Does materialism predict racism? materialism as a distinctive social attitude and a predictor of prejudice

Abstract

Previous research reported that Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) constitute the individual's ideological space and are strong dispositional determinants of racism. In the present study, materialism was examined as a third social attitude and a potential predictor of racism. In a student (N = 183) and heterogeneous adult sample (N = 176) analyses revealed that RWA, SDO and materialism constitute three separate dimensions and that each of them explains a unique part of the variance in racism. In addition, Structural Equation Modelling showed that the relationship between materialism and racism was largely mediated by selfish motives. In the discussion we go further into the role of materialism as a third social attitudinal dimension. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adorno

T. W.

Frankel‐Brunswik

Levinson

D. J.

Sanford

R. N.

(1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Row.

Alain

(1985).An empirical validation of relative deprivation. Human Relations, 38,739–749.

Appelgryn

A. E. M.

Bornman

(1996).Relative deprivation in contemporary South Africa. Journal of Social Psychology, 136,381–397.

Altemeyer

(1981). Right‐wing authoritarism. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press.

Altemeyer

(1998). The other ‘authoritarian personality’. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology(Vol. 30, pp.47–92). San Diego: Academic Press.

Altemeyer

B. C.

(1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding Right‐Wing authoritarianism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass Inc.

Belk

R. W.

(1984).Three scales to measure constructs related to materialism: Reliability, validity, and relationships to measures of happiness. Advances in Consumer Research, 11,291–297.

Corning

A. F.

(2000).Assessing perceived social inequality: A relative deprivation framework. Journal of Personality and Social Pscyhology, 78,463–477.

Davis

J. A.

(1959).A formal interpretation of the theory of relative deprivation. Sociometry, 22,280–296.

10.

De Cremer

Van Lange

P. A. M.

(2001).Why prosocials exhibit greater cooperation than proselfs: The roles of social responsibility and reciprocity. European Journal of Personality, 15,S5–S18; DOI: 10.1002/per.418

11.

Duckitt

(1988).Normative conformity and racial prejudice in South Africa. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology, 114,415–437.

12.

Duckitt

(1989).Authoritarianism and group identification: A new view of an old construct. Political Psychology, 10,63–84.

13.

Duckitt

(2001).A dual‐process cognitive‐motivational theory of ideology and prejudice. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 33,41–113.

14.

Duckitt

Wagner

du Plessis

Birum

(2002).The psychological bases of ideology and prejudice: Testing a dual process model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83,75–93.

15.

Duriez

Hutsebaut

(2000).The relation between religionism and racism: The role of post critical beliefs. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 3(1),85–102.

16.

Duriez

Van Hiel

(2002).The march of modern fascism. A comparison of social dominance orientation and authoritarianism. Personality and Individual Differences, 32,1199–1213.

17.

Duriez

Van Hiel

Kossowska

(2005).The changing face of right‐wing extremism: Authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in Western and Eastern Europe. Political Psychology, 26,299–320.

18.

Ekehammar

Akrami

Gylje

Zakrisson

(2004).What matters most to prejudice: Big‐Five personality, Social Dominance Orientation, or Right‐wing Authoritarianism? European Journal of Personality, 18,463–482; DOI: 10.1002/per.526

19.

Eysenck

H. J.

(1954). The psychology of politics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

20.

Fromm

(1955). The sane society. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

21.

Heaven

P. C. L.

Bucci

(2001).Right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and personality: An analysis using the IPIP measure. European Journal of Personality Psychology, 15,49–56.

22.

Bentler

P. M.

(1999).Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6,1–55.

23.

Joireman

J. A.

Lasane

T. P.

Bennett

Richards

Solaimani

(2001).Integrating social value orientation and the consideration of future consequences within the extended norm activation model of proenvironmental behaviour. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40,133–155.

24.

Jöreskog

Sorbom

(1996). LISREL 8. User's reference guide. Chicago: Scientific Software International, Inc.

25.

