Diversity policy, social dominance, and intergroup relations: predicting prejudice in changing social and political contexts

Abstract

In contrast to authors of previous single-nation studies, we propose that supporting multiculturalism (MC) or assimilation (AS) is likely to have different effects in different countries, depending on the diversity policy in place in a particular country and the associated norms. A causal model of intergroup attitudes and behaviors, integrating both country-specific factors (attitudes and perceived norms related to a particular diversity policy) and general social-psychological determinants (social dominance orientation), was tested among participants from countries where the pro-diversity policy was independently classified as low, medium, or high (N = 1,232). Results showed that (a) anti-Muslim prejudice was significantly reduced when the pro-diversity policy was high; (b) countries differed strongly in perceived norms related to MC and AS, in ways consistent with the actual diversity policy in each country and regardless of participants' personal attitudes toward MC and AS; (c) as predicted, when these norms were salient, due to subtle priming, structural equation modeling with country included as a variable provided support for the proposed model, suggesting that the effect of country on prejudice can be successfully accounted by it; and (d) consistent with the claim that personal support for MC and AS played a different role in different countries, within-country mediation analyses provided evidence that personal attitudes toward AS mediated the effect of social dominance orientation on prejudice when pro-diversity policy was low, whereas personal attitudes toward MC was the mediator when pro-diversity policy was high. Thus, the critical variables shaping prejudice can vary across nations.