PERSONAL SELF-ESTEEM AND PREJUDICE AMONG ETHNIC MAJORITY AND MINORITYYOUTH

The present paper reports upon the application of two main theoretical frameworks to the relationship between personal self-esteem and preju dice among both ethnic majority and minority youth. Ehrlich's (1973) p rinciple of self-congruity and the principle of downward social compar ison proposed by Wills (1981) were examined. In the first study, self- esteem was positively associated with prejudice among majority subject s, whereas among minority subjects a negative relation was found. Addi tionally, positive ingroup evaluation in combination with prejudice ap peared among majority youth, whereas among minority youth ingroup eval uation and prejudice were correlated negatively. These results for the majority subjects are most in agreement with downward social comparis on theory. In contrast, the results for the minority subjects are more in agreement with self-congruity theory. These findings were replicat ed in a second study where self-esteem was measured as a consequence o f group evaluations. The results show that the relationship between se lf-esteem and prejudice is affected by existing social relations and g roup status. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.