Perceived normative pressure and majority adolescents' implicit and explicit attitudes towards immigrants

The aim of the present study was to examine if perceived normative pressure (i.e., perception of the normative expectations of family and friends regarding one's intergroup attitudes) had a direct impact on majority youth's (N = 93) explicit attitudes and moderated the relationship between their implicit (measured with the ST-IAT) and explicit attitudes towards Russian immigrants in Finland. The results indicated that normative pressure is positively associated with the explicit attitudes of adolescents, and that the implicit attitudes of the adolescents towards immigrants surface on the explicit level only when they do not perceive a normative pressure to hold positive intergroup attitudes. More specifically, when there is no normative pressure, the explicit attitudes of youth are, at best, neutral, and reflect their implicit attitudes. In contrast, when normative pressure is perceived to be high, the level of explicit attitudes is generally more positive, and the expression of explicit attitudes is not determined by implicit attitudes. The effects of age, sex, quality of past intergroup contact experiences, and intergroup anxiety were controlled for in the analysis. The findings highlight the importance of taking normative pressure into consideration when studying socially sensitive ethnic attitudes among adolescents.