Toward an understanding of trait competition, cooperation and explicit intergroup prejudice

We sought to measure whether, and to what extent, correlations existed between trait-level cooperation and competition and different forms of intergroup prejudice. We recruited two samples of heterosexual European-American participants (n = 113 and n = 223) from a U.S. national panel survey service. Participants completed measures of racial, gender, and sexual orientation prejudice as questionnaires. In both samples, we found that trait competition tended to positively correlate with explicit measures, such that increasing trait competition was associated with higher degrees of prejudice. Interestingly, we found that different "families" of prejudice had different correlational profiles with trait competition, such that those with racial and gender prejudice had larger magnitudes than sexual orientation prejudice. Separately, trait cooperation only correlated reliably with prejudicial attitudes toward African Americans, such that increasing trait cooperation was associated with lower levels of prejudice.