The effects of self-esteem and threat on the formation of prejudiced attitudes and ingroup bias.

Abstract

It has been shown fairly consistently that those individuals low in self-esteem, as well as those exposed to a threat tend to develop prejudiced attitudes towards outgroups, or groups to which they do not belong. However, when these two factors are combined, threatened individuals who are high in self-esteem also develop prejudiced attitudes, as well as an ingroup bias. The current study sought to further investigate the relationship between these two factors. One hundred and fifty lower division sociology students were given a self-esteem measure and then separated into high and low groups on the basis of scoring .5 standard deviations above or .5 standard deviations below the mean, respectively. The remaining 87 Subjects were then randomly assigned to a threat or nonthreat condition, then completed an ingroup rating scale (average Emporia State student) and an outgroup rating scale (average minority student). A 2 x 2 repeated measures ANOVA showed highly significant effects for the rating variable, with minority students being rated lower than the average ESU student, F(1,83) = 40.29, p < .0001. However, there were no significant main effects for either self-esteem or threat. Thus, although there was definitely a more negative rating of minority students, this result was consistent across all four cells. This result contradicted findings of previous research and one possible explanation was the nature of the threat condition. It is possible the threat used was not significant enough to cause differences between the groups. Another possibility for the lack of differences might be the nature of the sample. The majority of students at Emporia state come from rural communities with limited exposure to minorities. This rather homogeneous sample was possibly more homogeneous in their attitudes, regardless of level of self-esteem. Lack of contact with minority students among the sample might also have been a contributing factor to the more negative ratings across all groups. These possibilities could be of great interest to future researchers and warrant further investigation.