The Study of

1
The Study of Prejudice
Larry Stern, Professor of Sociology Collin County
Community College
2
What is Prejudice?
The word prejudice is derived from the Latin noun
praejudicium, which means a precedent, a judgment
based on previous decisions and experiences.
It then acquired the meaning of a judgment formed
before due examination and consideration of the
facts - a premature or hasty judgment.
Finally, the term acquired an emotional component
- the favorableness or unfavorableness that
accompanies the prior and unsupported judgment.
Thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant.
3
What is Prejudice?
Thinking ill of others . . . .
An aversion or hostile attitude toward a person
who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs
to that group, and is therefore presumed to have
the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group.
. . . without sufficient warrant - lacks basis
in fact.
Few if any human judgments are based on absolute
certainty. The sufficient warranty of any
judgment is always a matter of probabilities.
Prejudices are often based on overcategorizations
- overblown generalizations.
4
What is Prejudice?
Not every overblown generalization is a
prejudice. Some are simply misconceptions.
Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are
not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
If a person is capable of correcting his
misconceptions and erroneous judgments in the
light of new evidence he is not prejudiced. A
prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is
actively resistant to all evidence that would
challenge it.
5
What is Prejudice?
Prejudice contains two essential
ingredients 1. there must be an attitude of
favor or disfavor 2. it must be related to an
overgeneralized - and therefore erroneous -
belief.
Although both attitudes and beliefs are
intertwined, it is necessary to recognize the
distinction between the two.
Beliefs, to some extent, can be rationally
attacked and altered Attitudes are ordinarily
far more resilient and resistant to change.
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Stereotypes
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Acting Out Prejudice
Antilocutions - ethnophaulisms - i.e., verbal
slurs
Avoidance
Discrimination
Physical Attack
Extermination - lynchings, pogroms, massacres,
genocide
8
The Separation of Attitudes from Behavior
Prejudiced? No Yes
The Prejudiced Non-Discriminator
The Unprejudiced Non-Discriminator
No Discriminate? Yes
The Prejudiced Discriminator
The Unprejudiced Discriminator
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Prejudice
Antipathy between the races had long been
explained by pointing to the natural differences
between the races. Whites would naturally
dislike close contact with an inferior race.
Similarly, African-Americans would be
uncomfortable with close contact with whites
with whom they could not possibly compete. Once
scientists rejected the notion of essential
racial differences, the question immediately
arose If the races were not naturally different
and unequal, why were African Americans, Native
Americans, Chinese so despised in American
society? In the 1930s, a new explanation for
racial antipathy emerged what they began
calling race prejudice.
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Prejudice Race Relations
Thomas thought that prejudice was biological and
instinctual in origin. In his view, prejudice,
antipathy, and affection were found in groups
which selectively noticed and remembered the
characteristics of people close and familiar to
them. Familiarity and similarity became
associated with positive affection while
hostility, antagonism, and dislike were
connected to those who were unfamiliar and
dissimilar. These feelings, then, became
symbolically connected to physical appearance
and social habits.
W. I. Thomas 1863 - 1947
Nevertheless, Thomas argued that the prejudice
process could be eliminated through contact and
association, increased communication, similar
systems of education, and equal access to
opportunities.
Moreover, Thomas claimed that there were no basic
differences in the minds, intelligence, or
capabilities of different races and that
there was more variety within races then between
them.
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Prejudice is a Rational Response to a Changing
World
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Prejudice Race Relations
During the 1920s, the sociologist Robert Park
developed a race-relations cycle to explain the
dynamics of racial change. Race prejudice was
seen as one part of this larger cycle of
competition, conflict, accommodation, and
assimilation.
Robert Park 1864 - 1944
The cycle followed a natural progression and was
immune to any attempts to modify it. As minority
groups strove to increase their status within
society, the majority group reacted against what
they perceived as a threat to their higher
status. One aspect of this reaction was race
prejudice, which Park viewed as a relatively
benign method to maintain the social distance
between different groups in society.
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Prejudice Race Relations
According to Park, race prejudice was a rational
response to the social mobility of minority
groups. It was a relatively benign way to keep
the social distance between different groups in
society. Prejudice is on the whole not an
aggressive but a conservative force a sort of
spontaneous conservation which tends to
preserve the social order and the social
distances upon which that order rests.
(The Concept of Social Distance, 1924)
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The Social Distance Scale
Emory Bogardus, like Park, saw race prejudice as
a benign force that served to preserve the
present social order. His interest was in
measuring and quantifying racial antipathy and
created a social distance scale. Respondents
are asked how willing they would be to interact
with various racial and ethnic groups in
specified social situations with different
degrees of social contact.
