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The Princeton trilogy revisited in South Africa : describing and examining changes in the content ofracial stereotypes in post-apartheid South Africa.

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Date

2010

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Abstract

This study investigated changes in the content and favourability of South African racial stereotypes over the past fifty years, with van den Berghe’s (1962) study providing baseline data. The scope of the current investigation was expanded to include investigations of stereotype uniformity, differences between personal and cultural stereotypes, and the degree to which racial subtypes overlap with global racial categories. The findings reflected an interesting change in the descriptive language used by the respondent groups between the two studies. At the same time, many trends observed in the van den Berghe (1962) study have persisted today. Stereotypes appear to be at least as (if not more) negative now than in 1962, with the exception of ‘English whites’ and ‘city blacks’, which were described more favourably in the present study. A significant difference between cultural and personal stereotypes was found for the global racial categories (black, white, Indian, coloured), but not for the two subtype groups (English and Afrikaans white; city and rural black). Thus there was only partial evidence to support Devine and Elliot’s (1995) hypothesis, which proposes that cultural stereotypes may remain relatively stable over time while personal stereotypes may undergo revision. The rural black subtype was most evidently reflected in the global black category, whereas the white global category seemed to be more of an aggregate of the English and Afrikaans white subtypes. Through investigating stereotypes using various methods outlined in this thesis, it was possible to assess shifts in people’s perceptions in response to sociopolitical change in South Africa over the past 16 years.

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Stereotypes (Social psychology)--South Africa., Prejudices., Racism--South Africa., South Africa--Race relations., Theses--Psychology.

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