The synergistic effect of intergroup threat

combined with minority self-expression on

majority attitudes.

640003613
PSY1203 13/01/2015
Word count = 1996

2 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Abstract

Social psychologists have found that perceived majority intergroup threat and essentialist

language used by the minority have significant effects on majority attitude, however little

research has combined these two factors. Our study combined these factors to examine

their synergistic effect on 174 British students support or opposition for religious

expression, tolerance of Muslim society and essentialist views of religion. Presence of

intergroup threat was manipulated through positive or negative pictures and minority

essentialism was manipulated through a paragraph of self-expression using either nouns

or adjectives. Support, tolerance and majority essentialism were then measured through a

questionnaire. Findings showed that presence of intergroup threat with essentialist

thinking had no consequence for opposition to religious expression and tolerance of the

minority, however essentialist language did in fact reduce tolerance but did not reduce

opposition to the ban. Contrary to previous research, there was also no effect for

support/opposition or tolerance to religious expression when only threat was present. We

concluded by discussing the possible reasons for our results.

PSY1203 640003613

3 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.

Prejudiced attitude is a major problem within the 21st century, even though many

people believe that the days of racism and prejudice are gone. In fact, prejudice has

generally moved from being Overt, with traditional and hateful views, to covert,

involving the hiding of bigoted views until it is perceived as safe to express them, i.e.

With like-minded people (McConahay, 1986). Prejudice becomes especially salient when

intergroup anxiety occurs, which is a feeling of unease between groups. The extent that

the out-groups negative characteristics are perceived as essentialised can also have a

large impact on in-group attitudes. Our study combines these two factors to measure the

effect that they have on the attitudes of British undergraduates on freedom of religious

expression and tolerance of Muslims.

Attitudes, Stereotypes and Prejudice

Attitudes form through situational information being organised during a state of mental

readiness for considered response and future response to similar stimuli, while prejudiced

attitudes are inflexible generalisations that incite antipathy towards groups and group

members (Allport, 1935; Allport, 1954). The middle ground between attitudes and

prejudices are stereotypes, which are the cognitive component of attitudes involving

exaggerated beliefs and information about categories (Allport, 1954). The core causation

of stereotypes and prejudice is generalisation, which stems from childhood expectations

of objects to share dispositional properties if they appear similar (Leslie, In Press). This

human disposition is especially true for negative and dangerous stimuli, most likely

developed as an evolutionary adaptation to deal with unknown situations (Leslie, In

PSY1203 640003613

4 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Print), which would explain why prejudices are intrinsically negative and focus on the

threats created by out-groups.

Essentialism and language: Nouns versus Adjectives

The likelihood of generalisation increases with the use of essentialised language, which

perceives traits as being grounded in the nature of the objects being (Leslie, In Print).

Essentialism is communicated to others by specific parts of speech, especially nouns, as

although in a sentence they appear to serve a similar function to adjectives or verbs,

nouns imply that a trait is stable and immovable from the persons character (Carnaghi et

al, 2008; Walton & Banaji, 2004; Gelman, Ware & Kleinberg, 2010; Gelman & Heyman,

1999; Graf et al, 2012; Maas et al, 1989). One explanation for this comes from Carnaghi

et al (2008), who found that essentialism leads to more noun use, concluding that specific

category membership is more salient when alternative categorizations are inhibited.

Stability and generalisation can increase prejudice against out-groups, as seen in Graf et

al (2012) who found when nouns were used to describe either previous Polish or Jewish

(out-group) owners of a house to Polish participants, they were more inclined to concede

restitution from a Pole rather than a Jew. The majority of previous research focuses on

the effect of in-group essentialist beliefs on attitudes against out-groups, and how this

affects general prejudice attitudes. Our research however is interested in finding out

whether out-group essentialist language will affect in-group support of the out-groups

cause and overall tolerance of the out-group.

PSY1203 640003613

5 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Effects of Inter-group threat

In todays society, the media focuses on the negative biases of out-groups such as

Muslims, causing an increased sense of threat against society. Lemmouh (2008)

described this from the New York Times, where the majority of news featuring Muslims

was violent, using non-neutral representations. Threat is a very strong predictor of

attitudes towards out-groups, as described by Stephan and Stephan (2000) in their

integrated threat theory that focuses on the four different types of threat; realistic,

symbolic, intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes. The most significant of these

appear to be realistic and intergroup anxiety, however all were significant predictors of

attitude towards immigrants (Stephan, Bachman & Ybarra, 1999). General threat causing

in-group anxiety has been found to predict negative attitudes and behaviour (Stephan et

al, 2005; Morgan, Wisneski & Skitka, 2011), however little research has focused on

positive aspects of relations such as support for an out-group cause in the presence of

threat. Also, as far as we know, very little research has combined the factors of threat and

essentialism to see if they will interact to improve or decrease prejudiced attitudes of an

out-group. Thus we predict that threat alone will reduce support for a minority cause, and

essentialist language by the minority will reduce support for the cause. When combined,

we suspect that in the presence of threat, essentialist language will be especially harmful

for the minority cause, while in the absence of threat; essentialist language might be

helpful for the minority cause.

