Outgroup Prejudice in Western Europe

Abstract

Outgroup prejudice has been a major area for social psychological applications. Yet European social psychology has not widely studied prejudice against the continent's new minorities. These groups provide a useful comparison with which to test generalizations concerning prejudice derived largely on African-Americans. This chapter advances two interrelated hypotheses: (1) The universality hypothesis predicts that social psychological factors operate in similar ways across nations and target groups though the macro-contexts vary widely; (2) the mediation hypothesis predicts that key social psychological predictors of prejudice serve as critical mediators of the effects on prejudice of social factors. We test these hypotheses and more specific phenomena with analyses of the rich data of the 1988 Euro-Barometer 30 survey. We find considerable support for both hypotheses. There are remarkable consistencies, with some distinctive features, in prejudice phenomena that operate across nations and outgroups. The chapter highlights the comparable operation of psychological processes acting as proximal causes of prejudice and mediators for social factors operating as distal causes.