INTERRACIAL PREFERENCES AND THEIR PERSONALITY DETERMINANTS

Abstract

This study aimed to compare the survey results on the interracial preferences of the university students who attended in 1954 with those in 1959, in order to explore the conformity of interracial pre-ferences to interracial evaluation of superiority or inferiority, and the relation between the interracial preferences and the personality determinants.
One hundred and six male and one hundred and twenty-six female students in the Faculty of Education of Kumamoto University were the respondents to the questionnaires made to indicate a degree of preference toward the twenty different races. To evaluate interracial preferences, subjects were asked to compare each race with the Japanese race on a 7 point scale. Then subjects were asked to rate their feelings of self-dislike on a 6 point scale and to select the most suitable opinion among five choices.
The results were as follows:
(1) There was a high correlation of 0. 874 between the interracial preferences conceived by the university students investigated in 1954 and those in 1959. But considerable changes in preferences were revealed in a negative direction toward the Chinese, the Indians, and Koreans, and in a positive direction toward the Australians, the Swiss, and the Americans.
(2) The correlation coefficient of the interracial preferences with the interracial evaluation of superiority was 0.760. The Russians, the Jews, the Chinese and the Americans, however, were rated remarkably higher in superiority evaluation than in preference however, the Japanase, the Indians, the Burmese, the Philippinoes and the Negroes showed higher preference than superiority evaluation. Thus, the interracial preferences and the interracial stereotypes have not always consistently appeared correlative.
(3) On the relation between the interracial preferences or the interracial evaluation of superiority and the personality determinants, the following tendencies have been found:
(a) Individuals who ranked Japanese at the 7th step in the scale or below in preferences have tended to score higher both on the racial evaluation scale and on the self-dislike scale, but lower on the racial prejudice scale, than those who did not.
This second tendency seems to be due to the results of the defensive processes by which they may escape from their guilty feelings regarding xenophilic attitudes as opposed to the domestic.
(b) Those who obtained higher scores on the prejudice scale were higher on the self-dislike scale and lower on the racial evaluation scale.
(c) Those who obtained higher scores on the selfdislike scale were higher both on the racial evaluation and on the prejudice scale. These results lead us to the -conclusion that there may be a certain similar underlying personality dynamics between the xenophilic and the prejudiced.