Social attitudes and intergroup relations in Croatian society

The project refers to the research and analysis of social attitudes and intergroup relations in contemporary Croatian society as one of the foundations for the analysis of Croatian social identity and for comparisons at the European and world level. Namely, social identity has its origins and manifestations in values, social attitudes and ideologies, which means that to understand social identity, analysis and knowledge of all the mentioned categories is necessary. The project will focus on two aspects of social attitudes – positive and negative. Positive refers to the categories of tolerance, solidarity, social trust, social responsibility and motivation to volunteer in the community. The negative refers to prejudices, stereotypes and discrimination and related ideologies. Since the project is part of the program “Croatian values in a comparative context”, which systematically investigates both values and certain positive aspects of social attitudes such as solidarity and motivation for community activities, special emphasis in this project will be on researching negative aspects of social attitudes. In this way, the findings from this project together with the findings from the other three will enable a systematic analysis of Croatian social identity in the European and world context. The first general goal of the project is to determine the representation of social attitudes important for intergroup relations and the degree of social cohesion, and to compare the level of prejudice and tolerance in Croatia compared to other countries. The second general goal is to investigate the determinants, formation and consequences of social attitudes and prejudices in the context of contemporary socio-psychological theories. Considering the importance of the cultural context in the emergence, determinants and consequences of social attitudes, as well as social and political changes and war events in Croatia, the project, in addition to the confirmation of general legalities, also expects to determine particularities. Since standardized research instruments and procedures will be used in the research within the project, the results will be verifiable by comparison with similar international and domestic research, and the conducted research will be repeatable. The primary importance of the project, according to the entire program, is in the discovery of factors that can help the processes of social cohesion and the development of a model of the determinants and consequences of social attitudes and prejudices within the Croatian context.