Intergroup Attitude Change in South Africa: A Thirty-Seven Year Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This longitudinal study reports intergroup attitude changes in South Africa over a 37-year period beginning from the 1970s when the apartheid dispensation was still firmly in place, following by a second data collection period after a time of political turmoil and the advent of a democratic dispensation from 1998–2000, and a third data collection from 2008–2009 after a period of political consolidation and social transformation. Data were collected using a 15-item Semantic Differential attitude scale. Significance of group differences was calculated by means of t-tests and the practical significance of differences assessed by calculating effect sizes (d). Results show that positive attitude changes did become manifest after democratization. However, certain critical negative intergroup attitudes such as the Black-White divide tend to persist.