Abstract:

Liu, J.H. & Sibley, C.G. (2006).
Differential effects of societal anchoring and attitude certainty in
determining support or opposition to (bi)cultural diversity in New Zealand.
Papers on Social Representations, 15, pages 1.1-1.15
[http://www.psr.jku.at/]

In the context of bicultural race relations in New Zealand (NZ) between indigenous Maori 
people and the dominant group NZ Europeans, standard societal discourses for talking 
about (bi)cultural diversity render illegitimate actions to rectify the disadvantaged position 
of Maori. However, Maori have considerable symbolic power in NZ to recognize or validate 
the ethnic identity of the dominant group because the foundation of the nation’s sovereignty 
is based on the Treaty of Waitangi between Maori and NZ Europeans. Based on content rich 
analysis of previous discursive work in this area, we hypothesized that “attitude strength” 
(ratings of certainty of opinion about an issue), and what we refer to as “societal anchoring” 
(the degree to which an issue is talked about interpersonally and debated in media) would 
exert differential effects on support for bicultural policy and related issues. Hierarchical 
Linear Modeling showed that intrapersonal attitude certainty had positive associations 
and societal anchoring had negative associations with support for bicultural policy in a 
sample of NZ European undergraduates. The importance of the distinction between 
attitude certainty and societal anchoring for social representations theory and the core 
and peripheral elements within a representation is discussed in relation to discourse 
analysis and attitude theory.