Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Helen Harton

Abstract

Thirty-two percent of Americans have at least one tattoo (Schaeffer, 2023), and many of them experience discrimination. The purpose of this study was to examine potential correlates of this prejudice. 251 participants completed a survey online that assessed their attitudes towards people with tattoos along with variables that have previously been associated with other types of prejudice. Perceived threat was the strongest predictor of prejudiced attitudes. Participants who reported greater prejudice also reported greater perceptions that tattooed people were different from themselves, higher levels of authoritarianism and lower levels of agreeableness. Older people and those without tattoos also reported greater prejudice. Participants’ gender, level of education, religiosity, ethnicity, and socio-economic status were not correlated with prejudiced attitudes when other variables were controlled. These results provide further support for the worldview conflict hypothesis (Brandt & Crawford, 2019) and suggest that positive contact with people with tattoos may help to reduce prejudice through reduced perceptions of threat and worldview conflict.

Year of Submission

2026

Department

Department of Psychology

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2026

Object Description

1 PDF file (43 pages)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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