Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Award Winner

Recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Master's Thesis Award - First Place.

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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Racism--United States--Religious aspects; Racism--United States--Political aspects;

Abstract

The effects of religion and political orientation on racial prejudice are frequently studied yet, to date, no research has compared these effects using meta-analysis. One theory of prejudice that may help to predict outcomes is sociocultural theory (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1981), which posits that social identities provide norms and values that promote cultural stereotypes. Strong social identities such as religion or political orientation may differentially promote outgroup stereotyping and prejudice. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of religion and political orientation on anti-Black racial prejudice through meta-analysis. 153 independent samples were analyzed with a random effects model using the robumeta package in R (Fisher & Tipton, 2013) and Pearson’s correlation coefficient r effect sizes. Religious constructs (i.e., religious ethnocentrism, religious fundamentalism, religious identity, religiosity) had an overall negligible relationship with racial prejudice, whereas political orientation constructs (i.e., political conservatism, political orientation, SDO, RWA) had an overall small-magnitude relationship with anti-Black prejudice. Conservative political orientation and party identification were significantly related to anti-Black prejudice. Affirmative action opposition as a measure of anti-Black prejudice was significantly related to conservative ideologies, whereas implicit measures of anti-Black prejudice were significantly related to more liberal ideologies. Religion constructs and political orientation constructs showed a small correlation with each other. The effects of religious constructs and political orientation constructs on racial prejudice were not moderated by year, but political orientation effects on racial prejudice were moderated by regional differences. In the West, the average correlation between political orientation and racial prejudice was higher than all other regions, whereas Northeast samples and in national samples, the average correlation was negative. Political orientation had a greater effect on racial prejudice than did religious constructs, but there were no differences between the magnitude of the average r when correlations between political orientation and religion were accounted for, indicating that the effects of religion and political orientation on racial prejudice may be interrelated. These results have implications for decreasing racial prejudice among political conservatives through increased intergroup contact. Conservative political groups in America (i.e., Republicans) tend to be highly insular and are predominantly White; increased intergroup contact may increase individuating information and humanization of Blacks (Pettigrew, Tropp, Wagner, & Christ, 2011) and may reduce reliance on negative stereotypes.

Year of Submission

2015

Year of Award

2016 Award

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Psychology

First Advisor

Helen C. Harton, Chair

Date Original

2015

Object Description

1 PDF file (vii, 186 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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