People were asked whether they would be willing
to admit members of other groups To close
kinship by marriage To my club as personal
friends To my street as neighbors To
employment in my occupation To citizenship in
my country As only visitors to my country Or
would exclude from my country
Emory Bogardus
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Prejudice is Acquired Through Conditioning
16
Goodwin Watson
Goodwin Watson was one of the first psychologists
to attempt to measure racial prejudice. He
measured the extent to which respondents agreed
with various stereotypes i.e., all Jews would
cheat, all Roman Catholics are superstitious
and how strongly they agreed with statements
such as Colored people should go to schools,
hotels, theaters, etc., patronized exclusively
by colored people, thus preventing some
inter-racial contact.
Watson assumed that race prejudice arose out of
some real-world experience specifically, from
unfriendly encounters with members of the race in
question. He argued, It has been rather
clearly demonstrated by the testimony of a
number of individuals that they acquired some of
the race-prejudice in a single instance, or
two, and afterwards reacted to all members
of the race in terms of the nb conditioning of
the single experience. (The
Measurement of Fair-Mindedness, NY Columbia
University, 1925, p.23)
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Prejudice is Inherently Irrational
and Psychological
18
Daniel Katz Race prejudice as a fundamentally
irrational attitude
In 1933 Daniel Katz, based at Princeton
University, had subjects match a list of
adjectives to a list of ethnic minorities. After
analyzing the results, Katz argued that race
prejudice was a matter of stereotypes rather
than a reasoned response to any real attribute
shared by the members of a group. Prejudice
was inherently irrational because no groups
members could possibly share all traits. People
were prejudiced toward an entire group based
merely on the cultural stereotypes of that group,
rather than on any experiences of the prejudiced
individual. Prejudice, according to this view,
was, in essence, a psychological phenomenon
basically, a problem with peoples internal
mental states.
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Frustration-aggression hypothesis Scapegoat Theory

• Frustration generates aggression
• Aggression becomes displaced upon
• relatively defenseless goats
• This displaced hostility is rationalized
• and justified by blaming, projecting,
• and stereotyping the others.

John Dollard 1900 - 1980
Prejudiced individuals believe that they are the
victims. Rather than accepting guilt for some
failure, responsibility is transferred to some
vulnerable group.
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Prejudical Individuals Are Aberrant Personality
Types
21
American Jewish Committee Department of
Scientific Research, 1945
Sponsored the five-volume Studies in Prejudice
Series
Two of the volumes were social studies Paul
Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction A Study of
Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany and
Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Gutterman, Prophets
of Deceit A Study of the Techniques of the
American Agitator (employing the method of
content analysis to explain the success of
demagogues such as Gerald L.K. Smith and Father
Coughlin). Three were psychological
Theodore W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian
Personality, Brunno Bettelheim and Morris
Janowitz, Dynamics of Prejudice and Nathan
Ackerman and Marie Jahoda, Anti-Semitism and
Emotional Disorder A Psychoanalytical
Interpretation.
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The Authoritarian Personality, 1950 Theodore
Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson,
R. Nevitt Sanford
Individuals with high levels of prejudice
possessed a distinctive cluster of personality
traits. They were found to be rigidly
conventional, submissive, uncritical of and
deferential toward authority, preoccupied with
power and toughness, sexually inhibited,
intolerant of ambiguity and intolerant of
people who are members of out groups.
Theodore Adorno
Rational arguments cannot be expected to have
deep or long-lasting effects because prejudice is
essentially irrational and rigid.
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
While it focused on anti-Semitism, the research
indicated that people who were prejudiced against
one ethnic, racial, or religious group tended to
be prejudiced against others.
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Prejudice is Learned and is Psychologically
Damaging
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Psychological Harm The Doll Tests
Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark
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The Doll Tests
Overall, 253 African American children - 134 in
segregated southern schools and 119 in integrated
northern schools - were presented with two black
dolls and two white dolls that were otherwise
identical.
Using a projective test, the Clarks asked
the children a series of eight questions
concerning the dolls.
The first four questions were designed to reveal
racial preferences - Give me the doll that you
like best of Give me the nice doll.
The next three were designed to discover racial
identification - Give Me the doll that looks
like a white, colored, Negro child
The final question revealed self-identification -
Give me the doll that looks like you
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Psychological Harm The Doll Tests
The majority of these Negro children prefer the
white doll and reject the colored doll.
