentage of Latin American immigrants in Argentina has grown all over the country. However, due to the economic crisis that the country is going through, the State offers economic support to the entire population, even to Latin American immigrants living in Argentina. Therefore, prejudiced attitudes towards these minority groups have increased. The aim of this study was to explore differences according to prejudice levels and country regions in the belief that Latin American immigrants who receive some kind of economic support do not really need it. Second, if the acceptance of granting economic support to immigrants can be explained by a theoretical model that includes conservative and self-enhancement values, right wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and prejudice towards them. Participants were 1570 non-immigrants adults (between 18 and 75 years old, Mage = 38.37; SD = 15.65), 55.1% female, grouped according to their region of residence (largest urban centers, smaller cities and border areas). Results of a path model indicate that values and ideological attitudes seem to underlie prejudice towards Latin American immigrants. Moreover, differences in the levels of prejudice according to the region where participants live, were found.

Believing that prejudice can change increases children's interest in interracial interactions.

Children begin interacting less across racial lines around middle childhood, but it remains unclear why. We examine the novel possibility that, at that time, children's prejudice theories-their understanding of prejudice as a fixed or malleable attribute-begin to influence their desire for interracial affiliation. We devise immersive behavioral experiences to evaluate when and how prejudice theories affect interracial affiliation. Study 1 measured prejudice theories among 8-13-year-olds (N=152; 76 White, 76 racial minority) and observed children in a newly-developed social interaction task. In line with our hypothesis, children older than 10 years with stronger malleable-prejudice theories exhibited more interest and affiliation in a simulated cross- (vs. same-race) interaction, regardless of their preexisting prejudice level. Study 2 randomly assigned children to listen to a fixed- or malleable-prejudice theory story before engaging in a real, first-time interaction with a same- or cross-race partner at a different school via live video-stream (N=150; 96 White, 54 racial minority). The malleable theory increased children's interest in further interaction with their cross-race partner. These findings highlight the promise of malleable-prejudice theories for sustaining positive interracial relationships during a critical developmental window-when the frequency of cross-race friendships typically declines.

Avaliação de uma Intervenção Formativa em Sexualidade e Gênero para Professoras de Educação Infantil

Abstract The themes of sexuality and gender must be addressed at all stages of schooling. However, there is a certain invisibility during childhood, as well as a lack of interventions focused on educators. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a formative intervention about sexuality and gender in teachers of Early Childhood Education, in relation to the level of prejudice and attitudes related to sexual and gender diversity, gender roles, and educational competences for working with LGBT students. In total, 37 teachers participated in the study. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were performed in the form of parametric tests (paired samples t-tests) and a thematic analysis. The intervention was positively evaluated, the prejudice level was significantly reduced and there was an immediate effect in relation to the application of knowledge. We suggest the development of interventions on subtle manifestations of prejudice towards sexual diversity and gender roles.

Prejudice Toward People With Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, and Depression: Measurement, Structure, and Antecedents.

Many existing measures of prejudiced attitudes toward people with mental illness have conceptual, theoretical, and psychometric problems. The recently created Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness (PPMI) scale has addressed many of these limitations, but prejudice toward people with different mental disorders may be unique and require further exploration. This study aimed to facilitate this exploration by adapting the PPMI to focus on schizophrenia and depression, and investigate the structure, distinctiveness, and the nomological network of prejudice toward people with these mental disorders. We adapted the original 28-item PPMI scale to create the Prejudice toward People with Schizophrenia (PPS) and Prejudice toward People with Depression (PPD) scales. There were 406 participants from the general population, who completed these scales and related measures. The original 4-factor structure (fear/avoidance, unpredictability, authoritarianism, and malevolence) was supported for each scale. Participants expressed the highest levels of prejudice toward people with schizophrenia, followed by prejudice toward people with mental illness, and lastly by prejudice toward people with depression. Analyses supported the proposed nomological network of prejudice, which involves theoretical antecedents of social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, empathy, personality traits, disgust sensitivity, and prior contact. This research provides evidence for the validity and psychometric properties of the PPMI, PPS, and PPD scales, expanding our understanding of antecedents to prejudice toward people with different mental disorders. This research also shows that we gain more insight into prejudice when we use measures targeting specific disorders rather than mental illness in general.

