Scottish Social Attitudes 2025 | Attitudes to discrimination and positive action

About the study

Since 1999, Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) has been tracking the views and opinions of people’s social, political and moral attitudes in Scotland. Every year, members of the Scottish public are invited to take part and share their views on a range of topics such as work, equalities, welfare, health and how the country is run.

Households are randomly selected from across Scotland to take part in the study to get a truly unbiased picture of attitudes in Scotland. Since 2023 the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey has been run as a push-to-web survey alongside the British Social Attitudes survey, retaining comparability with the face-to-face survey mode from 1999 to 2019.

In 2025 SSA included questions on general attitudes towards prejudice, personal relationships, employment and equality of opportunity in the labour market, positive action and promoting equality in the workplace, and attitudes towards immigration. The main aim was to measure the extent and character of discriminatory attitudes and the level of support for positive action in Scotland in 2025 – including comparing attitudes to different groups and in different contexts. 

Findings 

The key findings were as follows:

General attitudes to prejudice and diversity  

• In 2025, 65% of people said that ‘Scotland should do everything it can to get rid of all kinds of prejudice’ – a slight decrease from 2015 (69%), and a similar level to 2006 (65%) and 2010 (66%).  
• Around one in three (31%) said that ‘Sometimes there is good reason for people to be prejudiced against certain groups’ which is higher than in 2015 (22%).
• Nearly half (45%) of people said they would prefer to live in an area ‘with lots of different kinds of people’, while 31% said they would prefer to live in an area ‘where most people are similar to you’.  

Equity and participation in the labour market  

• Most respondents thought that both mothers (95%) and fathers (92%) of children under five definitely or probably should be entitled to take up to five days paid leave to look after their child when they are ill. A higher proportion thought that mothers ‘definitely should’ be entitled to this (75%) compared with fathers (68%).
• A quarter (26%) of people said that older people should be made to retire to make way for younger age groups, and 72% said it is wrong to make people retire just because they have reached a certain age.  

Promoting equality and positive action

• Four in ten (40%) thought that attempts to give equal opportunities for women had ‘not gone far enough’, compared with 32% thinking this about Black and Asian people and lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
• One in ten (10%) though that attempts to give equal opportunities for women had ‘gone too far’, compared with 23% thinking  this about Black and Asian people and 26% think this about lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

Conclusions

The findings indicate increased levels of acceptability of prejudice, and both increased levels of discrimination against some groups, and a continued decline in levels of discrimination against others, which vary depending on the context. Four groups were identified as being at particular risk of discrimination in 2025: trans people, Gypsy/Travellers, people with severe and enduring mental illness, and older people.  

Analysis of the survey results suggest that Muslims, Jewish people, people who experience depression, and gay, lesbian or bisexual people were all facing less direct discrimination than in 2010, however, fewer people in Scotland were happy that a close family member married or formed a long-term relationship with each of these groups in 2025 than they were in 2010.  

Three distinct groups in Scotland can be identified in terms of the extent to which they hold discriminatory attitudes:

One group demonstrates discriminatory attitudes towards a range of different minorities, across different contexts. They tend to prefer to live in areas with people similar to themselves and have a negative view of the impact of immigration. They are more likely to be male, older, heterosexual, and have a religious identity.  

The second group holds very few discriminatory attitudes, are largely in favour of immigration and positive action in the workplace, like to live in diverse areas, and would be happy to be related to all sorts of people or have someone from a minority group teaching their children. They are more likely to be younger, female, not religious and gay, lesbian or bisexual.

The majority who demonstrate some discriminatory attitudes, have concerns in specific situations or about specific groups, but these are not deep-rooted. Many of these people agree that Scotland should do all it can to eliminate prejudice, hence they may be willing to adjust their own behaviour and attitudes.

Methodology

Fieldwork for the Scottish Social Attitudes survey took place between 16 September and 11 November 2025. SSA was conducted using a push-to-web design, with a telephone option for those either unwilling or unable to take part online. Addresses from across Scotland were randomly sampled from the Postcode Address File (PAF). At each selected address up to two adults aged 16 and over were invited to take part in the survey. There were two versions of the survey in 2025; one funded by ESRC (including for the International Social Sciences Programme) and one funded by Scottish Government.

In total, on the Scottish Government funded survey 1,549 fully completed interviews were obtained, with an individual response rate of 15%.

SSA was conducted using face-to-face interviewing between 1999 and 2019, and shifted to the current push-to-web design from 2023 onwards.

Further detail can be found in the technical report: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-social-attitudes-survey-2025-technical-report/