Two-thirds of the children consistently wanted
to play with the white doll and claimed that it
was the nice doll. Three-quarters of the
children who identified a doll that would act
bad chose the brown doll.
27
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) The
Anti-Defamation League of the Bnai Brith
(ADL) American Jewish Congress (AJCongress)
During and after World war II Jewish agencies
founded in-house research departments,
formed partnerships with social scientists in
universities, and commissioned major studies.
These agencies collaborated closely with the
NAACP, ACLU, National Council of Churches,
National Catholic Welfare Conference, Catholic
Interracial Councils, National Conference of
Christians and Jews, the anti-communist
unions of the Congress of Industrial
organizations (CIO), and a host of other civic,
professional, and educational groups.
28
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) The
Anti-Defamation League of the Bnai Brith
(ADL) American Jewish Congress (AJCongress)
Beginning in the late 1930s all three built a
professional staff trained in fields such as
social work, social science, journalism,
advertising, public relations, and the law. All
three adopted the theory of the unitary
character of prejudice all forms of bigotry are
inseparable parts of the same phenomenon. The
fortunes of all American minority groups were
interrelated.
Strategies tended to fall into one of two general
categories (1) those aimed at modifying
prejudiced attitudes and (2) those designed to
eliminate discriminatory practices.
29
American Jewish Committee
Jacob H. Schiff 1847-1920
Oscar S. Straus
Cyrus Adler 1863-1940
Mayer Sulzberger 1843-
The American Jewish Committee, the oldest
existing Jewish defense agency in the U.S., was
established in 1906 by a group of wealthy
acculturated members of the German Jewish elite.
30
Anti-Defamation League
In 1913 the Bnai Brith founded its
Anti-Defamation League, which was dedicated
exclusively to the battle against domestic
anti-Semitism. Under the leadership of Sigmund
Livingston, ADL members conceived of
anti-Semitism largely as a problem of public
relations.
Sigmund Livingston -ADL
31
AJC ADL
In the same way that they had envisioned
anti-Semitism as an outgrowth of unfamiliarity
with Jews and Judaism, leaders of the American
Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League
initially understood prejudice as the product of
ignorance.
According to this view, prejudiced individuals
accepted derogatory stereotypes of Jews and
other minorities because they lacked reliable
information about, or first-hand experience
with, members of those groups.
Thus, they concluded that they could help to
eliminate prejudice by teaching members of the
majority about the various racial, ethnic, and
religious groups in the U.S.
32
AJC ADL
They spread their anti-prejudice message through
radio film television, pamphlets posters
billboards, comic books cartoons print
advertising and other media of mass
communication. The main objectives of this
propaganda crusade were to combat negative
stereotypes of minority groups, to demonstrate
the harmful consequences of prejudice, and to
emphasize the importance of intergroup harmony to
the advancement of American interests at home
and abroad.
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AJC ADL
EDUCATION
With the aid of the AJC and ADL the Bureau of
Intercultural Education worked with public
school teachers to ensure that children were
taught to respect cultural differences.
Curricular materials, including teaching plans,
were developed and distributed. Summer
workshops, seminars and institutes were sponsored.
RADIO
Lest We Forget, comprised of fifteen-minute
episodes celebrating the contributions made by
members of minority groups, aired on
radio stations. By 1950 it aired on approximately
one thousand stations with an audience in the
tens of millions.
34
AJC ADL
TELEVISION CARTOONS
The AJC produced and provided cartoons free of
charge to all television stations in the U.S.
for broadcast.
Snigglegrass, produced in cooperation with the
Advertising Council and shown on nearly every
television station in the country during 1950,
conveyed the message that Americas way of life
is rooted in the contributions of its
immigrants. Heres Looking At You, which
stressed the uniqueness of each human being and
the importance of respecting differences, was a
collaborative effort of the AJC and the National
Conference of Christians and Jews.
Baseball explained that only when people of all
races and religions team up can the USA roll up a
winning score. Sweet n Sour compared positive
intergroup relations to harmonious music.
35
The Movie Industry
Shortly after World War II a number of commercial
motion pictures dealing with prejudice appeared.
The determination by Hollywood filmmakers to
address these issues added fuel to the debate
among Jewish intergroup relations workers and
their advisors over the impact of the mass media
on prejudice.
In the Oscar winning film Gentlemans Agreement a
reporter, played by Gregory Peck, pretends to be
Jewish in order to cover a story on
anti- Semitism, and personally discovers the true
depths of bigotry and hatred.
