2a Explaining Racist and Xenophobic Attitudes
Readings: Dinesen and Hjorth (2020) and Pettigrew (1998)
In this second session, we will discuss theories that seek to explain why people hold racist and xenophobic prejudices. We will also try to operationalize central claims of these theories using the questions asked in the European Social Survey 2014. The photo below shows a racially-integrated unit in the Korean War. A long-standing question in the social sciences is whether such contact experiences lessen prejudices or may rather increase them.s
References
Dinesen, Peter Thisted, and Frederick Hjorth. 2020. “Attitudes Toward Immigration: Theories, Settings, and Approaches.” in The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Political Science. Oxford University Press.
Pettigrew, Thomas F. 1998. “Intergroup Contact Theory.” Annual Review of Psychology 49(1):65–85.