Date of Award

6-2010

Document Type

Union College Only

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

George Bizer

Language

English

Keywords

attitude, interracial marriage, interreligious, self-monitoring, tolerance

Abstract

The present study examines people’s attitudes towards intermarriage, both interracial and inter-religious marriages. Previous research has focused on demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education, ethnicity, and religious preference as factors that play a role in determining an individual’s attitude towards intermarriage. The present study investigates if two widely researched personality characteristics, self-monitoring (SM; Gangestad and Snyder,1986) and social dominance orientation (SDO; Schmitt et al., 2003), are also predictors of such attitudes. One hundred and sixty two respondents from a national sample reported their attitudes toward inter-religious and interracial marriages and then their perception of their friends’ and families’ attitudes toward inter-religious and interracial marriages. Respondents completed measures of the two personality variables. A series of multivariate regression analyses demonstrated that both SM and SDO were significant predictors of attitudes toward inter-religious marriage, such that people higher in SM were more tolerant of inter-religious marriage, while people higher in SDO were less tolerant. Interestingly, after controlling for how a person’s closest family and friends feel towards inter-religious marriages, self-monitoring was no longer a significant predictor. Indeed, this variable assessing peer attitudes was the most robust predictor of all.

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