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Category: Project

Description: The present research develops a predictive model of prejudice. For nearly a century, psychology and other fields have sought to scientifically understand and describe the causes of prejudice. Numerous theories of prejudice now exist. Yet these theories are overwhelmingly defined verbally and thus lack the ability to precisely predict when and to what extent prejudice will emerge. The abundance of theory also raises the possibility of undetected overlap between constructs theorized to cause prejudice. Predictive models enable falsification, and provide a way for the field to move forward. To this end, here we present 18 studies with ~5000 participants in seven phases of model development. After initially identifying major theorized predictors of prejudice in the literature, we used a model selection approach to winnow constructs into a parsimonious predictive model of prejudice (Phases I & II). We confirm this model in a pre-registered out-of-sample test (Phase III), test variations in operationalizations and boundary conditions (Phases IV & V), and test generalizability on a U.S. representative sample, an Indian sample, and a UK sample (Phase VI). Finally, we consulted the predictions of experts in the field to examine how well they align with our results (Phase VII). We believe this initial predictive model is limited and bad, but by developing a model that makes highly specific predictions, drawing on the state of the art in the science of prejudice, we hope to provide a foundation from which research can build to improve the science of prejudice.