Attitudes toward Indigenous Australians: the role of empathy and guilt

Abstract

Previous research in Perth, Western Australia, finds a disturbing amount of prejudice against Indigenous Australians. At the forefront of much prejudice research has been the distinction between old‐fashioned and modern prejudice. We constructed an Attitude Toward Indigenous Australians scale from items originating from qualitative data. We found that negative attitudes were predicted by collective guilt about past and present wrongs to Indigenous Australians (collective guilt directly linked to Indigenous issues, as well as collective guilt generally). Negative attitudes were also predicted by a lack of empathy for Indigenous Australians, and affective perspective taking generally. Socio‐demographics (e.g. a lack of education) predicted negative attitudes, which indicate the necessity of taking both social‐psychological and socio‐demographic factors into account when examining the nature of prejudice. A number of practical implications arise from these findings. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Attitudes toward Out‐groups and the perception of consensus: All feet do not wear one shoe

“…Items were responded to on a seven-point Likert scale (1= 'disagree strongly' to 7 = 'agree strongly'). The scale is reported to be reliable with reliabilities of α = 0.91 and α = 0.92 respectively in two separate studies reported in the Pedersen et al (2004) study. Reverse scoring was used to recode positively worded items so that for all items a higher score indicated a more negative attitude.…”

“…This was measured by an 18-item scale (Pedersen et al, 2004). Items were responded to on a seven-point Likert scale (1= 'disagree strongly' to 7 = 'agree strongly').…”

“…Additionally, levels of prejudice against Indigenous Australians in the community are unacceptably high (e.g., Mellor, 2003;Pedersen, Beven, Walker & Griffiths, 2004). The prevalence of negative attitudes found in these surveys may well be an under-estimate of the true position in the community given that respondents with university degrees are somewhat overrepresented in community samples (many surveys find a negative relationship between education and prejudice).…”

“…In Australia's seemingly 'egalitarian' society, there is a pressure to be accepting of others in a multicultural society and not to appear racist. Pedersen et al (2004), for example, found that participants made comments such as "I am…”

“This degrading and stealthy practice”

“…There continues to be a view in Australia that Indigenous Australians are irredeemable and money spent on them is money wasted, and this view continues to lead to Indigenous Australians being blamed for their circumstances and stigmatised (Choo, 1990;A. Pedersen, Beven, Walker, & Griffiths, 2004;A.…”