Abstract

The aim of this work is to investigate the relation between ethnic identity and subtle and blatant prejudice toward immigrants in the Italian context. 272 university students attending four different Italian courses (psychology, pharmacy, engineer and letter and philosophy), 120 male and 148 female (mean age = 22.2), completed a questionnaire composed of Subtle and Blatant Prejudice Scales developed by Pettigrew and Meertens (1995) and some Identification Scales on regarding Territorial, National, European, Cultural and Cosmopolitan dimensions of etnic identity. As hypothesized data show that: a) subtle and blatant prejudice could be measured separately on reliability way; b) the prejudice's psychological factors work in similar way regardless of target-groups; c) the students attending psychological courses are more sensitive to differences between subtle and blatant prejudice. The results partially confirm the hypothesis regarding the relations between ethnic identity and subtle and blatant prejudice and show that both types of prejudice: d) increase when participants tend to privilege the territorial dimension of ethnic identity, and, in general; e) with higher ethnic identification levels. Social Identity theory was utilised to explain the results.