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Attributing Attitudes to Members of Groups

  • Chapter
Attitudinal Judgment

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Social Psychology ((SSSOC))

Abstract

Stripped of the pejoratives and viewed analytically, this letter may reflect and reveal tendencies of how humans form and express their impressions of the climate of opinion in intergroup relations. The letter writer is sure of an in-group consensus agreeing with his personal preference for segregation. He is also hopeful, though perhaps less confident, that members of the out-group also prefer segregation.

I don’t really know what you niggers want... We have a high percentage of blacks in my company, and they are as good as the next soldier. We have to work together... but when I have any free time I want to get as far away from a nigger as I can get. The other whites feel the same way. We hope the niggers feel the same way about us... we whites do not wish to associate with niggers and we want them to feel the same towards us. For your information and future guidance I am sure that at least 98% of whites (north and south) (and I am from the north) feel the same way. Just a Yankee giving you the straight poop.

(Letter to Tommy Smith, Olympic Gold Medalist Sprinter at 200 meters in 1968, quoted by Edwards, 1969, p. 48 [emphasis added])

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Authors
  1. Donald Granberg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QG, England

    J. Richard Eiser

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© 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Granberg, D. (1984). Attributing Attitudes to Members of Groups. In: Eiser, J.R. (eds) Attitudinal Judgment. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8251-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8251-5_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-8253-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-8251-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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