Ethnocentrism and stimulus generalization.

"This study is an attempt to demonstrate that ethnocentrism is related to an 'over-generalization process' as has been postulated by various authors. The performance of a group of student nurses on a stimulus-generalization task was correlated with their scores on the California E scale yielding a significant μ = .44. Some possible theoretical implications are discussed and mention is made of further research which is in progress." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnocentrism and stimulus generalization: A replication and further study.

Data were previously reported giving "support to the hypothesis that ethnocentrism represents an 'overgeneralization phenomena.' " In a study of 60 female student nurses, aged 18 through 22, who were given the MMPI, the CVS Intelligence Scale, and the California Ethnocentrism Scale as well as two stimulus generalization (SG) tasks, significant correlations were not found between E Scale scores and total error scores on each stimulus generalization task. Previous positive finding "must therefore probably be attributed to chance. While present results do not preclude the possibility that ethnocentrism is related to overgeneralization in thinking, the functions involved in performance on the tasks investigated do not appear to be on the same psychological continuum." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnocentrism and tolerance of trait "inconsistency."

"This study has investigated the assumptions which two kinds of people make concerning the likelihood that various human traits will occur together… . High and low ethnocentrics do make different assumptions concerning the likelihood that various pairs of human traits will co-occur. Furthermore, the differences… are in the predicted direction: the assumptions which high ethnocentrics make are more closely related to their appraisals of the desirability of the traits." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnocentrism and the value of a human life.

Drawing on theories of intergroup prejudice and decision making, the authors examined how much participants valued lives of conationals and enemy civilians. Using decisions made under risk, Experiment 1 showed that Americans valued Iraqi and American lives equally when outcomes for those nations did not compete but valued American lives more under outcome competition. Experiments 2 and 3 extended this finding by illustrating ethnocentric valuation even when large numbers of lives were at stake: The number of lives at stake mattered less for enemy civilians than it did for conational combatants. Experiment 4 provided additional evidence of this ethnocentric indifference to magnitude, regardless of combatant status of the conationals' lives. In all experiments, individual difference measures associated with prejudice (e.g., group identification and prejudice, empathy, social dominance orientation, social attitudes) corresponded to ethnocentric valuation measured in decisions. Results demonstrate that categorization, competitive context, and individual propensities for prejudice influence how much one values lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Race prejudice and intolerance of ambiguity in children.

On the basis of tests given to 154 fourth and fifth grade children selected from the public schools of a midwest town, there appears to be no demonstrable relationship between prejudice, as defined by the Horowitz Faces Test and 6 operational definitions of intolerance of ambiguity involving decision time and various analyses of sociometric and Guess Who data. "Since anti-Negro race prejudice, at least in the midwest, is considered to be an important component of the perhaps more general term, ethnocentrism, this study does not support notions of an invariable relationship between ethnocentrism and intolerance of ambiguity… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitization and prejudice.

Slides were shown to two groups of Ss, selected previously for high and low ethnocentrism. Half of the Ss in each group were shown a critical slide picturing a Negro attacking a white man with a knife, the other half were shown a similar slide picturing a white man attacking a Negro with a knife. Recall measures of picture content were then taken. An analysis of the results revealed that the superior recall of the critical pictures attributed to those high in prejudice, when congruous material is presented, was attributed to sensitization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Meta-analysis of correlational relationships between perspectives of truth in religion and major psychological constructs.

