Prejudice: The Person in the situation

In two experimental studies, we created situational conditions (social norm and social threat) that altered the level of expressed prejudice in two different directions (decrease or increase). Then, we examined the stability of the relation between personality and prejudice across conditions and found that personality variables were related to prejudice in a similar way regardless of variations in prejudice level and situations. Thus, whereas situational factors affect the level of people’s prejudice, personality factors stand for the rank-order stability of prejudice. The outcome is discussed in relation to the current debate on whether prejudice is best explained by personality or situational factors.