CATEGORICAL RACE VERSUS INDIVIDUATING BELIEF AS DETERMINANTS OF DISCRIMINATION - A STUDY OF SOUTHERN ADOLESCENTS IN 1966, 1979, AND 1993

As follow-up on data collected in 1966 and 1979 from ninth-grade stude nts in a county school in North Carolina, data were collected in 1993 from the same school system. The 1966 data included responses only fro m white subjects, but the 1979 and 1993 data also included responses f rom both white and African-American subjects. As a test of Rokeach, Sm ith, and Evans' (1960) belief congruence theory [and also of Fiske and Neuberg's (1990) conceptually overlapping temporal-continuum model], subjects in all three periods responded to four questionnaires suppose dly completed by other teenagers. The questionnaires differed accordin g to a categorical race (same or opposite) by individuating belief(sim ilar or dissimilar) design. Subjects responded to each of the four oth er teenagers by making both evaluative judgments and social distance j udgments. Belief dissimilar questionnaires were individually construct ed according to the belief attributions that each teenager had previou sly reported for other-race teenagers. The results for white subjects indicated that belief similarity affected all dependent variables, and that these effects did not differ significantly over the three time p eriods. However, race effects declined over the three periods, as did perceived social disapproval for cross-race contact in the context of various behavioral associations (working together, marriage, and so on ). Furthermore, such social disapproval was correlated with the magnit udes of the race effects-in agreement with predictions from belief con gruence theory. For African-American subjects the race main effects di d not decline significantly from 1979 to 1993, and there were more com plex changes over time, indicating that belief similarity had an incre asingly larger effect for same- than opposite-race others. Furthermore , unlike in 1979, the race effects For African-American subjects were not correlated with perceived social disapproval. (C) 1996 Academic Pr ess, Inc.