The current meta-analysis examined the empirical linkages between (a) absolute versus conditional views of religious truth and (b) widely researched psychological constructs. Measures of religious fundamentalism typically include the notion of absolute religious truth, whereas quest measures reflect the notion of conditional religious truth. The meta-analysis represented the overall relationship between each of these truth orientations and four psychological variables (i.e., authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, militarism, and prejudice) most frequently related to the truth orientations. To accommodate our meta-analytic procedures, we included only studies reporting Pearson product–moment correlations. Participants resided in America, Canada, Korea, Northern Ireland, and England and included undergraduate and graduate students, parents of college students, members of the American Psychological Association, and members of various religious groups. Because of the relatively small number of studies (28) and the small samples used in many of those studies, we used a random effects model as the framework for calculating the average effect sizes. Overall, the psychological constructs tended to be more frequently and strongly related with religious fundamentalism than with religious quest, as well as related in opposite directions with the two perspectives of religious truth. The meta-analysis showed authoritarianism to be the psychological construct most strongly and consistently related to the religious truth orientations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of ethnic attitudes on reasoning about ethnic groups.

"This study was undertaken to investigate further the relationships between ethnic attitudes and objective reasoning about ethnic groups. It was argued that tolerant individuals would bias their reasoning in favor while intolerant individuals would bias their reasoning against ethnic groups. The findings revealed that tolerant individuals biased their reasoning significantly in favor of ethnic groups. However, intolerant individuals did not bias their reasoning significantly against ethnic groups. The lack of bias against ethnic groups was presumptively related to the absence of strongly prejudiced respondents in the sample. Biased reasoning on the part of the unprejudiced individuals challenged the traditional assumption that tolerance is invariably accompanied by superior reality directed thinking." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on "ethnocentrism" and acquiescent response sets.

93 high school students were given the 9-item E scale, the reversed F scale, and the Gough intolerance scale. Even though the Gough intolerance scale correlated positively with the E scale it also correlated positively with agreement to reversed F scale items. The results emphasize the "necessity of controlling item form in studying certain attitude contents, such as 'ethnocentrism' or 'authoritarianism.' " (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The comparability of positive and negative items in scales of ethnic prejudice.

"These findings suggest that the use of positive or negative items or a mixture of both is immaterial in the measurement of ethnic prejudice. All-negative item scales do not appear to possess any intrinsic superiority as has been previously assumed. While these reports support the choice of the E scale when desirable for continuity with earlier research, they equally support the use of a mixed scale when an all-negative (or all-positive) scale is regarded as creating problems of rapport." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural investigation of the relationship between ethnic prejudice, authoritarian ideology, and personality.

The studies done re the validation of the relationship between prejudice and authoritarianism on American Ss confounded ethnic prejudice and political attitude by the nature of the sample. An effort was made to investigate ethnic prejudice (as measured by the F Scale) independent of political (radical-conservatism) commitment by using Ss (Israeli students) demonstrating differential attitudes towards Arabs, but unanimity of feeling against Jewish immigrants from North Africa. The results provided a cross-cultural validation of the relationship between prejudice and authoritarianism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A further investigation of the pretest-treatment interaction effect.

What effect does a pretest have on a study of an attitude-treatment when the topic is of great concern to the Ss? Segregation and vivisection were the topics in comparing pretest-treatment interaction. 224 college students plus 100 others were used as Ss. "Apparently, an attitudinal pretest has no effect on the reception of a succeeding persuasive communication within the limits of involvement of S with the topical continuum represented by vivisection… at one point and ethnic prejudice at another." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguishing institutional identification from academic goal pursuit: Interactive effects of ethnic identification and race-based rejection sensitivity.

We examined the interactive effects of ethnic identification (EI) and race-based rejection sensitivity (RS-race) on institutional outcomes among African American college students. We distinguished between effects on institutional identification on the one hand and academic goal pursuit (e.g., staying in school, grade point average [GPA]) on the other. Supporting the utility of this distinction, we found that EI and RS-race interacted to predict these outcomes differently. Higher EI in combination with higher RS-race predicted reduced identification with the institution (Studies 1, 2, and 3a). This combination, however, did not lead to decreases in GPA over time. Moreover, EI was positively related to intentions to stay in school as well as to GPA increases among those lower in RS-race (Studies 1 and 3b). Implications for understanding identity negotiation vis-à-vis performance in institutional settings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification and changes in prejudice and in authoritarianism.

