The relationship between minority statuses and prejudice

Abstract

It is important to explore prejudice to understand and learn how to decrease it. There is a central belief that “personal knowledge reduces prejudice.” Does a person who has personal knowledge of prejudice, for example, those of minority status have less prejudice towards others? There has been considerable research on the prejudice that the majority might feel towards minorities but there is limited research on minorities’ prejudice towards others. The current study focuses on the relationship between a person of self-perceived minority statuses and her or his feelings of prejudice towards others (e.g. minorities and mainstream). Previous research had found a positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice. This study investigated that relationship and a positive correlation was found. Another aspect that has been studied in previous research, dealing with prejudice and self reports, is social desirability. This study investigated the relationship between social desirability and multiple minority statuses and no statistical significance was found. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to investigate the relationship between multiple minority statuses and prejudice. The analysis showed no statistical significance on the relationship between multiple minority statuses and prejudice. There is still a lot about prejudice that remains unknown. This area of research should be investigated further to better understand minority prejudice, which in turn might lead us to overcome its negative effects.