Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK.
Int J Psychol. 2013;48(1):60-8. doi: 10.1080/00207594.2012.729841. Epub 2012 Oct 26.
A study with British participants (N = 90) tested a potential mediator of the effect of essentialist beliefs about the national ingroup on prejudice against immigrants. Essentialist beliefs were defined as beliefs in genetic determinism, a basic assumption that group membership is "written in the blood" and that the groups' boundaries and characteristics are determined by genetic and/or biological factors. Essentialist beliefs were expected to play an important role in the formation of prejudice. They were predicted to be associated with a reduction in the perceived possibility of immigrants' adopting the mainstream culture. Further, it was expected that essentialist beliefs would be positively associated with perceptions of intergroup threat, which in turn would be associated with a stronger demand for immigrants adopting the mainstream culture. Taken together, essentialist beliefs were predicted to be associated with a greater discrepancy between the demand for and perceived feasibility of culture adoption. This discrepancy was hypothesized to mediate the effect of essentialist beliefs on prejudice against immigrants. Structural equation modeling analysis and mediation analysis supported the hypotheses, showing that essentialism attributed to the national ingroup results in people demanding something seemingly impossible from immigrants, and that this situation in which immigrants have little chance of fulfilling majority members' expectations results in prejudice against them. Thus, results show that perceptions of the ingroup are associated with attitudes to the outgroup, and they outline an explanatory mechanism for the positive correlation between essentialism and prejudice which has been found in previous research. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.
一项针对英国参与者（N=90）的研究测试了本质主义信念对民族内群体偏见的影响的潜在中介。本质主义信念被定义为对遗传决定论的信仰，这是一个基本假设，即群体成员身份“写在血液中”，群体的边界和特征由遗传和/或生物因素决定。本质主义信念被认为在偏见的形成中起着重要作用。它们被预测与移民采用主流文化的可能性降低有关。此外，预计本质主义信念将与群体间威胁的感知呈正相关，而群体间威胁又与对移民采用主流文化的更强需求有关。总的来说，本质主义信念被预测与文化采用的需求与感知可行性之间的更大差距有关。假设这种差距将调解本质主义信念对移民偏见的影响。结构方程模型分析和中介分析支持了这些假设，表明民族内群体的本质主义导致人们对移民提出看似不可能的要求，而这种移民几乎没有机会满足多数成员期望的情况导致对他们的偏见。因此，研究结果表明，对群体的看法与对群体的态度有关，并为之前研究中发现的本质主义与偏见之间的正相关提供了一个解释机制。讨论了理论和应用方面的意义。
