PREJUDICE AS A RESPONSE TO PERCEIVED GROUP THREAT - POPULATION COMPOSITION AND ANTI-IMMIGRANT AND RACIAL PREJUDICE IN EUROPE

Following the work of Blumer (1958), 1 extend and test a theory of pre judice based on perceived threats to dominant racial or national group s by subordinate groups. Perceived threat is hypothesized to be a func tion of economic conditions and of the size of the subordinate group r elative to the dominant group. I rest the group-threat theory using a multilevel model that combines population data with survey results on attitudes towards immigrants and racial minorities from Eurobarometer Survey 30. ''Group threat'' explains most of the variation in average prejudice scores across the 12 countries in the sample and has a small but statistically significant effect on the influence of certain indi vidual-level variables on prejudice. These results demonstrate the imp ortance of perceived intergroup threat in the formation of prejudicial attitudes and suggest a re-interpretation of past findings on the rel ations between individual characteristics and expressions of prejudice .