Prejudice and the function of attitudes relating to Muslim Australians and Indigenous Australians

The aim of the present study was to examine prejudice against Muslim Australians and Indigenous Australians and the function of those attitudes using previously identified functions, direct experiential-schematic and value expressive, and including a new indirect experiential-schematic function. Respondents were categorised into two groups: accepting and rejecting. For the Muslim data there was no difference between accepting and rejecting groups regarding the value-expressive function, but acceptors reported the experiential-schematic function to a greater extent than did rejectors. For the Indigenous data there was no difference between groups on the value-expressive or the experiential-schematic function. With both target groups, rejectors reported the indirect experiential-schematic function more than acceptors. The value-expressive function was higher for the Muslim data and the experiential-schematic function was higher for the Indigenous data. The importance of taking into account the function of respondents' attitudes, the distinction between source and function of attitudes, as well as specific issues surrounding target groups themselves, is discussed.