Explaining attitudes toward minority groups with human values in Germany - What is the direction of causality?

This paper examines the reciprocal relations between values and attitudes toward minorities over a period of fourteen months in 2015 and 2016. A representative sample of the adult population in Germany completed four waves of a panel study in which attitudes and values were each measured two times. Reciprocal relations over time between Schwartz's (1992) higher-order value of conservation and the value of universalism as well as attitudes toward four different minorities (Muslims, refugees, foreigners, Sinti/Roma) were examined using a modified cross-lagged longitudinal design. The results showed that values and attitudes had reciprocal longitudinal effects on one another, meaning that values predicted changes in attitudes and attitudes predicted changes in values. The findings also revealed that (1) values were more stable over time than attitudes, and (2) the longitudinal effect of values on attitudes was not significantly stronger than the longitudinal effect of attitudes on values.