Kawakami

Dion

(1993).The impact of salient self‐identities on relative deprivation and action intentions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 23,525–540.

26.

Liebrand

W. B. G.

McClintock

C. G.

(1988).The Ring measure of social values: A computerized procedure for assessing individual differences in information processing and social value orientation. European Journal of Personality, 2,217–230.

27.

Lippa

Arad

(1999).Gender, personality, and prejudice: The display of authoritarianism and social dominance in interviews with college men and women. Journal of Research in Personality, 33,463–493.

28.

Lipset

(1981). Political man: The social basis of politics. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

29.

Marsh

H. W.

Hau

K. T.

Balla

J. R.

Grayson

(1998).Is more ever too much? The number of indicators per factor in confirmatory factor analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 33,181–220.

30.

McFarland

S. G.

(1999).Personality, values, and latent prejudice: A test of a causal model. Paper presented at the annual convention of the International Society for Political Psychology, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 1999.

31.

McCrae

R. R.

(1996).Social consequences of experiential openness. Psychological Bulletin, 120,323–337.

32.

Meloen

J. D.

(1991). Inventarisatie Nederlandse F‐schalen 1959–1990. In P. Scheepers , & Eisinga, R (Eds.), Onderdanig en intolerant. Lacunes en controverses in autoritarisme‐studies(pp.186–222). Nijmegen, the Netherlands: ITS.

33.

Messick

D. M.

McClintock

C. G.

(1968).Motivational basis of choice in experimental games. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4,1–25.

34.

Milgram

(1963).Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67,371–378.

35.

Parks

(1994).The predictive ability of social values in resource dilemmas and public goods games. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20,431–438.

36.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Meertens

R. W.

(1995).Subtle and blatant prejudice in western Europe. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25,57–75.

37.

Pratto

Sidanius

Stallworth

Malle

(1994).Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67,741–763.

38.

Richins

M. L.

Dawson

(1992).A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19,303–316.

39.

Saucier

(2000).Isms and structure of social attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2),1022–1038.

40.

Saunders

(2001).Fromm's Marketing Character and Rokeach values. Social Behavior and Personality, 29(2),191–196.

41.

Saunders

Munro

(2000).The construction and validation of a consumer orientation questionnaire (SCOI) designed to measure Fromm's (1955) ‘Marketing Character’ in Australia. Social Behavior and Personality, 28(3),219–240.

42.

Sherif

(1966). In common predicaments: Social psychology of intergroup conflict and cooperation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

43.

Sniderman

P. M.

Tetlock

P. E.

(1986),Symbolic Racism: Problems of motive attribution in political analysis. Journal of Social Issues, 42(2),129–150.

44.

Stellmacher

Petzel

(2005).Authoritarianism as a group phenomenon. Political Psychology, 26,245–274.

45.

Sobel

M. E.

(1982). Asymptotic intervals for indirect effects in structural equations models. In S. Leinhart (Ed.), Sociological methodology 1982(pp.290–312). San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass.

46.

Tajfel

Billig

M. G.

Bundy

R. P.

Flament

(1971).Social categorization and intergroup behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1,149–178.

47.

Tyler

T. R.

Smith

H. J.

(1998). Social justice and social movements. In D. T. Gilbert , S. T. Fiske , & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology(4th ed., Vol. 2, pp.595–629). New York: McGraw‐Hill.

48.

Van Hiel

Duriez

(2002).Meetinstrument voor individuele verschillen in sociale dominatie oriëntatie. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie, 57,114–116.

49.

Van Hiel

Kossowska

(2004).Contemporary attitudes and their ideological representation in Flanders (Belgium), Poland and the Ukraine. Manuscript submitted for publication.

50.

Van Hiel

Mervielde

(2002).Explaining conservative beliefs and political preferences: A comparison of social dominance orientation and authoritarianism. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32,965–976.

51.

Van Hiel

Pandelaere

Duriez

(2004).The impact of need for closure on conservative beliefs and racism: Differential mediation by authoritarian submission and authoritarian dominance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30,824–837.