In Jaywalker’s blog I happened to run on a post he did on a university study on bigotry; the post was so interesting that I decided to steal his find and post about it also here – no hard feelings I hope. :)
Vani K Borooah from the University of Ulster and John Mangan from the University of Queensland were the key authors in this rather interesting study. The study included 23 countries from the so called Western World; practically Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The key question was:
“Would you like to have a person from this group as your neighbour?”
The 5 groups were: of a different race, muslims, jews, immigrants or foreign workers and homosexuals. The study didn’t only concentrate on this question but went on to analyse how bigotry was distributed between groups, how it related to the country in question, to political beliefs, unhapiness and other indices.
The results were unsettling both for the Western World and Greece. Copying the findings of the study:
The highest proportion of bigoted persons (bigotry count ratio) was in Northern Ireland and Greece – where, respectively, 44 and 43 percent of respondents did not want persons from at least one of the five groups as their neighbours – and the lowest proportion of bigoted persons was in Sweden (13 percent), Iceland (18 percent), Canada (22 percent), and Denmark (22 percent).
The value of the bigotry gap ratio – the mean, percentage amount by which the bigotry scores of all the persons was above the bigotry line (z=1) – was also highest for Greece (51 percent) and Northern Ireland (50 percent): not only did these countries have a high proportion of bigoted persons, bigots in these countries were, on average, more bigoted than in countries.
Greece scored second worse for people from a different race, universally worse for muslims, second worse for jews (with Spain being surprisingly first), 4th worse for immigrants and 4th worse for homosexuals. The troubling fact was that, while countries usually had some groups that they disliked in particular, Greece scored high in bigotry in all 5 groups; practicaly sharing a first place with Northern Ireland if we take into account all indices. Practically almost 1 out of 2 people in Greece would not like as a neighbour, at least, one of the aforementioned groups, (43.2% to be exact). Also the greek population of bigots is the most bigotted one on the whole western world.
Even after controlling for personal characteristics, the likelihood of a person being bigoted depended on the country in which he/she lived. With Northern Ireland as the residual country, and after controlling for personal characteristics, persons who lived in Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the USA were less likely to be bigoted (and strongly bigoted) – and persons who lived in Greece were more likely to be bigoted (and strongly bigoted) – than those living in Northern Ireland. The country effect for the other countries was not significantly different from zero.
What I didn’t expect for Greece was such a high degree of homophobia, equally high with the very catholic Italy and Ireland. I didn’t also expect such a high percentage for muslims but I imagine that the equation muslim=turk still works against muslim acceptance. At least immigrants were the most accepted from all groups, though still the rate of rejection was extremely high. As far as jews are concerned there weren’t any surprises with Greece being twice as judeophobic, as the media of the Western World. Interestingly enough, this was also the group were Greece differed more from the western media, scoring 97% more.
To tell the truth I feel that real percentages must be higher. The question was fairly straight-forward and at least some people must have dodged answering in a negative way against some groups, as not to appear racist. I doubt that this is the case in Greece as people still do not actually think that racist behaviors are socially unacceptable – I’m trying this moment to back this sensation with some tangible data.
Anyway still quite disturbing and as far as jewish presence is concerned verifies what we’ve been saying insofar. I’m even more troubled if I think that the paper didn’t included Roma; I tremble when I think what the percentages would be in that case. :(
Again thanks to Jaywalker for finding about this interesting survey.
Abravanel, the Blog 