Jewish Americans' identity salience and effects on attitudes toward diversity.
Sci Rep
; 14(1): 21676, 2024 09 17.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39289433
ABSTRACT
Although Jewish people in the US are often racialized (i.e., perceived by others) as White, Jewish Americans vary in the extent to which they consider themselves White, and in how strongly they identify with being Jewish. Based on prior findings that identifying with a White ethnic subgroup (e.g., Irish, Italian) can reduce prejudice toward racial and ethnic minorities, we predicted that strongly identified Jewish Americans would exhibit less intergroup bias than weakly identified Jewish Americans. For the present research, we recruited participants whose religious affiliation was Jewish but who self-identified as racially White. In a preregistered correlational study, Jewish identification was associated with lower bias, whereas White identification was associated with greater bias, toward Whites relative to racial/ethnic minorities. The relationship between Jewish identification and intergroup bias was accounted for by high Jewish identifiers' perceptions that they could personally contribute to diversity in groups and organizations. Across three meta-analyzed experiments, participants whose religious minority (Jewish) identity was made salient exhibited less intergroup bias than did control participants, and in one preregistered experiment, perceived personal contributions to diversity mediated the effect of condition on intergroup bias. Implications for the forms of ethnic identity that predict more versus less intergroup bias in an increasingly multicultural society are discussed.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Attitude
/
Jews
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
America do norte
Language:
En
Journal:
Sci Rep
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States
Country of publication:
United kingdom