This thesis aimed to investigate the changing nature, expression and
measurement of contemporary racist attitudes, discriminatory behaviours and racial
stereotypes in an Australian context. The first principal aim of this thesis was to
further establish the psychometric properties of the Symbolic Racism Extended Scale
(Fraser & Islam, 1997b). Study 1 revealed good psychometric properties for the
Symbolic Racism Extended Scale as a measure of symbolic (modern) racist attitudes
in Australian populations. The study also found support for incorporating modern
racism items within a 'social issues' questionnaire format to reduce reactivity
concerns associated with self-report measures.
The second principal aim of this thesis (Studies 2 and 3) was to explore the
nature, prevalence and potential sources of contemporary racist attitudes, and
associated discriminatory behaviours, in an Australian context. Study 2 detected a
sizeable proportion of modern racist attitudes in both the University and ACT
Secondary College student samples. The nature of modern racist attitudes in the
population samples maintained clear consistencies with key tenets of contemporary
theories of racial prejudice. Overall the study provided further empirical evidence of
the nature, tenets and potential socio-demographic sources of modern racist attitudes
in Australian populations.
Study 3 explored modern racists' discriminatory behaviours in conditions of
low racial salience. In an employment-hiring task, high and low prejudiced
participants (university undergraduates) revealed significantly different employment
hiring preferences for an Aboriginal applicant. In providing Australian empirical
evidence of modern racists' discriminatory behaviours, the study also discussed
methodological implications for future Australian research investigating the
discriminatory behaviours of modern racists.
The third principal aim of this thesis was to provide further analysis of the
measurement of contemporary racist attitudes, specifically to examine concerns
pertaining to the measurement of racial attitudes through implicit techniques. Implicit
free-response measurement of Australian racial stereotypes in Study 4 revealed that
high and low prejudiced participants (as measured by the SR-E) were equally
knowledgable of the cultural stereotypes of Aboriginals, Asians and immigrants.
Cultural knowledge of the implicit stereotypes was found to be predominantly
independent of prejudicial beliefs, lending support to concerns (Devine, 1989; Devine
& Elliot, 1995) that implicit measures of racial prejudice may actually be measuring
an individual's cultural knowledge of the primed racial group, rather than his or her
prejudicial beliefs.
The fourth principal aim of this thesis was to investigate the content of
Australian racial stereotypes. Study 4 revealed the implicit content of the cultural
stereotypes of Aborigines, Asians and immigrants to be predominantly negative in
nature. In response to the predominantly negative content of the Aboriginal cultural
stereotype, Study 5 investigated whether the recategorising of ingroup boundaries and
disconfirming information, relating to Aboriginal Australians, observed in the recent
Sydney Olympic Games would result in changes to the content of the cultural
stereotype. The study found significant decreases and increases in the negative and
positive traits respectively reported as being part of the cultural stereotype of
Aborigines, two weeks following the Sydney Olympic Games.
Together, the five studies contributed to empirical research on the changing
nature, expression and measurement of contemporary racist attitudes, discriminatory
behaviours and racial stereotypes in Australian populations. A number of theoretical
and practical implications of the present findings for Australian prejudice research are
addressed and discussed. Furthermore, a number of practical recommendations for
future research are identified to further investigate the modern nature of racist attitudes in Australian populations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218729 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Wheeler, Jenny, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Human & Biomedical Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Jenny Wheeler |
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