Prejudice causes and cures

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Prejudice- causes and cures

• Chapter 13

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• Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past,
  threatens the future and renders the present
  inaccessible.
• -Maya Angelou

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• Prejudice is ubiquitous
• Any group can be a target of prejudice

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• Outline
• Prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination
  defined
• What causes prejudice?
• Individual differences in prejudice
• Effects of stereotyping stigma
• How can prejudice be reduced?

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Definitions

• Prejudice is an attitude- thus, it has an
  affective, cognitive, and behavioral component

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• The affective component
• a hostile or negative attitude toward a group pf
  people, based solely on their membership in that
  group
• Therefore, distinguishing characteristics are
  ignored

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• The cognitive component stereotypes
• Walter Lippman (1922)
• the little pictures we carry inside of our
  heads
• -we categorize based on cultural norms
• Stereotype a generalization about a group of
  people in which identical characteristics are
  assigned to virtually all members of the group

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• The Behavioral component Discrimination
• Defn unjustified negative or harmful action
  toward a member of a group, simply because of his
  or her membership in that group
• Eg., Bond (1988)- compared the treatment of black
  and white patients

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What causes prejudice?

• The way we think social cognition
• What we believe stereotypes
• The way we feel emotions
• The way we assign meaning attributional biases
• The way we allocate resources
• The way we conform normative rules

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• A. The way we think Social cognition
• One approach
• Prejudice is the by-product of the way we process
  and organize info
• -by the way we categorize
• -use heuristics, schemas, and show faulty memory
  processes

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• Social categorizing us versus them
• We make sense of the world by forming categories
• This is the first step in prejudice
• Consequence People tend to classify as ingroups
  versus outgroups AND we tend to see people in our
  ingroup more positively (Social Identity theory
  Tajfel, 1982)

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• People even show this is minimal conditions
• Minimal groups research
• -strangers are formed into groups using the most
  trivial criteria
• -by a flip of a coin
• -liked members better, rated them more
  positively, allocate more rewards etc

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• Why do we show an in-group bias?
• 1. Belonging to a group gives us a social
  identity
• 2. Having a social identity contributes to
  self-esteem

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• As predicted from in-group bias theory, research
  shows that
• i) the greater the identification with ones own
  group, the greater the discrimination against an
  out-group.
• ii) when peoples self-esteem is threatened, they
  are especially likely to denigrate the out-group.

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• Is there a way to minimize the us-vs.-them
  effect?
• foster feelings of a common identity between
  groups
• boost self-esteem in some other domain, so as to
  negate the need to derogate others for this
  purpose.

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• Another consequence of categorization
• Out-group homogeneity bias
• is the perception that those in the out-group are
  more similar to each other than they really are,
  as well as more similar than the members of the
  in-group
• has been found in the US, Europe, Australia and
  Canada.

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• schemas-
• Individuals who hold schemas for groups process
  information in a particular way
• Info consistent with their beliefs about the
  groups will be given more attention, rehearsed
  and recalled more often
• Info relevant to schema will be processed more
  quickly than info unrelated to it
• Info consistent with schema will fill in the
  blanks

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• B. What we believe Stereotypes
• Negative stereotype show prejudice
• The relationship between stereotyping and
  prejudice is quite complex

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• Activation of stereotypes
• Research shows that derogatory comments can
  activate other negative, stereotypical beliefs
  about the target person
• How does this activation work?

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• Patricia Devine and colleagues
• Distinguish between
• Automatic and
• Controlled processing of information.

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• Automatic processing is when we have no control,
  i.e., under certain conditions the stereotypes
  are automatically triggered,
• e.g., Native Canadians are lazy.
• Controlled processing allows for the suppression
  of these automatic stereotypes,
• e.g., Thats not fair Native Canadians are no
  lazier than anyone else.

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• Thus, according to Devines theory when we
  process information about another person,
• i) first the stereotypes that we know about are
  automatically triggered,
• ii) then in the controlled process we decide
  whether or not to accept the stereotype.

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• Fazio et al, (1995) suggest that there are
  probably three kinds of people
• Those who do not have an automatic negative
  reaction to the target person, blacks (ie, low
  prejudice people)
• Those who have an automatic negative reaction to
  blacks but have no qualms about expressing those
  feelings (ie, people who are willing to be
  prejudiced)
• Those who have an automatic negative reaction but
  want to suppress this reaction.

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• Stereotype Activation and Inhibition
• Stereotypes can be selectively activated or
  inhibited, depending on motivational factors such
  as self-enhancement

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• Sinclair and Kunda (1999)
• __ __ A C K
• C R __ __ __

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• C. The way we feel
• there is more to prejudice than merely the
  attribution of stereotypes to groups (Esses et
  al, 1983)
• the emotions elicited by a particular group are
  important in determining our level of prejudice.