Funcionamento Familiar de Pessoas com Deficiência: Análise Baseada em Clusters

Abstract Disability tends to impact family functioning in different ways. The aim of this study was to investigate the family functioning clusters of people with disabilities, comparing them in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, social support, autonomy, and prejudice. A sociodemographic questionnaire, Family Cohesion and Flexibility Rating Scale, Prejudice Scale and Social Support Satisfaction Scale were used in 205 people. Three clusters were identified: Low, Medium, and High Family Functioning. The low Family Functioning group had the lowest levels of Social Support and highest levels of prejudice; whereas the high Family Functioning group was characterized by higher education, higher Social Support, and lower prejudice. In conclusion, the relevance of understanding disability and its impact on Family Functioning is highlighted from a broader viewpoint, which relates it to psychosocial variables (prejudice, Social Support and schooling), beyond the issue of the injury itself.

Science interrupted Our attempt to study disgust sensitivity and the development of political attitudes among children and their parents.

Recent research contends that the behavioral immune system, operating largely outside conscious awareness, motivates individuals to exhibit higher levels of prejudice toward unfamiliar out-groups. This research finds that individual variance in disgust sensitivity correlates with support for political policies that facilitate the avoidance of out-groups. We were interested in developing less intrusive indicators of disgust sensitivity via olfactory measures (i.e., ratings of disgusting odors) and behavioral measures (e.g., willingness to touch disgusting objects) and studying the association between measures of disgust sensitivity and in-group bias among children and adults. We submitted a registered report to conduct this research and received an in-principle acceptance. Unfortunately, unforeseen events impaired our data collection, leaving us with a limited sample (nchildren = 32, nadults = 29) and reducing our ability to draw reliable conclusions from our results. In this essay, we describe our motivation and plan of research, the events that made completing the research impossible, and our preliminary results. In doing so, we hope to offer support for studying the effects of the behavioral immune system, even in ways that we did not originally plan. We conclude with a reflection on the value of registered reports for advancing science.

White College Students' Racial Prejudice and Perceptions of Racial Hate Crime.

This study investigated how racial prejudice influences White college students' perceptions of hate crime. We also examined the moderating effects of the race of the victim of hate crimes and the absence of hate crime laws. Our sample included 581 White students in a predominantly White university located in a state that does not have a hate crime law. The study was set up in a 2 (race of the victim and the perpetrator) × 3 (level of assault) factorial design. Participants rated their perceptions of three scenarios (i.e., non-racially biased simple assault, racially biased simple assault, and racially biased aggravated assault). The dependent variables were perceptions of hate crime and willingness to report. The key independent variable was participants' level of racial prejudice. The moderators included race of the victim in each scenario and whether participants' state of origin has a hate crime law. Results suggest that higher levels of modern racism were associated with lower perceptions of hate crime and lower willingness to report racially biased simple and aggravated hate crime. When the victim was White, participants with higher levels of racial prejudice were more likely to perceive a hate crime and more willing to report it. The opposite was true when the victim was Black. The absence of state hate crime laws and race of victim were significant moderators. Our study suggests that racial prejudice is associated with lower perceptions of hate crime and willingness to report. Furthermore, the moderating effect of the race of victims provides insights on how racial prejudice can lead to a differential perception of hate crime, depending on whether one's racial in-group is targeted. Our findings also highlight the importance of having state-level hate crime laws to mitigate the linkage between modern racism and perceptions of hate crime.

Are patients with obesity "scapegoats"? The obesity prejudice levels of health care workers in Turkey.

