The project focused on changes in prejudice dependent on contextual circumstances. The project has proceeded as planned. We had the opportunity to begin the analytical work and report it early on as the project used already existing data.

We have evolved the project during the period by also incorporating how prejudice change within individuals. The latter means that we have partly focused on individuals (adolescents) over time in order to explain how various circumstances in their surrounding effect changes in prejudice. This is a contribution to the focus on national contexts in relation to prejudice. We still focus on attitudinal change but we realized, which was reported in the midterm report to RJ, that this evolved focus would enhance the whole project where we had the opportunity to study populational changes but also to understand how prejudice is created and sustained amongst adolescents.

The main reason for the expansion of the project is related to the so-called formative years approach where an increasing amount of research, including ours, highlights implicitly or explicitly that attitudinal change primarily takes place during adolescence.

The three main results from the project are first, that the rise of the radical right in Europe does not necessarily drive attitudinal changes in prejudice, but that those parties capitalize on already existing attitudes. Simultaneously we show that the articulation of these parties can increase saliency of the issues related to migration and thus may affect attitudes further down the road. This becomes especially acute in relation to the third point below in relation to adolescents and generational shifts. Second, we question the sociological theoretical frameworks concerning the effects of contexts on attitudes. We show that the assumed relationship between immigrant populations, politics and prejudice is more complex than previously suggested. Third, we show the importance of studying attitudinal change amongst adolescents as attitudes both fluctuates and are solidified during the formative years. We do not claim that attitudinal change does not happen during adulthood; it does. However, the potential for change in larger during adolescence which needs to be monitored to enable the understanding of these processes. We have contributed with an increased understanding of the factors that cause attitudinal changes in prejudice during the formative years.

The project include a number of specific results. We have shown that radical right parties do not drive changes in prejudice. Independently of how we measure the presence of these parties as well as potential effects (prejudice, dispersion in prejudice or other attitudes) these attitudes do not change in relation to changes in radical right presence (Bohman& Hjerm). This insight caused the need to further understand the radical right, which resulted in an article accounting for the change within these parties between 1970 and 2013 (Eger & Valdez). We have also shown, accounting for changes over time, how different welfare state policies effect prejudice, which questions previous research unable to show that such relationship exist (Nagayoshi & Hjerm). This relates to the fact that previous research has not accounted for the large variation between seemingly similar welfare state arrangements. This finding gave us the idea to further understand the relationship between the welfare state and prejudice and approach the so-called progressive’s dilemma. We show that it is less likely that people support a comprehensive welfare state and generous immigration systems at the same time (Kulin, Eger & Hjerm), while immigration or ethnic heterogeneity on its own does not relate to prejudice. We also show that the perception of group differences are important for how we should understand the progressive’s dilemma (Breznau & Eger). We have also contributed with two theoretical papers that touches upon the relationship between politics and prejudice (Eger & Bohman; Eger & Hjerm). We discuss prejudice research while also revisiting the classical question of liberalism versus multiculturalism in a time of increased migration. Both papers contribute to place the project in a bigger theoretical perspective.

In relation to the expansion of the project towards changes in prejudice during the formative years, we have highlighted the importance of friends to predict prejudice (Hjerm, Eger & Danell). We show that adolescents become more prejudice if their friends are prejudice, or more precisely that their attitudes adapt to their friends´ attitudes. We also show that it is the totality of friends' attitudes rather that various relationships (networks) with those friends that matters. We follow up by examining political discussion, as a feature of deliberative democracy, and concluded that that such discussions decrease prejudice over time (Bohman, Hjerm & Eger). Moreover, we show that teacher quality and critical thinking skills are important predictors of low levels of prejudice (Hjerm, Johansson-Sevä & Werner) and that the relationship between teachers and students is important where more supportive teachers contribute to a reduction in prejudice over time (Miklikowska, Thijs & Hjerm).

The insights from the first part of the project have generated a number or new research questions concerning changes in prejudice. The primary question concerns how lasting contextual effects during adolescence are. Preliminary results (Eger, Hjerm & Mitchell work in progress) suggest that those effects may be a lot more lasting than previously expected, but more research is needed. Moreover, we have examined how contextual circumstances influence adult populations and how more proximal circumstances affect adolescents, but we need to study how more distal contextual circumstances affect people during their formative years. Finally, the project has lead us to question the assumption of universal effects within the threat paradigm in Sociology. A number of our studies, as well as other contemporary research, indicate that the relationship between immigrants as a perceived threat and prejudice is far more nuanced than previously assumed.

The project is international in that we exclusively publish in English in international journals. Moreover, the project has mainly used cross-country comparative data over time where we examine attitudes in different countries. In those case where we us country specific data (Sweden) we always aim to examine universal theoretical phenomena. We have also a number of collaborative publications with researcher both inside and outside of Sweden. The project has also contributed to new contacts with researchers in Poland, the Netherlands and Germany, which resulted in a FORTE program emanating from this project.

Results from the project has primarily been reported to the research community in scientific journals (see publication list), but also via participation in various conferences like ASA, International Conference of Europeanists, International Society of Political Psychology Annual Meeting and more including a number of smaller workshops. We have also written a number of popular science texts to disperse our results to the broader public. Finally, we have given at least a dozen popular presentations about our research aimed at the broad public.