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Category: Project

Description: Discrimination experiences are a common phenomenon that does not happen at random, but instead appear to be linked to individual characteristics and social identities. Accordingly, being a member of an ethnic minority groups tends to increase the risk of experiencing discrimination. But not all members of a minority group report discrimination and not all individuals experiencing negative behavior against them regard this behavior as discrimination. There is either variation in a) the probability to become affected by unjust treatment, b) interpreting experiences of unjust treatment as discrimination, c) reporting perceived discrimination experiences, or d) a combination of the above. Evidence exists that each process, ultimately leading to the reporting of discrimination experiences, may depend on external (e.g, belonging to a social group, appearance or social behavior) and/or internal factors (e.g, personality, attribution styles). Despite the fact that the empirical literature offers a broad variety of potential variables that can ultimately lead to the perception of discrimination, such variables are seldom contrasted and potential confounds are not conclusively controlled for. Especially for controlling confounds, twin studies seem ideal: Twins, as a natural experiment, are matched for a number of variables, which potentially serve as reason to be discriminated against. In conclusion, the first aim of the study is to test, to what extend reports of discrimination depend on physical features or on other more obviously perceivable behavior (in the following called incident related features) and individual personality-like constructs (in the following called attribution related features) in a twin based sample, while taking multiple variables into account simultaneously. To explore the potential underlying mechanisms of discrimination experiences and attributions, the second aim of the study is to test whether variations of reports between twins will be mostly driven by twin’s differences in variables of the two aforementioned categories of variables (some variables increase either likelihood of an insult or the likelihood of attribution to the social belonging). To address these aims, secondary data analyses on the TwinLife data will be performed.