This study assessed obesity prejudice levels, attitudes, and perceptions of health care workers toward individuals with obesity and the relationship between health care workers' perceptions of own and society's weight bias, healthy lifestyle preferences, body mass index, and other factors with obesity prejudice levels. This cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted with 700 health care workers in Turkey via an online survey addressing characteristics, perceptions, and attitudes toward obesity including an obesity prejudice scale. Categorical variables were expressed as frequencies and percentages. The χ² test was applied to compare categorical variables. The distribution of the data was evaluated by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Normally distributed data were compared by an independent sample t-test, while the Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used for comparing non-normally distributed data. Participants' mean age was 40.2±11.3 years and 67.9% were women. Notably, 57.9% worked at tertiary health care centers, 85.9% were physicians, and 64.8% were family physicians; 25% were prejudicial, while 58.1% tended to have prejudice toward individuals with obesity. Obesity prejudice scores were significantly higher among those who were in close contact with and who stated their preference for patients with obesity. Half of the participants tended to have prejudice, and one-fourth were prejudicial toward individuals with obesity. These results highlight the necessity of raising awareness of health care workers to reduce prejudicial attitudes that may negatively impact patients with obesity. Stigmatizing experiences might be detrimental, reducing the quality of life with long-term consequences for emotional and physical health.

Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Efrén Pérez about Political Psychology and the Study of Race and Ethnic Politics

Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Efrén Pérez about Political Psychology and the Study of Race and Ethnic Politics

Social dominance orientation and differential affect toward immigrant origin groups: Evidence from three immigration-receiving countries

Recent evidence suggests that majority group members in immigration-receiving societies express differential levels of prejudice and stereotyping toward various immigrant origins. However, there is little research on whether this tendency to differentiate between more vs. less liked immigrant groups is informed by essential psychological motivations and systematically related to individual differences. In this paper, I test whether majority group members’ propensity to express greater differences in affect toward immigrant origins is associated with social dominance orientation. Using survey studies carried out in the Netherlands, the United States, and Britain, I demonstrate that majority group members’ tendency to express differential affect toward immigrant origins holds across national contexts. I also show that individual-level inclination to differentiate between more and less liked immigrant groups is consistently related to social dominance orientation in all three countries. Overall, my findings confirm the group-specific character of anti-immigration attitudes and highlight the role of social-dominance motivations in prejudice toward immigrants.

Effects of Religious Discrimination and Fear for Safety on Life Satisfaction for Muslim Americans

Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between two forms of religious discrimination (religious prejudice and environmental discrimination) and life satisfaction among a sample of Muslim Americans. Based on the framework of minority stress theory, we also hypothesized that higher levels of religious prejudice as well as environmental discrimination, would significantly relate to higher fear of safety, and in turn, would relate to lower life satisfaction. Method: A total of 192 Muslim American participants (Age M= 27.87) completed an on-line survey about their experiences as Muslim American. Women made up almost 75% of the sample.Results: Findings revealed that higher religious prejudice as well as environmental discrimination were both significantly related to lower life satisfaction and that fear of safety partially mediated both of these relationships. Conclusions:  Findings help illustrate that Muslim Americans are not immune to the social-political climate of Islamophobia and can experience religious discrimination in different ways. In addition, women and younger participants expressed higher fear of safety when compared to men and older participants. Professionals who work with individuals from the Muslim community are encouraged to consider the chronic and on-going impact of stress that Muslim Americans face especially within the context of the United States.

“I'm a salesman and my client is China”: Language learning motivation, multicultural attitudes, and multilingualism among university students in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

The Central Asian republics represent an interesting yet little-studied space for researching the interplay between language learning motivation (LLM), multiculturalism, and multilingualism given their cultural and linguistic diversity and official promotion of multilingualism and positive multicultural attitudes through language learning initiatives in schools and universities. This article reports on a questionnaire study that investigated the LLM of 235 university students in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, including their integrativeness and international posture. The students were learning Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish, with a majority of them learning two or more languages concurrently. The study also explored their views regarding the benefits of being multilingual and the extent to which their level of multilingualism, both formally and natively acquired, affected their multicultural attitudes and levels of prejudice towards outgroups. The findings revealed statistically significant gender differences in how the participants viewed the benefits of being multilingual, as well as statistically significant relationships between their levels of natively acquired multilingualism and their multicultural attitudes and levels of prejudice towards outgroups. International posture and integrativeness, meanwhile, were found to be distinct concepts with little overlap.