36
Crossfire, RKO Studios,1947
One of the first major Hollywood films to explore
the subject of American anti-Semitism. In the
film the Jewish victim is murdered by a
demobilized soldier whose only motive is his
acute anti- Semitism. This character was
described as the kind of person who fell victim
to the Hitlers in the modern world and became an
instrument in bringing about the recent
holocaust. In the course of Investigating the
murder the police detective - played by Robert
Young - gives voice to the films anti-prejudice
moral and emphasizes the connection between
anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance,
including anti-Catholicism and nativism.
37
Crossfire, RKO Studios,1947
One month before the films premiere a group
of nearly forty social scientists met for a
preview and critical discussion of the film Most
expressed serious doubts as to whether the film
could actually diminish anti-Semitism a
single-shot could not be reasonably assumed to
change such deeply seated attitudes. Some were
concerned that the film might have unintended
negative effects - that it would
boomerang. The anti-Semitic character might be
seen by some as a hero-victim, while the
Jewish murder victim, who appeared as a civilian
and a wise guy with an obviously Gentile
girlfriend, might be found objectionable.
38
Crossfire, RKO Studios,1947
The chief concern was that well-intentioned
films, thrown hastily together by Hollywood
filmmakers without the benefit of scientific
research, could easily catalyze the powerful
anti-Semitism that was latent everywhere in the
country.
Supporting these criticisms was new research
that questioned the effectiveness of mass
mediated programs aimed at changing attitudes.
39
American Jewish Committee Department of
Scientific Research, 1945
By the late 1940s researchers began to seriously
question the effectiveness of anti-prejudice
messages to change peoples attitudes.
According to a number of studies conducted in
collaboration with Columbia Universitys Bureau
of Applied Social Research,

• Anti-prejudice messages reached a self-selected
• audience that tended to be more educated and
• tolerant than average (preaching to the choir)

Marie Jahoda
2. Bigots, if exposed to the messages,
generally evaded them through the process
of selective perception or simply
misconstrued the point of the message.

• Anti-prejudice messages often have a boomerang
• effect on intolerant individuals.

Paul Lazarsfeld
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The Effects of Mass Communication
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The Communication Process
WHO says
Attributes of the source, ie. credibility
The content of the message levels of
meaning Differential selective perception
WHAT
The target audience
to WHOM
Formal mass media Informal interpersonal
through which CHANNEL
in what WAY
Rhetorical Strategy Logic, Emotion
Reinforcement Conversion
with what EFFECT?
The Popeye Effect
42
The Popeye Effect
Messages sent are not necessarily the same as
messages received.
WHY???
Messages are often misperceived or have a
boomerang effect because the source of the
information is not believed to be credible.
Messages often contain multiple levels of
information and meaning. Through the operation of
selective perception, the particular aspect of
the message one plugs into or is most attentive
to - and the interpretation one gives to a
message, often depends upon the social
background - the social status - of the receiver.
43
Prejudice and Discrimination are Situational and
Dependent on Groups
44
The American Jewish Congress
The American Jewish Congress was initially
convened at the end of 1918. Whereas the AJC was
conservative and elitist, AJCongress advocates
spearheaded by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Zionist
leader Louis D. Brandeis called for an
inclusive, democratically elected body to
represent all American Jewry. The original
Congress was dissolved in 1920, then
re- established under the leadership of Wise.
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise
Unlike the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) who focused on
attitude change as the means to reduce prejudice
and then discrimination, the AJCongress believed
that attacking discrimination through legal
means was the key to reducing prejudice.
Louis Brandeis
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American Jewish Congress Commission on Community
Interrelations
The AJCongress had earmarked 1 million for the
creation of a research center for the study of
intergroup relations. In 1945 AJCongress
president Rabbi Stephen Wise announced that the
AJCongress would fund the CCI under the
direction of Kurt Lewin for five years and that
its purpose was to investigate scientifically
the causes and cures of anti-Semitism and race
prejudice.
Lewin and his staff of social scientists devised
two lines of research to investigate prejudice
and discrimination 1. research conducted
on the separation of attitudes from
behavior and 2. research on the effects of
interracial contact.
Kurt Lewin
46
The Separation of Attitudes from Behavior
CCI researchers built on the work of Richard T.
Lapiere who, in the 1930s, traveled through the
U.S. with a Chinese couple, staying in hotels
and eating in restaurants. Except in one hotel,
they were served without incident. Six months
after returning, Lapiere sent a questionnaire to
these establishments asking if they served
members of the Chinese race. Over 90 percent of
those responding indicated that they would not,
despite the fact that they had done so six
months earlier.
