The Social Psychology of Prejudice

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The Social Psychology of Prejudice
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Prejudice Defined

• Aronsona hostile or negative attitude toward a
  distinguishable group of people based solely on
  their membership in that group.

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Blaming the Victim and the Culture of Poverty

• What is blaming the victim?
• ''justifying inequality by finding defects in the
  victims of inequality (William Ryan)
• What is a culture of poverty?
• A manufactured portrait of poor people as a
  group, ascribing to them many negative
  characteristics that can be used to hold them
  responsible for their economic situation.
• Ability to delay gratification-70 vs. 65
• Dont value education-91 vs. 68

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This one idea

• illustrates how firmly entrenched a belief can
  become, and then how the belief contributes to
  our cognitive habits that maintain or perpetuate
  prejudice, discrimination, and unfair treatment
  of clients.

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How does prejudice show up in the Human Services
Context?

• Frequent targets?
• Frequent perpetrators?
• Consequences?
• Causes of?

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Some context

• Culture, diversity, multicultural, crosscultural
• What do these words mean?
• What are their implications?
• Agents and Targets
• Internalzied ism
• Institutionalized ism
• In what ways do our institutions maintain or
  perpetuate racism, classism, sexism, ableism,
  heterosexism, etc.?

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Link between context and social psychology???

• You tell me
• Take a minute and come up with an example
  illustrating the connection between the concept
  on the left and the population on the right.

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Think of an example of how the concept may occur
in re to the population
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Causes of Prejudice

• Economic and Political Competition
• Displaced Aggression
• Maintenance of Self-Image and Status
• Dispositional Prejudice
• Prejudice Through Conformity

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Social Class is Dead. Long Live Social Class!

• Write a definition of stereotype threat, compare
  with the person next to you.
• What are the class-based stereotypes cited in the
  article?
• What are others youre aware of?
• Do these affect your clients? If so, how?
• How might clients unintentionally be made aware
  of these stereotypes?

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Social Class is Dead. Long Live Social Class!

• What were the hypotheses?
• What were the independent variables?
• The dependent variables?
• What were the conclusions?
• What questions, hypotheses, next steps are
  generated by this research?

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Privilege and Ability

• PWDs must demonstrate that we have
• merit as humans. (p. 7) What does the author
  mean by this?
• What are some of the ways gatekeepers
  demonstrate ableism?
• How might benevolent ableism show up in our work
  as human service professionals?
• Link the causes of prejudice from the text to
  prejudice toward people with disabilities. Find
  one example of the cause you are assigned.

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Reducing Prejudice

• Behavior leads to attitude change
• Clear inevitability leads to attitude change
• Economic conflict blocks progress
• Competition can block progress
• Interdependence helps
• Equal status familiarity helps

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Consider SES

• What differences exist between SES groups?
• Worldview
• Locus of Control
• Locus of Responsibility
• Time orientation
• Are these situational or dispositional?

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• Sharon Wachsler, 2007. The Real Quality of Life
  Issue for People with Disabilities.
• Journal of Progressive Human Services, 18(2),
  7-14.
• In SocINDEX