Prejudice and Discrimination

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Prejudice and Discrimination
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Pair up with

• someone you dont know that well
• Without discussing with them, write down
• What do you think this persons favorite type of
  music is?
• What type of movies do you think this person
  likes?
• What type of food do you think this person likes?
• even if your inclination is to say I have no
  idea, write down your best guess

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Accuracy?

• Now, confer with this person
• How accurate were you?
• On what did you base your guesses?
• Whenever we interact with someone, we generally
  have some type of expectation of what that
  person is like
• What type of car tends to hold bad drivers?
• What type of car tends to hold good drivers?
• How do you decide whether you should be worried
  when you see someone coming toward you in an
  alley?

4
Categorization and expectations

• Prejudice has to do with judging someone based on
  the group that that person is from
• Why dont we see people as individuals, rather
  than as members of a particular group?
• Categorization
• When might we rely on categorization rather than
  seeing people as individuals?
• Pressed for time
• Preoccupied
• Tired
• Emotionally aroused

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Expectations the good, the bad, the ugly

• When are these expectations OK?
• When are they not so OK?
• What if we went through the world with no
  expectations about what the people we come across
  might be like?

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Definitions

• Stereotype Belief about a group of people
• Examples?
• Prejudice Negative pre-judgment of a group and
  its individual members
• Examples?
• Discrimination Negative behavior toward
  individual members of a group, based on a
  negative pre-judgment of that group
• Examples?

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Key differences in definitions

• Stereotypes can be positive or negative, accurate
  or inaccurate
• Prejudice is negative
• Discrimination is a behavior

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Measuring prejudice

• How might we measure someones prejudice?
• Self-report?
• Behavior?
• But, think back to attitudes does peoples
  behavior always match their attitudes?
• And, think back to the definitions if we
  measure behavior, are we measuring prejudice or
  discrimination?
• IAT?

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IAT

• What was your experience with the IAT website?
• Would you have given the same responses if you
  were explicitly asked about your views?
• What are benefits of explicitly asking people?
• What are disadvantages?
• What are benefits of using a measure such as the
  IAT?
• What are disadvantages?

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Measuring discrimination

• How much do you think discrimination is a problem
  today?
• May be more prevalent as level of intimacy
  increases
• E.g., shopping at a store owned by a homosexual
  vs. seeing a homosexual doctor
• Less blatant forms may be more prevalent
• Attributional ambiguity If peoples behavior can
  be attributed to something other than
  discrimination, they may be more likely to behave
  in a discriminatory way

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Example of attributional ambiguity

• Movie and disabled How many people sat on the
  same side as the confederate?

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Where does prejudice come from?

• Whom do people tend to be prejudiced against?
  Those in high status or those in low status?
• Why might this be the case?
• Stereotypes and prejudice can be used to
  rationalize unequal status

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Where does prejudice come from?

• Realistic group conflict theory
• Prejudice arises as a result of competition for
  resources
• Scapegoat theory when the cause of frustration
  is vague, aggression and hostility are redirected
  to an easy target
• Cotton prices and lynchings
• This doesnt explain things though.
• Is this always necessary for prejudice?

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Where does prejudice come from?

• Turner and Tajfels social identity theory
• ingroup
• Outgroup
• Outgroup homogenity
• minimal groups paradigm
• sharing a school, sharing a birthday, last digit
  of social security number
• How might people divide points?
• More to ingroup
• denigrating an outgroup can make us feel better
  about ourselves
• BIRGing

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Where does prejudice come from?

• Inertia and conformity
• Racial attitudes of parents and peers predict
  peoples attitudes
• Societal messages
• Ads -- men vs. women -- whose faces are more
  prominent? Whose bodies are more prominent?
• Whos been president in the past?
• Attention paid to Lieberman being Jewish
• What color is Crayolas flesh color?

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Where does prejudice come from?

• Summary
• Realistic groups conflict theory
• Social identity theory
• Attribution-value model
• Do you think each of these always plays a role?
• In what situations do you think each may be most
  prevalent?

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Why does prejudice remain?

• What if people meet someone from another group,
  who does something positive?
• Attribution might make?
• ? just as theres a self-serving bias, theres a
  group-serving bias
• What if people meet someone who goes against
  their stereotype of the persons group? Does this
  change their mind?
• Subtyping

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Consequences of prejudice

• Self-fulfilling prophesy
• Steele stereotype threat
• Told test measures math vs. unimportant
• Women, swimsuit, and math study
• Stereotype and memory
• Scene with person holding weapon study

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What can be done?

• Sherif Robbers Cave
• Two groups of boys Eagles and Rattlers
• Ingroup-outgroup effects
• How bring them together?
• Simple contact?
• Didnt work -- subtyping, etc occurred
• Any type of contact doesnt work -- must be equal
  status
• Bus breaking down Common external threat and
  superordinate goals
• ? Question of identities -- can claim
  superordinate and keep subordinate? Want keep
  subordinate?