Generalized and specific components of prejudice: the decomposition of intergroup context effects

Although different types of prejudice tend to be highly correlated, target-specific and more generalized components can nevertheless be distinguished. Here, we analyze whether indicators of the intergroup context—threat, contact, and neighborhood composition—predict the target-specific and/or generalized components of prejudice. Using data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N = 4629), we build a multilevel model that captures the relationship between social dominance orientation, general levels of neighborhood heterogeneity, symbolic and realistic threat and cross-group friendship (averaged across target groups), and generalized prejudice. Our model simultaneously estimates the relationship between target-specific levels of these intergroup context indicators and target-specific prejudice. Results indicated that social dominance orientation remained the strongest predictor of generalized prejudice when adjusting for other variables and that indicators of the intergroup context primarily explain differences between target group ratings. Aggregate levels of cross-group friendship also had a small effect on generalized prejudice