The relation between societal factors and different forms of prejudice: A cross-national approach on target-specific and generalized prejudice

• Specific prejudices are positively associated within and across European countries.
• Associational strength between prejudices varies between European countries.
• Associational strength between prejudices is target group specific.
• Economic conditions are only weakly related to anti-immigrant prejudice.
• Egalitarianism is related to general and target-specific components of prejudice.

The goal of this paper was to investigate the generalizability of prejudice across contexts by analyzing associations between different types of prejudice in a cross-national perspective and by investigating the relation between country-specific contextual factors and target-specific prejudices. Relying on the European Social Survey (2008), results indicated that prejudices were indeed positively associated, confirming the existence of a generalized prejudice component. Next to substantial cross-national differences in associational strength, also within country variance in target-specific associations was observed. This suggested that the motivations for prejudice largely vary according to the intergroup context. Two aspects of the intergroup context – economic conditions and cultural values – showed to be related to generalized and target-specific components of prejudice. Future research on prejudice and context should take an integrative approach that considers both the idea of generalized and specific prejudice simultaneously.