This paper explores how New Zealanders minify or underscore inclusionary versus exclusionary traits of the national prototype, an essential symbolic resource for upholding hierarchy between societal groups. This helps justify several subtile biased and exclusionary practices aimed at novel immigrant groups, to the degree that such groups are considered as not really ‘fitting’ into the nation. Highlights ► Proposes the exclusionary emphasis hypothesis of national character. ► Measured representations of national character in New Zealand. ► Showed that Social Dominance Orientation predicts national character representations. ► Describes how national character representations function as legitimizing myths.