Predictors of prejudice towards childfree individuals in Poland

Abstract

Individuals who choose to be childfree often face misunderstanding and a lack of acceptance from others. In many cases, this results in negative attitudes, followed by discrimination and prejudice. There have been few studies that would allow us to determine which features are responsible for treating childfree individuals with prejudice. This study aimed to explore the effect of five possible features that could influence others' prejudice towards childfree individuals: collective narcissism, right‐wing authoritarianism, religiosity, political beliefs, and generativity. The study was conducted in Poland among 229 participants (age 19–59, M = 30.23; SD = 6.72). Commonality analysis was performed which allowed us to isolate both unique and common effects of possible predictors on the dependent variable (prejudice). Right‐wing authoritarianism, political beliefs, and collective narcissism had both a unique and common effect on the dependent variable. Religiosity only had a common effect on prejudice, whereas generativity had no effect (neither common nor unique) on the dependent variable. The total explained variance of the dependent variable was R2 = 0.46. The study isolated four predictors of prejudice towards childfree individuals: right‐wing authoritarianism, political beliefs, collective narcissism, and religiosity. This provides a better understanding of the possible origin of prejudice towards childfree individuals and allows us to explore the relation between these predictors in the future. These results can be used to promote more positive attitudes towards childfree individuals as well as create more targeted actions to tackle the prejudice towards them.