Prejudice

Its Causes, Effects, and Cures

Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination

• Stereotypes are the cognitive component of attitudes toward a social group consisting of beliefs about what particular groups are like.

• Prejudice is the affective component of prejudice, the feelings we have about particular groups.

• Discrimination is the behavioral component, or differential actions taken toward members of specific social groups.

Stereotypes

• Beliefs about social groups in terms of the shared traits or characteristics. Stereotypes are cognitive frameworks that influence the processing of social information.

• Gender Stereotypes concern traits possessed by females and males, and that distinguish the two genders from each other.

Gender Stereotypes

Women• Kind• Nurturent• Considerate • Dependent• Weak• Overly emotional

Men• Decisive• Assertive• Accomplished• Aggressive• Insensitive• Arrogant

Warmth/Competence Dimension

• Women are collectively seen as high in warmth but low on competence, similar to other low-status groups who are not a threat to the high-status group.

• When a group—such as Jews in Nazi Germany—are seen as a threat to the high-status group (sometimes called ‘envious prejudice’), those groups are stereotyped as low in warmth but high on competence.

Glass Ceiling

• Barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent women from advancing to top-level positions.

• Despite being higher than men in ‘likeability,’ women’s traits are viewed as less appropriate for high-status positions.

• Women are often rejected when violate stereotypes (‘respect’ also a factor).

• Men often ride the ‘glass escalator’ to the top.

Some Basis for Optimism

• Female professors at MIT found they were systematically awarded less research support and lower salaries than their male colleagues, yet other studies show few gender differences in actual career success at large companies. Women do experience more obstacles to success (difficulties fitting-in, exclusion from informal networks, securing developmental assignments) but some arrive nevertheless.

Tokenism

• Hiring members as token members of their group

• Performing trivial positive actions for members of out-groups that are later used as an excuse or justification for later discriminatory treatment (refusing more meaningful beneficial actions)

• Lets prejudiced people ‘off the hook’ and can damage self-esteem of targets.

Sexism• Prejudice based on gender; usually refers to

negative responses toward women.• Benevolent Sexism: Views suggesting that

women are superior to men in various ways and are truly necessary to men’s happiness (higher in women).– Social Creativity Response: when low-status

groups attempt to achieve positive distinctiveness for their group on alternative dimensions that do not threaten the high-status group.

• Hostile Sexism: views that women are a threat to men’s position (higher in men).

Are Gender Stereotypes Accurate?

• Gender differences may reflect the impact of stereotypes and their self-confirming nature.

• There are some differences between males and females with respect to various aspects of behavior, but generally the magnitude is much smaller than prevailing stereotypes suggest; can be exaggerations that reflect behaviors that are typical of the roles occupied by men and women.

“Same” does not necessarily mean “Equal.”

Shifting standards: even when the same evaluation ratings are given to members of different groups, it does not mean that stereotypes are not influencing those ratings, nor will same identical ratings translate to behavioral expectations.

Subjective scales: open to interpretation; good to bad, weak to strong

Objective scales: measurement units that mean the same thing regardless of category membership.

(dollars earned per year vs. earning a lot)Within-group comparisons

Subtypes

• A subset of a group that is not consistent with the stereotype of the group as a whole.

-When the individual represents an extreme disconfirmation of the stereotype, stereotypes are not revised, it is only when the disconfirming target is different in one specific way but is otherwise seen as a typical group member, that stereotype revision may occur, especially if repeatedly encounter others with same variation.

Illusory Correlation

• The perception of a stronger association between two variables than actually exists. – Ratings can be affected by group size– Ratings are affected by distinctiveness, such as

infrequency of events or stimuliTendency of white Americans to overestimate crime

rates among African Americans (minority group=high in distinctiveness, as are many criminal behaviors, which are relatively rare).

Out-group Homogeneity• Tendency to perceive members of an out-group

as “all alike” or more similar to each other than members of the in-group (older people, university students from another college).

• In-Group Differentiation: tendency to perceive members of our own group as showing much larger differences from one another (more heterogeneous) than members of out-groups.

• In-group Homogeneity (occurs most among minority group members, gay vs. straight)

• Social motives for occurrence of both

Prejudice & Discrimination: Feelings and Actions toward Social

Groups• Prejudice consists of negative attitudes

toward the members of specific social groups.• It is not personal or based on individual traits

or behaviors; the person is disliked for belonging to a group other than the perceiver’s own group.

• Prejudice expressed in action depends on perceived norms and acceptability of doing so.

Attitudes of Prejudice Given Higher Attention, Processed More

Carefully• Information that is consistent with prejudice

views receives closer attention and so is remembered more than information not consistent with these views.

• People high in prejudice find it essential to know the group membership of individuals, believing groups contain underlying essences, which are used to justify differential treatment.

Attitudes of Prejudice: Negative Feelings or Emotions

• Occurs in the presence of, or by simply thinking about members of particular groups

• Associated with specific intergroup emotions such as fear, anger, envy, guilt or disgust. Each emotion may evoke a different discriminatory action (anger-harm, guilt/disgust-avoidance, fear/envy-defensive reaction).

• Prejudice reduction efforts should address intergroup emotion on which prejudice is based.

Only some negative emotions lead to automatic responses

• When feeling angry, participants more rapidly associated the out-group with negative evaluations, and took longer to associate the out-group with positive evaluations.

