Interracial perception among black, white, and Mexican-American high school students

33 black, 35 Mexican-American, and 65 white high school students participated in a study of perceived belief similarity and accuracy of social perception. One-third of the Ss within each ethnic group responded to a 20-item questionnaire as they thought a black student would respond; 1/3 responded as they thought a Mexican-American student would respond; and 1/3 responded as they thought a white student would respond. The black Ss perceived both their white and Mexican-American classmates as being dissimilar to themselves, but the Mexican-American Ss did not demonstrate differential perception between themselves and the other 2 groups. All 3 groups had relatively veridical perception of how black and Mexican-American students would respond to the questionnaire. Blacks and Mexican-Americans were substantially inaccurate in their perception of whites. These data suggest that blacks and Mexican-Americans are more aware of each other's personality characteristics than they are of the characteristics of white students. (28 ref)