PSY1203 640003613

6 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Method

Participants

A sample of one hundred and seventy four undergraduate psychology students from the

University of Exeter (146 women, 27 men, Mage = 19.51, SD = 3.45) participated as part

of a course module. The study focused solely on British, non-Muslim participants and

subsequently 50 sets of data from people not in this population were excluded from

analysis.

Design

A between measures design was used involving 4 conditions from two Independent

variables; IV1 was of intergroup threat, either activated (N=100) or neutral (N=74), IV2

used either nouns (N=88) or adjectives (N=86) in a statement of minority self-expression.

The three dependent variables were; Strength of support for banning religious expression,

tolerance level of Muslin society and the strength of essentialist thinking about religion.

Procedure and materials

Participants were randomly assigned into two groups and were randomly assigned one of

two questionnaires, involving five sections. Participants gave informed consent after

being told the study was looking at knowledge and opinions of current affairs, and were

not aware of the manipulated conditions. The first IV was presented in the form of three

pictures out of a possible five on an interactive board, two that were either of a positive or

threatening recent event, one that was neutral in both conditions. Section one of the

questionnaire asked participants to name the events shown, rate their importance to

PSY1203 640003613

7 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Britain and whether they were negative or positive. Participants then completed a

distractor question involving naming pictures of six celebrities, to divert their attention

away from the true aim of the study.

Participants then began section three, presented as your attitudes and opinions

about important issues in British society. This included IV2 presented within a paragraph

written by a Muslim woman, describing her self-identity using nouns; I am or

adjectives; I believe. From reading this paragraph, participants answered three

questions about their opinions on issues of wearing religious symbols (e.g. Bans on the

wearing of religious symbols are discriminatory) involving a seven-item Response Scale

(Likert, 1932)1 from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. Participants then completed six

questions measuring their tolerance towards Muslim society on a response scales (e.g.

British society should adapt to accommodate Muslim beliefs and practices).

Participants then answered whether they were religious with options; no, yes; not

practicing and yes; practicing. If they were, they were asked to specify which religion.

Participants then completed four questions measuring the level of essentialist thinking

towards religion on a response scale (e.g. Religion is a fundamental part of a persons

identity. It makes them who they are). After completing the last section on demographic

information, participants were thanked for their participation and debriefed.

Results

1 Assume that for all response scales mentioned that they are 7-item Likert (1932) scales, ranging from strongly disagree to
strongly agree.

PSY1203 640003613

8 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Overall means and standard deviations for the three dependent measures essentialist

thinking about religion, opposition to headscarf bans, and tolerance and the correlations

between these measures are presented in Table 1. Higher scores on each measure indicate

more essentialist thinking (i.e., religion as a fundamental feature of the self), stronger

opposition to restrictive bans against the minority, and more tolerance. As can be seen in

Table 1, participants generally held slightly non-essentialist views of religion, were

slightly opposed to the idea of banning Muslim women from wearing headscarves and

other religious, and were moderately tolerant. Interestingly, essentialist thinking was

associated with significantly less tolerance, but not less opposition to bans; tolerance and

opposition to bans were also significantly correlated.

Table 1. Variable means, standard deviations and inter-correlations.

Variable M SD 2. 3.

1. Essentialist thinking 3.84 .96 -.05 -.22*

2. Oppose ban 4.76 1.43 .52***

3. Tolerance 4.01 1.08

Note: * p < .05, ***p < .001

Variable means and standard deviations according to experimental condition are

presented in Table 2. To examine the hypotheses, a 2 x 2 (threat: present versus absent)

(minority expression: I am versus I believe) analysis of variance was conducted on

PSY1203 640003613

9 The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


each of the dependent measures. In all analyses, the participants gender and

religiousness were included as covariates to control for these possible sources of

individual differences.

Table 2. Means (and standard deviations) for agreement and opposition to a ban as a

function of threat and minority self-expression.

