National and European policies aim to facilitate the integration of Roma people into mainstream society. Yet, Europe’s largest ethnic group continues to be severely discriminated. Although prejudice has been identified to be at the core of this failure, social psychological research on anti-Gypsyism remains scarce. We conducted a study in six countries using student and community samples ( N = 2,089; Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Norway, Italy, Spain) to understand how anti-Gypsyism among majority-group members predicts unfavorable acculturation preferences toward Roma people. Openly negative stereotypes predicted acculturation preferences strongly across the countries. However, stereotypes about the Roma receiving undeserved benefits were also relevant to some degree in East-Central Europe, implying that intergroup relations are framed there as realistic conflict. Stereotypes about traditional Roma culture did not play a central role in acculturation preferences. Our findings highlighted that anti-Gypsyism may be an impediment to integration efforts, and efforts should be context-specific rather than pan-national.
Research has provided evidence that the effects of intergroup contact on prejudice reduction are not limited to the outgroup one has contact with (primary outgroup). Rather, they extend to secondary outgroups uninvolved in the contact situation (secondary transfer effect; Pettigrew, 2009, Social Psychology, 40, 55). We aimed to provide the first empirical evidence for the emergence of the secondary transfer effect among children. Majority (Italian) and minority (with an immigrant background) elementary schoolchildren were administered a questionnaire including measures of contact with the primary outgroup (minority children for the majority, majority children for the minority), prejudice towards the primary outgroup and towards a dissimilar secondary outgroup (disabled children), and social dominance orientation. Results revealed that among the majority group, contact with the primary outgroup had indirect associations with reduced prejudice towards the secondary outgroup. Specifically, we found evidence for sequential mediation by social dominance orientation and prejudice towards the primary outgroup. No secondary transfer effects emerged among minority group members. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the findings, arguing for the importance of identifying the core processes driving the secondary transfer effect.
Modern systems of knowledge production reinforce inequalities and coloniality, especially in the Global South. We investigated whether this was the case in contemporary social psychology. We examined manifestations of coloniality of knowledge (in the form of internalized Global North standards and practices) and critical awareness and reflection (historic and systemic attributions for collective disadvantages) in a survey of social psychologists in 64 countries (N = 232). Although colleagues in the Global South and Southern and Eastern Europe adopted Global Northern publication standards and tendencies, their compliance seemed motivated by institutional demands and pragmatic concerns rather than internalized inferiority or principled conviction. Regarding international mainstream publication practices, participants from all regions (most prominently outside the Global North) reported biases, under-representation, lack of relevance, and structural disadvantages. Participants offered mainly systemic attributions for these and other disadvantages.These findings suggest that social psychologists engaged with the international publication system are caught in a double-bind between collective systemic disadvantages and coerced compliance, especially outside the Global
Response instructions—inviting participants to respond from a certain perspective—can significantly influence the performance and construct validity of psychological measures. Stereotype Content Model (SCM) and then the BIAS map (“behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes”) were originally developed as universal measures of shared cultural stereotypes—participants’ perceptions of what most of the people in a society think about the target group—and their related social-structural antecedents, emotions and behavioral tendencies. Yet a number of studies have adopted a different response instruction focusing on individual stereotypes—what the participants personally think about the target group. So far, there is little evidence to suggest how these two different response instructions (individual vs. shared cultural perspective) might influence the performance of the BIAS map, especially when applied to target groups that elicit different normative and social desirability concerns. To provide novel evidence, we conducted an experiment with a representative sample of ethnic Slovaks (
N
= 1269). In a 2 × 2 factorial design, we found response instruction (individual vs. shared cultural perspective) and target group [stigmatized ethnic minority (the Roma) vs. non-stigmatized ethnic minority (the Hungarians)] had significant effects on the BIAS map and their interaction had significant effects on the social structure and behavioral tendencies (but not on stereotypes and emotions) scales. Exploratory analysis also points to partial influence on the mediation hypothesis underlying the BIAS map and minor effects on its scale properties. Our evidence suggests that the difference between individual stereotypes and shared cultural stereotypes partially depends on the target group in question and that they should be treated as two potentially separate constructs.
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