Ss "were first given the F Scale and a measure of anti-Negro prejudice… . Four weeks later they read a case history of a person who was prejudiced and authoritarian. Half of the subjects were told that the person in the case history was similar to themselves in background and objective personal characteristics. The other half… that the person was dissimilar to them. Three weeks later the F Scale and the anti-Negro prejudice scale were readministered. It was found that those low in prejudice at the first administration became more prejudiced but only if they were told the case history was about someone like themselves… . These results were interpreted in terms of the social support for suppressed 'wrong' feelings and in terms of the pressures to achieve cognitive consistency in one's self-concept." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GD65S. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A justification-suppression model of the expression and experience of prejudice.

The authors propose a justification-suppression model (JSM), which characterizes the processes that lead to prejudice expression and the experience of one's own prejudice. They suggest that "genuine" prejudices are not directly expressed but are restrained by beliefs, values, and norms that suppress them. Prejudices are expressed when justifications (e.g., attributions, ideologies, stereotypes) release suppressed prejudices. The same process accounts for which prejudices are accepted into the self-concept. The JSM is used to organize the prejudice literature, and many empirical findings are recharacterized as factors affecting suppression or justification, rather than directly affecting genuine prejudice. The authors discuss the implications of the JSM for several topics, including prejudice measurement, ambivalence, and the distinction between prejudice and its expression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scaling norm conflicts in the area of prejudice and discrimination.

This study presents the development of a scale measuring militantly antidiscriminatory tendencies in particular social situations which require distinctive resolutions of norm conflicts. The Ss came from the high school population of a New England city who filled out a questionnaire requiring that they choose 1 of 4 courses of action for resolving Negro-white conflict situations. An 8-item Guttman scale resulted with a coefficient of reproducibility of .91. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnocentrism and causal attribution in Southeast Asia.

Tested D. M. Taylor and V. Jaggi's (see record 1975-05049-001) hypothesis of ethnocentric attribution, which states that group members make internal attributions for the positive behavior of other ingroup members and external attributions for their negative behavior, while the reverse holds true for attributions to outgroup members. In Exp I, 34 Malay and 34 Chinese male Malaysan university students were asked to ascribe to internal or external causes the behavior of ingroup and outgroup members performing socially desirable or undesirable acts. The hypothesis was supported only for the Malays, whereas the Chinese favored the outgroup. These results were consistent with a limited analysis of auto- and heterostereotypes. Exp II, with 60 Singaporean male university students, revealed ingroup favoritism for the Malays once again, although the Chinese no longer favored the outgroup. These less extreme results mapped onto the stereotypes and mirrored the more multicultural environment in Singapore. Differences between the studies are discussed in terms of wider sociostructural and cultural influences that indicate that ethnocentric attribution is not a universal tendency. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extrinsic religious values and prejudice.

Religiosity and anti-Semitism highly related. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Racial and ethnic harassment and discrimination: In the eye of the beholder?

The nature, rate, and higher-order relationships among facets of racial/ethnic harassment (REH) and discrimination (RED) were examined across five racial/ethnic groups in a sample of 5,000 US military personnel. Using a hierarchical, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis approach, results suggest that the nature of REH and RED do not differ by race, with behavioral items equally representing REH and RED across the different groups. Further, higher-order relationships among the facets of REH and RED do not vary across race, with a single second-order factor accounting for the relationships. This single factor is theorized to represent a root intergroup prejudice that leads to harassment and discrimination. However, as anticipated, individuals from minority groups generally reported higher levels of REH and RED once measurement equivalence has been established. Together, the results suggest that both intergroup prejudice (which is multidirectional) and racism (which originates in powerful groups against other groups) are operating in REH and RED experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influencing ethnocentrism in small discussion groups through a film communication.

Method and procedure described with tables and graphs. 12 experimental groups using the California Ethnocentrism Scale. "Extent of participation in discussion depends upon the amount of learning that has taken place." 18 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)