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• Haddock et al (19931994)
• -had Ps describe their emotions, their
  stereotypic beliefs, and their symbolic beliefs
  when thinking of members of each group
• -behavior was assessed through frequency of
  contact

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• Which best predicted attitudes?
• All variables were related
• Strongest relations were found for emotion
• Some variation for group
• Emotion best for lowest prejudice (Native and
  English Canadians)
• Symbolic beliefs best predictor of highest
  (Pakistani and homosexuals)

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• Esses and Zanna (1995) manipulated mood and
  measured the effect on peoples attitudes.
• They found evidence for causal relationship.
• Participants in a bad mood described various
  ethnic groups in more negative terms than did
  those who were in a good mood, or a neutral mood.

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• D. The way we assign meaning Attributional
  Biases
• tendency to make dispositional attributions to
  leap to the conclusion that a persons behavior
  is due to some aspect of personality rather than
  to some aspect of the situation.
• Pettigrew (1979) called this the ultimate
  attribution error

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• E. Normative Rules
• -there is a strong tendency to go along with the
  group- to fulfill expectations and gain
  acceptance
• -Pettigrew argues that the greatest determinant
  of prejudice is conformity to social norms
• -Crandall et al (2002)

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• As the norms swing toward more tolerance- people
  are more cautious about being outwardly
  prejudiced
• Modern Prejudice- outwardly acting unprejudiced
  while inwardly maintaining prejudice attitudes
• measures Modern Racism Scale
• Neosexism Scale

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Individual differences in prejudice

• Certain people are more likely to hold negative
  attitudes toward out-groups
• Subscribe to just world beliefs
• High in right-wing authoritarianism
• High in religious fundamentalism,
• High in social dominance
• are more likely to be prejudiced against
  out-groups than those who score low on these
  dimensions

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• Just world beliefs
• the view that the world is a fair and just place
  where people get what they deserve and deserve
  what they get.
• E.g. Negative attitudes toward the poor and
  homeless are more prevalent among individuals
  with strong just world beliefs (Farnham Gunter,
  1984)

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• Right-Wing Authoritarianism
• is defined in terms of three clusters of
  attitudes
• authoritarian submission (a high degree of
  submission to authority figures)
• authoritarian aggression (aggression directed
  toward groups that are seen as legitimate targets
  by authority figures)
• conventionalism (a high degree of conformity to
  the rules and conventions that are established by
  authority figures)

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• Those who score high on right-wing
  authoritarianism compared to lows
• -hold traditional, nonegalitarian attitudes
  toward women
• -express more negative attitudes toward French
  Canadians, Natives, and Pakistanis, and
• -show especially high levels of prejudice against
  homosexuals.

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• Can the attitudes of right-wing authoritarians be
  changed? Yes.
• create awareness that their attitudes toward the
  target group (eg, homosexuals) are much more
  negative than other peoples,
• -they tend to change their attitudes because
  conforming to social norms is important to them

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• Another way is to encourage interaction with
  members of the out-group.
• Altemeyer (2001) found that right-wing
  authoritarians became more positive in their
  attitudes toward homosexuals following
  interaction.

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• Religious fundamentalism
• a belief in the absolute and literal truth of
  ones religious beliefs.
• Research has shown that people who scored high in
  religious fundamentalism blamed homosexuals and
  single mothers (seen as immoral by religious
  fundamentalists) for unfortunate situations (eg
  unemployment), whereas
• groups who were not seen as threatening basic
  religious values (eg, students) were not blamed
  to the same extent.

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• Social dominance orientation
• the belief that groups of people are inherently
  unequal and that it is acceptable for some groups
  in society to be benefited more than others.
• Canada, China, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand,
  Taiwan, and the US has shown that social
  dominance is associated with racial prejudice,
  sexism, and negative attitudes toward homosexuals

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• Fixed versus Incremental theories of human nature
• Implicit beliefs
• Fixed- more likely to categorize more likely to
  ascribe stereotypes to groups
• Incremental- more likely to see the mediating
  factors- less likely to hold stereotypic beliefs

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Effects of stereotyping and prejudice

• From the TARGETS PERSPECTIVE
• Stereotype Threat
• Presence of stereotypes in performance
  environments can impact performance negatively
  for members of group who are implicated

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• Stereotypes
• Women are bad at math
• African Americans are stupid/low intelligence
• Elderly have poor memory
• White men cant jump

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• Threat
• this test has shown gender differences
• Simply indicating gender
• Exposed to gender stereotypic images
• Sole woman in testing room

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• Performance context
• Relevant to stereotype- GRE quantitative section

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• threat no threat
• Men 8 8
• Women 4 7

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• Stigma research
• Chronic experience of ST- leads to
• Psychological disengagement
• Disidentification with domain
• Maintains global self-esteem and interest in
  other areas