Testing the Relationship between Ethnic Pride and Prejudice in the Context of Cyprus

Abstract

In this chapter¹ we use the survey data gathered from GCs and TCs to test some of the hypotheses that emerged from our analysis of the qualitative interview data and the review of the international literature on the relationship between ethnic pride and prejudice. We defined GC students as those students who perceive themselves as either Cypriot, Greek Cypriot or Greek and who have at least one parent that speaks Greek to them. Similarly, we defined TC students as those students who define themselves as either TC or Cypriot (excluding the few students who perceived themselves as Turks) and who have at least one parent that speaks Turkish to them. As there are no respondents who speak both Greek and Turkish with their parents, the variables that measure the languages that our respondents spoke at home with each parent seems a valid boundary to distinguish GCs from TCs. The analysis is divided in two parts. First, we focus on GCs’ and afterwards on TCs’ attitudes to meaningful ethnic out-groups. For both GCs and TCs we try to explain variability within these two groups in terms of their perceptions to meaningful ethnic out-groups. Or, in other words, we try to explain why some GCs are more positive to ethnic out-groups as compared to other GCs and why some TCs are more positive to ethnic out-groups as compared to other TCs.