Ethnophaulisms for ethnic immigrant groups

Ethnophaulisms (Roback, 1944) are the words used as slurs to refer to ethni c immigrant outgroups. This article explores the effects of attributes of e thnic immigrant groups on the cognitive representations of these groups in ethnophaulisms and the effects of these cognitive representations on behavi or toward these immigrant groups. The results of these analyses, based on a rchival data spanning a 150-year period of American history, provide a sobe ring picture of the cognitive representation of immigrants: a century and a half of thinking about smaller, less familiar, and more foreign ethnic imm igrant groups in a simplistic and negative manner and a resultant tendency, to exclude those immigrant groups from the receiving society. The implicat ions of these results for theoretical approaches to intergroup perception a nd for immigration policy are considered.