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.