Judging offensiveness as a method of uncovering covert prejudice and self-hate

Includes bibliographical references (pages 62-70)This study is an attempt to tease out prejudice and self-hate from a syllogistic survey which asks subjects to rate how offensive a particular syllogism is a) to himself or herself personally and b) if the subject was a member of the minority group in questions. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and several personal measures of identification with ethnic and religious groups were given. One hundred and twenty-six subjects were used in four minority groups: Blacks, Mexican-Americans, Jews and gays. A multivariate analysis of variance was performed on the data, along with a priori contrasts. The results showed a significant interaction between ethnicity and type of scale for personal ratings. Mexican-Americans found the Jewish Scale to be more offensive than did subjects from the other groups. Jews found the Jewish Scale to be less offensive than did subjects from the other groups. Blacks and Jews found the Gay Scale to be the most offensive of the four scales. There was a statistically significant multivariate analysis of variance when subjects were asked to rate the syllogisms as if they were members of other groups. Here Blacks rated the Mexican-American Scale as less offensive than the other scales. Mexican-Americans rated the Jewish and Gay Scales as more offensive than the other scales. There was no statistically significant difference among the subjects from the various ethnic groups in self-esteem scores