We want to have a public image, hiding what's inside our mind. A new research made by a team at the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics and to be published in "Political Research Quarterly" shows that men are less tolerant than women, and the most likely victims of prejudice are poorly educated immigrants and Arab-American airplane travelers, while the least likely victims are the genetically disadvantaged category.
The survey was made on over 3,300 subjects and showed that when subjects could not hide behind an anonymous identity, men tend to understate and women to overstate their tolerance for discrimination.
"An individual who sees nothing wrong with
certain kinds of biases will often find others objectionable. We have found that, while discrimination in its traditional forms - based on race and gender - may be receding somewhat, discrimination in other domains, as based on appearance, persists. Here we found that people are more willing to accept discrimination against poorly educated immigrants, for example, than so-called genetic discrimination. Men are more willing to accept discrimination, but both men and women converge when we did a telephone survey and there was a live interviewer - women became more, and men less, openly tolerant of discrimination," said co-author Edward J. McCaffery, a USC law professor.
The subjects were presented five scenarios both by phone and on-line, each coming with a class of persons known as targets for discrimination: Arab-American airplane travelers, obese people, the genetically disadvantaged, poorly educated immigrants and African-American motorists.
In all situations, the persons were first involved in a controversy and then the subjects received a discriminating statement followed by the justice variant. Most subjects chose the justice variant.
In both the phone and Internet survey, the highest percentage of discrimination was against "poorly educated immigrants" (27.7%, 32.3% respectively), followed by Arab-Americans (26.4%, 17.8% respectively). The lowest level of discrimination was manifested against the genetically disadvantaged (6.7%, 3.2% respectively). Discrimination against African-Americans was of 13.7%, 13.2 % respectively, and that against obese people of 15%, 13% respectively.
Men were more likely than women to accept discrimination: by 7.6% against the obese people and by 8.9% against African-American motorists.
The male intolerance boosted on the Internet survey: they were 19.% less tolerant against the obese people and 17.4% against African-Americans.
This shows that live interaction on the phone, even when the interviewer was impartial and withheld any reaction, inhibited some subjects from being sincere. In this case, women paraded a higher intolerance and men hid their's, compared to the anonymity offered by the Internet.
The gender intolerance gap narrowed in case of categories considered socially acceptable, like Arab-American airplane passengers (8%), and was higher in the case of African-American motorists (28.9%), in the phone survey.
"People do not insist on equal treatment for everyone, in every context. The surveys reported in this article validate this poorly appreciated fact in reference to several matters of political importance," said McCaffery.
|
No user comments yet.
Be the first to express your opinion using the form below!
