NON-CAUSES OF RACISM

Psychologists have given much thought to the fact that some people seem to be more racist than others and have put forward various theories about it. A still widely-held view is that racism is a consistent personal disposition -- if you dislike one outgroup you will tend to dislike all outgroups. Another view is that it is the wicked conservatives who are racist. A third view is that people with a hostile or “authoritarian” personality are highly likely to be racists.

I have just put up here (post of 11th) three research reports that test those three theories. The survey research on which the reports are based was carried out in 1987 by an Australian postgraduate student in order to gather data for her dissertation. She designed a questionnaire with some reference to prior work of mine and administered it to a community sample of 250 Australians. When the work was done she handed the data to me for computer analysis and I wrote the three articles mentioned on the basis of what came out of the computer. The findings were unfavourable to all three of the psychological theories mentioned.

None of the articles were accepted for publication in the academic journals despite the research being unusually soundly based. Psychologists base most of their published generalizations about human behaviour on studies of white rats or studies of college students so data derived from a human general population survey should have been unusually interesting, one would have thought. The fact that the findings upset preconceptions popular among psychologists would therefore seem to have had some role in the non-acceptance of the articles.

It may be of some interest to note in passing that the lady who did the research has generally Leftist views and is married to an Australian Aborigine.

For what DOES cause racism see here.

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