Fictitious Groups and the Generality of Prejudice: An Artifact of Scales without Neutral Categories

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Abstract
Generality of prejudice of real groups (ethnic and ideological) to fictitious groups was dramatically reduced to about chance level when college Ss were allowed the response alternative of neutrality, which was strongly their dominant response. When attitude scales had no neutral category, as in past research, then generality of prejudice-tolerance to nonexistent groups occurred. This is an artifact of the use of nonneutral scales. There were more significant correlations between judgments of the real groups when judged on the neutral point semantic differential scale than when measured on the nonneutral semantic differential.

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