Pliable Prejudice: The Case of Welfare

AbstractThe conventional wisdom maintains that whites’ racial predispositions are exogenous to their views of welfare. Against this position, scattered studies report that prejudice moves in response to new information about policies and groups. Likewise, theories of mediated intergroup contact propose that when individuals encounter messages about racial outgroups, their levels of prejudice may wax or wane. In conjunction, these lines of work suggest that whites update their global views of blacks based on how they feel about people on welfare. The current article tests this “prejudice revision” hypothesis with data from “welfare mother” vignettes embedded on national surveys administered in 1991, 2014, and 2015 and ANES panel data from the 1990s. The results indicate that views of welfare recipients systematically affect racial stereotypes, racial resentment, individualistic explanations for racial inequality, and structural explanations for racial inequality. Prejudice, in short, is endogenous to welfare attitudes.

Anti-black prejudice in Asian American public opinion

ABSTRACT Despite the growing size and political relevance of the Asian American population, existing research provides limited insight into how anti-Black prejudice shapes Asian American public opinion. Using four Cooperative Congressional Election Surveys (CCES) and additional tests using two National Asian American Surveys (NAAS), I show four key findings. First, US-born Asians exhibit lower levels of anti-Black prejudice than foreign-born Asians even after accounting for the effects of other plausible influences. Furthermore, both groups are more racially sympathetic than whites. Second, US-born Asians’ racial attitudes liberalized at a faster rate than foreign-born Asians’ after 2016, in line with trends found in existing research on white Democrats. Third, despite having lower overall levels of anti-Black animus, US-born Asians’ racial sentiments are more strongly correlated with a variety of political attitudes than the racial sentiments of their foreign-born counterparts. Fourth, this racialization of political attitudes for US-born Asians appears to be the result of racially liberal US-born Asians being especially likely to hold liberal political views.

Attitudes Toward Lesbians, Gay Men, and Their Rights in a Sample of Ecuadorian Cisgender Men and Women

ABSTRACT Since 1997, Ecuador has undergone a series of changes to ensure family rights to sexual minorities. However, there is still limited research regarding attitudes toward them. This study focused on the attitudes toward lesbians (L), gay men (G), and their rights. A sample of 318 cisgender Ecuadorians who responded to an online survey was recruited. Analyses indicated that men, heterosexuals, who practice their religion, attend more frequently to religious services, and identify as conservative showed higher levels of prejudice against LG as well as less support toward their rights. Further, participants who did not have LG acquaintances, friends, family members, and those who did not know any LG parented family showed less support toward these populations. Multiple regression analyses indicated that believing that a person’s sexual orientation is learned significantly predicted the attitudes measured in our study. Implications of these findings to help reduce prejudice against LG individuals are discussed.

Intergroup Attitudes and Interpersonal Relationships in Online Contact between Groups in Conflict

ABSTRACT This exploratory study examined changes in intergroup attitudes and interpersonal relationships between members of virtual groups from diverse and conflicting backgrounds in an intergroup contact program. Seventy-six students took part in a collaborative online course during one academic year connecting Jews and Arabs in Israel. They marked their perceived distance to their team members at the beginning and end of the course using the novel Team Circles tool. Initially both Arab and Jewish students felt closer to their in-group team members. However, perceived distances decreased significantly over time with Arab students reporting equal perceived distances to their in-group and out-group members after the course. The results from the Team Circles test were combined with repeated measures of intergroup attitudes using Implicit Association Tests. Although no significant changes in intergroup attitudes were observed, greater reduction in perceived distances to out-group team members resulted in lower levels of prejudice toward the out-group as a whole after the course.