• No time differences were obtained when participants felt either sad or neutral.

• Incidental feelings, induced separately or before the encounter, can still affect judgments. (DeSteno et al., 2004)

Implicit Associations

• Links between group members and trait associations of which the perceiver may be unaware or even deny (can be activated automatically).

• Implicit stereotypes towards many different groups were activated in priming studies.

• Implicit stereotypes may be better predictors of bias than explicit measures.

Origins of Prejudice: Contrasting Perspectives

• Threat: concerns fear that one’s group interests will be undermined or that one’s self-esteem is in jeopardy.

• Research suggests that holding prejudice views of an out-group can bolster the in-group’s image/feelings of superiority (Rocky videos), but such prejudice may be expressed only when threat is present.

• Threat in the form of perceived criticism.

Threats to Superiority and Self-Esteem of In-Group

• Men’s collective opposition to challenges by women and to affirmative action for women is most severe when men perceive their fortunes as declining relative to women’s and they realize that particular social policy will undermine their group’s position.

• Advantaged groups exhibit prejudice toward out-groups most strongly with threats to group’s image and interests (immigrant studies).

Realistic Conflict Theory

• View that prejudice stems from direct competition between various social groups over scarce and valued resources such as land, jobs, adequate housing and other desirable outcomes (Israeli and Palestine conflict).

• In-group losses lead to increasingly negative labels like ‘enemy,’ feelings of moral superiority, making firmer boundaries and even dehumanizing the opposing group.

Superordinate Goals

• Goals that can be achieved only by cooperation between groups.

• Competition prejudice demonstrated Robber’s Cave study with campers (Sherif,1961) but it’s not clear if competition is necessary for prejudice to develop of if simply being a member of a group and indentifying with it is sufficient for prejudice to occur.

Social Categorization

• The tendency to divide the social world into separate categories such as Us-versus-Them.

• Many social categories like race, religion, age, gender, occupation, income etc., and some differences take on considerable importance and have meanings for our identities.

• Considerable social agreement for holding differential views of in-groups/out-groups.

Ultimate Attribution Error

• The tendency to make more favorable and flattering attributions about members of one’s group than about members of other groups. In effect, it is the Self-Serving Attributional Bias at the group level.

Social Identity Theory• Concerned with the consequences of

perceiving the self as a member of a social group and identifying with it.

• Self-esteem more important than desire to be fair-minded and we often see groups as inferior to ours, especially when there is social consensus.

• Less bias expressed when distinctiveness and security of in-group is not threatened by similar out-group (Hornsy & Hogg, 2000).

Discrimination: Prejudice in Action

• Differential (usually negative) behaviors toward members of different social groups.

• Negative actions have decreased as laws, social pressure and fear of retaliation all serve to deter prejudiced acts, yet extreme instances occur with disturbing frequency (Hate groups).

• Generally prejudice expressed in subtle or disguised forms of discrimination.

Modern Racism

• More subtle beliefs than blatant feelings of superiority, consists of thinking that minorities are seeking and receiving more benefits than they deserve and a denial that discrimination affects their outcomes.

• Concealing prejudice attitudes in public but expressing bigoted attitudes when it is safe to do so.

Bona Fide Pipeline• A technique that uses priming—using a

stimulus to make accessible related information in memory—to measure implicit attitudes (adjectives/faces study).

• Research suggests that people have implicit racial attitudes automatically elicited by members of racial or ethnic groups, which can influence important forms of behavior.

• Contrast to Bogus Pipeline and explicit measures of attitudes

Exposure to Others’ Prejudice• Studies suggest that exposure to derogatory

ethnic labels can increase prejudice in part because of conformity pressures, wanting to fit in and perceptions of social norms.

• But those with ambivalent racial attitudes may evaluate targets more positively after exposure to ethnic slurs, perhaps reminding them of what they wish not to be but fear that they are.

Countering Effects of Prejudice• Social Learning View (of prejudice): prejudice

is acquired through direct and vicarious experiences like other attitudes.

• Children express negative attitudes towards groups because they are rewarded by parents, but if parents confront their own prejudices, some are willing to modify their words or behavior to reduce prejudice in children.

• People high in prejudice suffer harmful effects from their intolerant views (less enjoyment).

Contact Hypothesis

• The view that increased contact between members of various social groups can be effective in reducing prejudice among them.– Leads to growing recognition of similarities. – Cross-group friendships can reduce out-group

anxiety (simply knowing about them may be enough).

– Important when reflects increased cooperation and interdependence between groups.

Recategorization

• Shifting the boundary between “us” and “them.”

• Common in-group Identity Model: to the extent to which individuals in different groups view themselves as members of a single social identity, intergroup bias will be reduced (Jews who perceive Germans as ‘humans,’ rather than a separate group, reported less prejudice toward contemporary Germans).

Saying “No” to Stereotypes

• Stereotype-negation training: designed to weaken stereotypes. Participants were told to respond ‘no’ when presented with words and pictures consistent with stereotypes. Prior to negation training, people categorized white and black faces more quickly when paired with stereotypical words, but these differences disappeared after negation training.

Prejudice reduction by Social Influence

• Social norms play an important part in the maintenance and reduction of prejudice. Beliefs that are believed to be held by other members of one’s group predict prejudice, and providing individuals with evidence suggesting that members of their group hold less prejudice views than they do can reduce prejudice.

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