More Kindness, Less Prejudice Against Immigrants? Sometimes, but not Always. A Preliminary Study with Italian Adolescents

Prejudice against immigrants is a relevant research topic within social psychology. Researchers detected several individual variables affecting prejudice such as morality, personality, and sex. However, until now, it has never been studied in relation to kindness, which might be a significant protective factor against prejudice. Based on Kohlberg’s theory of moral judgement, Comunian (1998) identified four stage dimensions of kindness, from egocentric to societal kindness (i.e., a means of social progress and improvement). This study aims to explore the relation between such kindness dimensions and blatant and subtle prejudice against immigrants in adolescence, also by considering the moderating effect of adolescents’ sex. It involved 215 Italian participants (77% girls; Mage=16.77, SD=0.72), who were asked to fill in a self-report questionnaire. Moderated regression analysis showed that kindness was associated with both blatant and subtle prejudice, negatively or positively depending on the kindness dimension. Interestingly, both egocentric and extrinsically motivated kindness supported prejudice. Moreover, the positive association between egocentric kindness and blatant prejudice was moderated by sex, being stronger for boys. The implications of these findings are discussed.