Threat Absent Threat Present

I am I believe I am I believe

Essentialist thinking 3.67 3.69 4.22 3.71

(.89) (1.00) (.91) (.94)

Oppose ban 4.54 4.71 4.99 4.69

(1.59) (1.48) (1.26) (1.41)

Tolerance 3.94 4.07 4.05 3.94

(1.15) (1.25) (1.01) (.90)

n 36 38 51 48

After controlling for gender, F (1, 167) = 7.31, p = .008, and religiousness F < 1, analysis

of essentialist thinking about religion revealed a significant effect of threat, F (1, 167) =

PSY1203 640003613

10
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


3.80, p = .05, such that participants were more essentialist about religion after being

exposed to a threat compared to the control condition. This effect of threat was qualified

by a significant interaction with minority expression, F (1, 167) = 4.41, p = .04. Follow-

up tests revealed that in the presence of threat, participants became significantly more

essentialist about religion when the minority used I am language rather than I believe

language, F (1, 167) = 7.92, p = .005. However, in the absence of threat the language

used by the minority did not affect essentialist thinking, F < 1.

The same analysis performed on opposition to the ban and more general tolerance

towards Muslims in British society, revealed no significant effects of any of the variables

and no significant interactions, all Fs (1, 167) < 1.07, ps > 30.

Discussion

This research aimed to study the effects of intergroup threat when combined with

essentialist thinking on majority support/opposition and tolerance to a minority cause.

Overall, we found our hypotheses were not supported as the presence of threat did not

reduce support for minority rights, essentialist language did reduce tolerance however did

not reduce opposition to the ban, and there were no consequences to these results in both

essentialist and non-essentialist conditions.

Our first hypothesis findings contradict previous research, which states that

increased threat from out-groups should increase intergroup anxiety, thus leading to

reduced support of the out-group (Stephan, Bachman & Ybarra, 1999; Stephan et al,

2005; Morgan, Wisneski, Skitka, 2011). A possible reason for our findings is that we

PSY1203 640003613

11
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


didnt account for the prior contact participants may have had with the minority, i.e.

Muslims. This is important, as contact between the majority and minority is the best way

of reducing prejudice according to the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1958), but dependent

on the circumstances can become either a predictor of intergroup anxiety (Islam &

Hewstone, 1993; Yehuda, 1969) or reduce prejudice (Salvekoul et al, 2011; Novotny &

Polonsky, 2011; Zafar et al, 2014). This means that participants who have lived longer in

multicultural areas such as London are perhaps less likely to change their view on the

minority in a threat condition. Also, our use of real threat alone may not have been strong

enough to affect the attitudes of participants as Stephan (2005) found that realistic and

symbolic threat combined gave the greatest negative attitude outcome.

The second hypothesis also contradicts our prediction as results showed lower

tolerance but no effect on support for the cause, and a possible explanation for this comes

from Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst (2002). They found that essence-related beliefs were

strongly correlated with anti-gay attitudes but not racism nor sexism, pointing out that

this could mean the relationships between essentialism and generalised prejudice may not

be as clean cut as thought. Thus, essentialism then may be related to prejudice (in our

case tolerance), however may not cause prejudice (reduced support). Other factors may

be involved in the effect of essentialist language, such as individual differences in

sensitivity to and interpretation of essentialised meaning (Graf et al, 2012).

The third hypothesis again diverged from our prediction, as essentialised language

by the minority had no positive of negative effect in the control condition or in the threat

present condition. In theory, the consistency that comes with essentialist attitudes can

increase acceptance and support for a minority in a non-threatening situation (Moscovici,

PSY1203 640003613

12
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


1985). However, as seen in research above, essentialism can also lead to increased

aversion to a group when intergroup and in-group anxiety occurs (Allport, 1954), giving

a possible explanation for our results. Also, tolerance should be reduced compared with

the essentialist non-threat condition, rather than being higher, as threat and essentialist

language combined gave the largest measure of essentialist thinking. The only real

explanation that can be put forward is that individual differences between the groups may

have caused these odd results, due to random allocation of more students with specific

essentialism-reducing beliefs into one condition than the other, causing unpredicted

stability in the essentialism plus threat condition. Combining the explanations for

hypothesis one and two can give explanations for the threat plus essentialism condition

results.

One major limitation of this study, along many similar studies looking into the

effect of essentialism and threat on attitudes, is that it is only correlational. This means

that cause and effect cant be inferred from our findings. Future studies then should

attempt to find the exact effects that essentialist language has on the cognition of attitudes

and prejudice. A possibility is to testing different forms of prejudice, with nouns of

different valence and connotation in order to see whether effects are different for

different combinations. This may help expand upon the problem highlighted Haslam,

Rothschild and Ersnt (2002) of essentialism not affecting some prejudices.

Many other limitations have in fact been highlighted in discussing the hypotheses,

however if this research were to be repeated, perhaps the most important thing to change

would be to find out predisposed essentialist attitudes of the participants beforehand so

that they may be take account of, along with finding the previous level of contact with

PSY1203 640003613

13
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


minority groups. This would help to avoid such problems that have occurred in

hypothesis one and three.

