Outgroup Prejudice, Personality, and Religiosity: Disentangling a Complex Web of Relationships Among Adolescents in the UK

This cross-sectional study tested the idea that personality is indirectly related to outgroup prejudice through religiosity and through outgroup contact. A total of 2,756 White adolescents from Northern England completed a questionnaire that included measures of outgroup prejudice, extraversion, tough-mindedness, religiosity and outgroup contact. Correlation and path analysis indicated that extraversion had no direct effect on outgroup prejudice, but was associated with greater outgroup contact, which in turn was associated with lower prejudice. Psychoticism was associated directly with higher levels of prejudice, and indirectly via religiosity because high psychoticism was associated with low religiosity, and low religiosity was associated with high prejudice. There was no direct relationship between age and prejudice but a decline in religiosity between early and midadolescence was associated with an increase in prejudice. Implications of the findings for the study of prejudice in adolescents and adults are discussed.