Chapter 9

Chapter NinePrejudice: Disliking OthersCarol SaccaggiPsych 2C – Social Psychology22-23 April 2013

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Defining Prejudice

Preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members

Prejudice is an attitude (a combination of feelings, inclinations to act and beliefs) Supported by stereotypes

Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people

Although stereotypes can be positive and true, they also result in overgeneralization

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Defining Prejudice

Discrimination Unjustified negative behaviour toward a

group or its members Racism

Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour toward people of a given race

Sexism Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory

behaviour toward people of a given sex

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit

Dual attitude system Explicit

Conscious Implicit

Automatic

Our actions don’t alwaysmatch our beliefs/attitudes

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice?

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Racial Prejudice Is racial prejudice disappearing?

South Africa:

Study published in 2003 by Smith et al. compared young adults’ racial attitudes in 1995 and 1999. Some findings:• Small increase in tolerance, but not significant• English speaking whites less tolerant of racial

differences than Black and Coloured participants• White individuals’ levels of tolerance increased

more than those of Black individuals

What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Racial Prejudice

Subtle forms of prejudicePrejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behaviour have gone into “hiding”

Labor market discrimination Patronization

Avoiding criticisms Overpraising accomplishments

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Racial Prejudice

Automatic prejudice Involves primitive regions of the brain

(amygdala) are associated with fear Critics note that unconscious associations

may only indicate cultural assumptions, perhaps without prejudice

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Gender Prejudice

Gender stereotypes Strong gender stereotypes exist Members of the stereotyped group accept

the stereotypes Most believe that men and women are

different yet equal

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Gender Prejudice

Sexism: Benevolent and Hostile Attitudes toward women have changed rapidly Most see women as understanding, kind, and

helpful (“women-are-wonderful effect”) Gender Discrimination

Disappearing in democratic Western countries, but lives on in subtle forms

Non-Western countries gender bias is still strong

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Sources of PrejudiceSocial

Sources•Social inequalities•Socialization•Institutional support

Motivational sources

•Frustration and aggression (scapegoat theory)•Social Identity Theory (Feeling superior)•Motivation to avoid prejudice

Cognitive sources

•Categorization•Distinctiveness•Attribution (just world hypothesis)

What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and

Prejudice Unequal status breeds prejudice (they are poor

because they are not as good as I am) Social dominance orientation

Motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups

Being in a dominant high-status position tends to promote this orientation and justification

People high in social dominance tend to embrace prejudice

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What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? Socialization

Authoritarian personality Personality that is disposed to favor

obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status Ethnocentricity

Believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group, and having a corresponding disdain for all other groups

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What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? Socialization

Religion and Prejudice In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to

sanctify the present order Use of religion to support injustice helps explain a

pair of findings concerning North American Christianity Church members express more racial prejudice than

nonmembers Those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian

beliefs express more prejudice than those professing more progressive beliefs

Remember that this is correlational, not causal

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What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? Socialization

Conformity If prejudice is socially accepted, many

people will follow the path of least resistance and conform to the fashion

If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can diminish

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What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? Institutional Supports

Government Schools Magazines and newspapers

Face-ism Films and television

2012 BigMovies:

• Skyfall• The Dark

Knight Rises• The Hobbit• The Twilight

Saga

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The Bechdel Test for Movies:

1) Two or more female characters (with names)

2) Talking to each other

3) About something other than a man

What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Frustration and Aggression: The

Scapegoat Theory Displaced aggression

Hate crimes Realistic group conflict theory

Prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources

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What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior

to Others The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the

part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships We categorize We identify (ingroup) We compare (outgroup)

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What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior

to Others Ingroup bias

Tendency to favor one’s own group Because of our social identifications, we

conform to our group norms When our group succeeds, we feel better by

identifying strongly with it

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What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior

to Others Need for status, self-regard, and

belonging High status can only exist if someone else

has low status Terror management

People’s self-protective emotional and cognitive responses when confronted with reminders of their mortality

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What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Motivation to Avoid Prejudice

Motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to modify their thoughts and actions Self-conscious people will feel guilt and try

to inhibit their prejudicial response

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Categorization: Classifying People into

Groups Spontaneous categorization

Social identity theory implies that those who feel their social identity keenly will concern themselves with correctly categorizing people as us or them

Necessary for prejudice

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Categorization: Classifying People into

Groups Perceived Similarities and Differences

Outgroup homogeneity effect Perception of outgroup members as more

similar to one another than are ingroup members

Own-race bias Tendency for people to more accurately

recognize faces of their own race

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who

Stand Out Distinctive people

Feeds on self-consciousness Stigma consciousness

Person’s expectation of being victimized by prejudice or discrimination

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who

Stand Out Vivid cases

Given limited experience with a particular social group, we recall examples of it and generalize Can prime the stereotype

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who

Stand Out Distinctive events

Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership and individuals’ presumed characteristics

Attentiveness to unusual occurrences can create illusory correlations

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Attribution: Is It a Just World?

Group-serving bias Explaining away outgroup members’

positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions

Just-world phenomenon Tendency of people to believe that the

world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get

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What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes

Whenever a member of a group behaves as expected, we duly note the fact; our prior belief is confirmed

When a member of a group behaves inconsistently with our expectation, we may interpret or explain away the behavior as due to special circumstances

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What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes

Subtyping Accommodating individuals who deviate

from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as “exceptions to the rule”

Subgrouping Accommodating individuals who deviate

from one's stereotype by forming a new stereotype about this subset of the group

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What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-

Fulfilling Prophecy Social beliefs can be self-confirming Prejudice affects its targets

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What Are the Consequences of Prejudice?

Figure 9.10

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Stereotype Threat Disruptive concern,

when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? Do Stereotypes Bias Judgment of

Individuals? Yes, but people often evaluate individuals

more positively than the groups they compose

Strong Stereotypes Matter Stereotypes Bias Interpretations

Affect how events are interpreted We evaluate people more extremely when

their behavior violates our stereotypes

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