In conclusion, the study of essentialism combined with intergroup threat is in its

early stages as there is much that remains unexplained in this field of work. It appears the

link between essentialism combined with intergroup threat and majority attitude is far

more complex than anticipated, and this calls for future re-evaluation of the mechanisms

that cause prejudice, and more interestingly that cause of specific forms of prejudice.

References

PSY1203 640003613
14
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Allport, G. W., (1935). Attitudes. In Handbook of social psychology. Edited by C.

Murchison. Worcester, MA: Clark Univ. Press.

Allport, G., (1954). The nature of prejudice, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley

Allport, Gordon W., (1958). The Nature of Prejudice. New York: Anchor Books.

Carnaghi, A., Bianchi, M., Maass, A., Gresta, S., Cadinu, M., Arcuri, L, (2008). Nomina

Sunt Omina: On the Inductive Potential of Nouns and Adjectives in Person

Perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 94 (5), pp.839-859.

Gelman, S.A., Heyman, G.D., (1999). Carrot-eaters and creature-believers: The Effects

of Lexicalization on Children's Inferences About Social Categories. Psychological

Science. 10 (6), pp.489-493.

Gelman, S.A., Ware, E.A., Kleinberg, F., (2010). Effects of Generic Language on

Category Content and Structure. Cognitive Psychology. 61 (3), pp.273-301

Graf, S., Bilewicz, M., Finell, E., Geschke, D, (2012). Nouns Cut Slices: Effects of

Linguistic Forms on Intergroup Bias. Journal of Language and Social Psychology

. 10, pp.1-22

Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., Ernst, D., (2002). Are essentialist beliefs associated with

prejudice?. British Journal of Social Psychology. 41, pp.87-100

Islam, M.R. & Hewstone, M. (1993). Dimensions of contact as predictors of

intergroup anxiety, perceived outgroup variability, and outgroup attitude: An

integrative model. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 700-710.

Lemmouh, Z. (2008). A critical linguistic analysis of the representation of Muslims in

the New York Times. Hermes, 40, 217240.

PSY1203 640003613
15
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Leslie, S.J. (in press). The Original Sin of Cognition: Fear, Prejudice and Generalization.

The Journal of Philosophy.

Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of

Psychology, Vol 22, 140, 55.

Maass, A., Salvi, D., Arcuri, L., Semin, G.R., (1989). Language use in intergroup

contexts: The linguistic intergroup bias.. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology. 57 (6), pp.981-993

McConohay, J. B., (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the Modern Racism Scale..

Prejudice, discrimination, and racism. (pp.91-125). San Diego, CA, US:

Academic Press, xiii, 337 pp.

Morgan, G. S., Wisneski, D.C., Skitka, L.J, (2011). The Expulsion From Disneyland The

Social Psychological Impact of 9/11. American Psychologist. 66 (6), pp.447-454

Moscovici, S. (1985). Social influence and conformity. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson

(Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (3rd ed.). New York: Random House.

Novotny, J., Polonsky, F. (2011) The Level of Knowledge about Islam and Perception of

Islam among Czech and Slovak University Students: Does Ignorance Determine

Subjective Attitudes?. Sociologia - Slovak Sociological Review. Vol. 43 (6), p.

674-696.

Savelkoul, Michael, Peer Scheepers, Jochem Tolsma, and Louk Hagendoorn. 2011.

Anti-Muslim Attitudes in The Netherlands: Tests of Contradictory Hypotheses

Derived from Ethnic Competition Theory and Intergroup Contact Theory.

European Sociological Review 27: 741- 758.

PSY1203 640003613

16
The synergistic effect of intergroup threat combined with minority self-expression on
majority attitudes.


Stephan, W.G., Bachman, G., Ybarra, O., (1999). Prejudice towards immigrants.. Journal

of applied social psychology. 29 (11), pp.2221-2237

Stephan, W.G., Lausanne-Renfro, C., Esses, V.M., Stephan, C.W., Martin, T., (2005).

The effects of feeling threatened on attitudes toward immigrants. International

Journal of Intercultural Relations. 29 (), pp.1-19

Stephan, W.S., Stephan, C.W. (2000). An integrated theory of prejudice. Reducing

Prejudice and Discrimination. Edited by S. Oskamp (1), pp.23-46

Walton, G.M., Banaji, M.R., (2004). Being what you say: The effect of essentialist

linguistic labels on preferences. Social Cognition. 22 (2), pp.193-213.

Yehuda, A., (1969). Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations.. Psychological Bulletin. 71

(5), pp.319-342

Zafar, S., Ross, E.C., (2014). Interreligious Contact, Attitudes, and Stereotypes: A Study

of Five Religious Groups in Canada. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science.

(No pagination)

PSY1203 640003613