What if your daughter married a Jew?: The dissociation of stereotypic trait judgments from prejudicial attitudes

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to explore a hypothesis that people’s trait judgments about Jewish males can be dissociated from prejudice against them. Two general findings supported this hypothesis. First, although participants made more positive, and fewer negative, trait judgments about Jewish males than about Christian males, they were relatively unwilling to have a daughter (if they had a daughter) marry a Jew. Second, participants’ positive trait judgments about Christians were correlated with their willingness to have a daughter marry one, but no correlation was obtained regarding Jews. The support for the dissociation hypothesis implies that changing beliefs about the traits of stereotypic groups may be ineffective in changing prejudice against those groups.