Abstract
Social scientists have long been interested in understanding sources and causes of discriminatory attitudes, hostility, and prejudice toward out-group populations and the mechanisms underlying the emergence of such sentiments. Consequently, a variety of alternative theoretical models have been advanced in the literature to explain why members of the majority population hold discriminatory attitudes toward out-group populations and why they are willing to deny subordinate minority groups from equal access to social, political, and economic rights (e.g., Blumer, 1958; Fetzer, 2000; Schnapper, 1994). The alternative theoretical explanations range from racism or symbolic racism to authoritarian personality, to right-wing mobilization and to competitive threat, to name but a few (for a detailed discussion of the alternative theoretical models, see Wimmer, 1997). Although these alternative explanations are not necessarily contradictory or mutually exclusive, each emphasizes a different mechanism underlying the emergence of prejudice, discrimination, and hostility, and each has received some empirical confirmation and support.
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Semyonov, M., Gorodzeisky, A. (2012). Personal Threat, Collective Threat, and Discriminatory Attitudes. The Case of Foreign Workers in Israel. In: Salzborn, S., Davidov, E., Reinecke, J. (eds) Methods, Theories, and Empirical Applications in the Social Sciences. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18898-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18898-0_16
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