Prejudice Among the Religious Majority: A Person-Centered Approach to Prejudice Among Christians in the United States

Much of the recent work on prejudice emphasizes individual differences, which focuses on the strength of relations between variables on specific instances of prejudice such as racial-ethnic or sexual prejudices. However, the relations between religiosity and prejudice variables are inconsistent and sometimes even paradoxical (Allport, 1954). In three studies of Christian Americans (N = 2,271), we utilized a person-centered data-analytic approach to identify distinct subgroups or profiles characterized by similar self-reported prejudices. Our results support four distinct profiles of prejudice among Christians in the United States. We labeled the profiles of prejudices Generalized, Tepid, Sanctioned, and Warm. The Generalized profile demonstrated prejudice toward people in historically disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation groups. People in the Sanctioned profile demonstrated a pattern of value-based prejudice. The Tepid profile reported neutral attitudes toward people groups, and the Warm profile reported positive attitudes toward minority groups and warm (but slightly less so) attitudes toward conservative groups. These results support the generalized and value violation models of prejudice and provide further insight to other variations in prejudice among Christian Americans.