Demographic and religious correlates of prejudice across 66 countries: The moderating role of national human development

Prejudice remains a persistent social issue, yet limited evidence exists on how its predictors differ across countries. Data from Wave 7 of the World Values Survey were used to construct a generalized prejudice index based on self-reported xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism in a sample of 97,220 adults from 66 societies ( M age = 43.18, SD age = 16.58, 52.6% female). Age, gender, education, income, subjective social class, and religiosity were examined as predictors of prejudice, and it was assessed whether these associations varied according to national human development. Bayesian multilevel analyses indicated that higher national human development was associated with lower average levels of prejudice. In the pooled global sample, older age and greater religiosity were positively associated with prejudice, whereas being female and having higher education, income, and subjective social class were negatively associated with prejudice. These relationships were, however, contingent on societal development. Cross-level interactions showed that demographic and religious predictors were weak or negligible in low-development countries but became stronger and statistically significant in high-development countries. In less developed societies, these predictors were largely unrelated to prejudice, suggesting that individuals’ demographic characteristics and religiosity say little about their level of prejudice in such societies. These results suggest that many findings often assumed to be general are in fact more characteristic of high‑development than low‑development contexts.