Prejudice toward groups rises with their local prevalence when fear drives it.

Evidence

Before ending this chapter, I’d like to mention one other mitigating factor that Will Gervais has identified. In his classic study of prejudice, the noted psychologist Gordon Allport observed that there are stronger feelings of prejudice toward groups that loom large. Subsequently, researchers have confirmed this pattern. For example, anti-black prejudice is stronger in regions of the United States where black people are a greater percentage of the local population. However, most research relating prejudice to out-group size comes from investigations of anti-black prejudice in America, and we know that when it comes to this particular prejudice, fear is a prominent emotional reaction. It is unsurprising that prejudice is positively associated with the relative size of a feared group that is seen as a threat to safety and property. However, prejudices based on different perceived threats might be differentially affected by outgroup prevalence. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 310

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whether atheist distrust, driven by moral suspicion rather than safety fear, responds differently to group size than fear-based prejudice is an open extension relevant to the reader’s framework.
• XREF: connects to: Northern white Baptist women feared southern and eastern European immigrants clustered in eastern cities. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 530