Table 3.
Criteria for and percentages of participants categorized into the different factual minority groups in study 1.
| factual minority status | categorization |
|---|---|
| ethnicity (12.0%) | participants were categorized as either factually belonging to an ethnic minority group or the ethnic majority group based on an ordered listing of the ethnic majority and minority groups within each respective country [45]. See note accompanying table 1 for details |
| religious affiliation (11.3% religious minority/38.0% non-religious) | in the USA and Germany, Protestants and Catholics were considered the religious majority group [46]. For the UK, the religious majority are Christians generally (includes Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist), while in Poland it is Catholics. Participants not belonging to any of these religious denominations in their country were thus coded as part of a factual religious minority group |
| political orientation (7.8% left-wing/7.3% right-wing) | in two separate dummy variables, participants with either a very left-wing/liberal political view (scoring 0 or 1 on the scale) or a very right-wing/conservative political view (scoring 9 or 10 on the scale) were categorized as a factual political minority and compared to the rest of the participants |
| sexual orientation (8.6%) | participants indicating another sexual orientation than heterosexual were categorized as part of a factual minority group and compared to heterosexuals |
| gender identity (50.6%) | although women are not numerically a minority group, one can argue that they constitute a minority in terms of power and status as they experience social inequalities relative to men in many societies including those considered in this research. Therefore, we coded participants who identified as women or other-gendered/non-binary as a minority group and men as the majority group. Please note that the number of non-binary responses (n = 7) did not allow us to compare it to binary responses |
| social class (5.4%) | a common way to categorize participants as belonging to the lower class in society is to operationalize low class as having a relative low income [47] and holding a low level of educational attainment (e.g. [48]). In line with this, participants were grouped into the minority group (i.e. low social class) or majority group (remaining participants) based on their income and education level relative to others in their country |
| region of residence (42.5%) | across the countries we sampled, the majority of the population live in urban areas (USA = 82.9%; UK = 84.2%; Poland = 60.1%; Germany = 77.5%; [49]). Hence, participants not living in an urban area were categorized as a part of a factual minority group based on region of residence |