Attitudes towards Ethnic Minorities, Homosexuals, Smokers and the Overweight: Australian Evidence

• In Event: 123 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions and Section on Sociology of Mental Health).
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 01. Prejudicial Attitudes

Abstract

It is logical to hypothesize that there will be one underlying factor of general prejudice against ethnic minorities, homosexuals, smokers and the overweight. Additionally however, there may be a further underlying element of additional prejudice towards things that are considered a matter of choice, in the language of Parsons, the distinction between ascribed (inborn, or at least socially labeled from very early on) and achieved or chosen characteristics. This paper investigates that issue using data from the Round 18 of the International Social Science Survey/Australia, a simple random sample of Australian citizens drawn from the compulsory electoral roll. I use a module of questions that ask how the respondent would feel about their relative marrying (or in the case of homosexuality, living with) a person who is (in separate questions) fat, a smoker, gay, or a Vietnamese, Greek, British or American immigrant. There are extremely high correlations between comfort with different immigrant groups. Social distance from gay people, fat people, and smokers was substantially less highly correlated.
Factor and regression analyses show that there is a strong shared underlying concept or dimension in the social consciousness underlying social distance from all these different less socially desirable groups. But that isn't all. In addition there is an important distinction exacerbating prejudice against people who are seen as choosing to belong to a particular group.

Authors

• S.M.C. Kelley, University of California-Berkeley

• Jonathan Kelley, University of Nevada, Reno