ABSTRACT
Prejudice originates from socialisation within a particular culture or group that transmits its norms, values and reference models to younger generations. In the language of causal modelling, a procedure based on total effects decomposition was used, which estimates the direct effect of education on prejudice and the indirect effect operating through the three intervening variables. One of the principal purposes of formal education is to increase knowledge. It does so by bringing the individual into contact with problems and worlds often very distant from his or her everyday reality, helping to create a knowledge base on which s/he can draw when required to construe new realities. Although education does not always produce upward social mobility, it at least guarantees the conservation of status by rendering individuals less vulnerable to competition by members of an outgroup. Thus, that a higher level of education is associated with a lower level of prejudice is widely acknowledged.
