Personality and ideological bases of anti-immigrant prejudice among Croatian youth

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the relationship between personality, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO) and anti-immigrant prejudice of Croatian youth (N = 1050). We base our hypotheses on the Dual-process motivational model of ideology and prejudice (DPM) and the meta-theoretical framework of McCrae and Costa’s five-factor theory of personality (FFT), assuming that dispositions (basic tendencies) relate to ideological attitudes (characteristic adaptations) that further relate to prejudice (objective biography). The present study contributes to the existing literature by disentangling the mechanism of the personality–prejudice relation in thus far under-researched anti-immigrant prejudice domain. In addition, as one of the rare examinations of the personality–prejudice relation conducted outside the Western Europe and North America, the study offers valuable insight about the cross-cultural stability of the current findings. On the present sample, extraversion and openness to experience exerted direct effects on anti-immigrant prejudice. Indirect effects via RWA were found for extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness, and indirect effects via SDO were found for agreeableness, neuroticism and openness. Intriguingly, indirect effects of agreeableness on prejudice via RWA and SDO operated in opposite directions. Overall, the results support the DPM and FFT assumptions and provide fair replication of the existing empirical evidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-immigrant prejudice
• Big Five personality
• right-wing authoritarianism
• social dominance orientation
• Croatia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editorial team, Professor Paul Statham and Dr James Hampshire, and the two anonymous reviewers for their timely and insightful review of earlier drafts of this article. We would also like to express our gratitude to Dr Branislava Baranović and Dr Saša Puzić for their assistance in data collection, as well as to Dr Iva Košutić and Dr Svjetlana Salkičević for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jelena Matić http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1101-3379

Ajana Löw http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8231-430X

Denis Bratko http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2482-4413