Social Class Affiliation and Ethnic Prejudice

An attempt is made to reassess SC affiliation as the R sees himself & the validity of the mailed questionaire with its partial return. 2 behavior variables were considered: (a) degrees of prejudice, & (b) degrees of religiosity. A comparison of the present findings with those of R. Centers in PSYCHOLOGY OF SO- CIAL CLASSES (Princeton U Press, 1949) & A. Hollingshead in ELMSTOWN'S YOUTH: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CLASSES ON ADOLESCENTS (Harper Bros, 1947) were made. An openended questionaire was mailed to a systematic random sample (N=2,497) of Cedar City (Calif). Returns were received from 47.9% of R's. Scales of degrees of prejudice were constructed by the method of a modified F-scale & degrees of religiosity from a previous scale. In order to test diff's, if any, between the mailed 0 & structured interviews, a coded questionaire was admin'ed to R's & an approximate 10% random sample was drawn from those who did & did not answer the mailed 0. Findings reveal the following: (1) There seems to be a general consensus as to a 3 SC division with minor variations. The Chi-square for this variable is high & statistically signif at the .001 level & beyond. (2) Prejudice is highly r'ed to class affiliation in general, ie, the higher the SC affiliation the stronger the prejudice att. However, if only the degree of prejudice is considered a U- shape distribution ensues. (3) There seems to be no statistical signif diff between R's who answer & those who do not answer the mailed M. (4) There seems to be no statistical signif diff between the present open-ended approaches, Hollingshead's index of soc position, &/or that of the modified Centers' class self-designation. Religiosity in general is inversely related to the prejudice phenomenon-a greater proportion of religious R's display lesser degrees of prejudiced att's. However, the more orthodox types of religious adherence seem conducive to stronger prejudiced att's toward the outgroup. Modified AA.