“Why should I?”: Adolescents’ motivations to regulate prejudice in relation to their norm perceptions and ethnic attitudes

The present study examined native Dutch adolescents’ motivations to regulate their out-group prejudice, and tested the relations with their ethnic attitudes and the perceived multicultural norms of their friends and parents. Three types of anti-prejudice motivation were assessed using a slightly adapted version of the Motivation to be Nonprejudiced Scale (MNPS; Legault et al., 2007): a strongly self-determined motivation (involving an intrinsic appreciation of out-groups and a personal endorsement of equality and out-group acceptance), a weakly self-determined motivation (including concerns with negative reactions from self and others), and amotivation (the absence of a clear motivation). Only the strongly self-determined motivation was consistently related to less negative ethnic attitudes, and it partly mediated the link between the perceived norms and these attitudes. The perceived norms of the friends were positively associated with the weakly self-determined motivation but the latter was not effective. Practical implications are discussed.