Abstract

Pettigrew and Meertens's (1995) scale attempts to distinguish between subtle and blatant forms of prejudice. In this paper we sought to test the validity of the measures included in the scale. We argue that the subtle prejudice scale lacks construct validity due mainly to two major flaws of the scale: first, the construct was operationalized via some items which do not show discriminant validity with the blatant prejudice measures; second, some subtle prejudice items just measure perception of cultural differences, but it is unclear whether the perception of cultural differences unambiguously reflects prejudice. A group of 356 Italian participants filled out measures of subtle and blatant prejudice, ethnocentrism, and political orientation. Results show that most indicators of subtle prejudice actually belong to the traditional general prejudice factor. The cultural differences sub-scale fails to achieve concurrent validity, suggesting that this scale is weakly related to the subtle prejudice construct; moreover, we show that the cultural differences subscale, if considered an indicator of subtle prejudice, leads to misleading results and interpretations.