Bernard Kutner successfully duplicated Lapieres
research when he sent two white women into New
York restaurants. They were later joined by an
African American woman, who was seated without
incident. When Kutner inquired as to the
policies of the restaurants he was informed that
they did not serve African Americans.
47
The Separation of Attitudes from Behavior
Prejudice No Yes
The Prejudiced Non-Discriminator
The Unprejudiced Non-Discriminator
The person of prejudice who does not actively
discriminate in practice due to the fear of
sanctions. The most effective tactic is the
institution of legal controls administered with
effectiveness
No Discriminate Yes
The Prejudiced Discriminator
The Unprejudiced Discriminator
Supports discriminatory practices when it is the
easier or more profitable course The liberal who
hesitates to speak up against discrimination for
fear he might lose esteem or be otherwise
penalized by his prejudiced associates and/or
friends.
He is as much a conformist as is the unprejudiced
non-discriminator. He is merely conforming to a
different cultural and institutional pattern that
is centered, not on the creed, but on a
doctrine of essential inequality of status
ascribed to those of diverse ethnic and racial
origins. The local mores, the local
institutions, and the local power structure
support his private attitudes and practices.
48
Interracial Contact
CCI social scientists envisioned a vicious circle
of discrimination and prejudice because
discrimination seemed to teach people that
minority groups were inferior, it led to
prejudicial attitudes these attitudes, in turn,
led to the erection of more discriminatory
barriers preventing minorities from fully
entering society. CCI saw interracial contact as
the point at which the cycle could be broken.
What CCI and other researchers on interracial
contact attempted to discover were the specific
conditions under which interracial contact would
decrease prejudice.
The abolition of segregation was a necessary
rather than a sufficient step toward bettering
race relations. Social scientists were arguing
NOT that all that was required to reduce
prejudice was to eliminate legal segregation
but, rather, that nothing could be done to
reduce prejudice until legal segregation was
eliminated.
49
Interracial Contact the contact hypothesis
CCI researchers concentrated on interracial
public housing and employment. In one of the
first studies of interracial housing two CCI
staffers Morton Deutsch and Mary Evans Collins
conducted interviews with families living in
two desegregated and two segregated housing
projects. The researchers found that white
prejudice was much higher in the segregated
projects. They posited that the contact possible
in integrated neighborhoods gave individuals the
opportunity to realize that their prejudices had
no basis in reality.
A parallel set of studies explored the effects of
interracial workplaces. John Harding and Russell
Hogrefe polled the white workers on a newly
integrated sales floor and found that while
basic attitudes of whites toward their black
co-workers may not have changed significantly,
they could nonetheless work peacefully side by
side.
50
The Nature of Prejudice
The Contact Hypothesis
Prejudice (unless deeply rooted in the character
of the individual) may be reduced by equal status
contact between majority and minority groups in
the pursuit of common goals. The effect is
greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by
institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom or
local atmosphere), and provided it is of a sort
that leads to the perception of common interests
and common humanity between members of the two
groups.
Gordan Allport 1897-1967
Equal-status in the situation
Common goals
Supported by local authority and milieu
Common interests - no inter-group competition
51
Beliefs Behavior
52
The Self-fulfilling Prophecy
In the beginning, a false definition of a
situation that is socially shared and leads to
new behavior that makes the initially false
definition come true.
Robert K. Merton 1910 - 2003
Socially shared false definition of the situation
Subjective
Socially Patterned Behaviors
Consequences Objective
53
The Self-fulfilling Prophecy
As a result of their failure to comprehend
the operation of the self-fulfilling prophecy,
many Americans of good will retain enduring
ethnic and racial prejudices.
False definition Negroes are
strikebreakers and no friend of unionists.
Robert K. Merton 1910 - 2003
Behavior As traitors to the working-class they
are excluded from unions.
Consequence Out of work after World War I and
kept out of unions, Negroes accept jobs as
scabs.
54
The Self-fulfilling Prophecy
In the beginning, a false definition of a
situation that is socially shared and leads to
new behavior that makes the initially false
definition come true.
Robert K. Merton 1910 - 2003
False definition People of African-American desc
ent are intellectually inferior.
Behavior withhold/reduce funding for inner-city
schools and compensatory education programs.
Consequence Test scores of African-American
students are lower.
55
Pluralistic Ignorance
Pluralistic ignorance, a concept first coined by
Floyd Allport (1924, 1933), refers to the
pattern in which individual members of a group
assume that they are virtually alone in holding
the social attitudes and expectations they do,
all unknowing that others privately share them.
Floyd Allport 1890 - 1978