Prejudice, Stereotypes, and Discrimination

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Mass Death Episodes

• How can we explain these atrocities?
• How can we avoid them in the future?

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Examples

• All Wars
• Civil War 558,000
• WWI 8.5 million soldiers
• WWII approximately 11 million soldiers
• Hiroshama 100,000 Nagasaki 50,000
• Holocaust 6 million
• Soviet Purges 8 million
• WTC Tragedy approximately 2823

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Causes of Prejudice

• Are we biologically wired to hate those who are
  not like us?
• Possible, but even if so, the specifics of
  prejudice must be learned
• Four causes have been researched extensively
• Economic and political competition, displaced
  aggression, personality needs, conformity to
  existing social norms

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Economic and Political Competition

• Prejudice increases during economic difficulties
• In the west in the late 1800s attitudes toward
  the Chinese varied greatly depending upon the
  amount of employment opportunities. After Civil
  War the Chinese were hated due to competition for
  jobs
• Research shows that the most anti-black prejudice
  is found in groups that are one rung higher on
  the SES ladder
• This variable is confounded w/ educational level

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Economic and Political Competition

• All of this data is correlational and
  descriptive, what about experimental data?
• Muzafer Sherif Boy Scout Research
• Created competition between the Eagles and the
  Rattlers and conflict over scarce resources
• Even after competition ended animosity remained
  and even continued to escalate

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Misplaced Aggression

• More commonly known as Scapegoating
• Blaming a relatively powerless innocent person
  for something that is not his or her fault
• Similar to Freuds concept of displacement
• Term is based on ancient Hebrew practice
• Long history Holocaust, southern Blacks
• Between 1882-1930 the number of lynchings in the
  south in any give year could be predicted by the
  price of cotton

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Scapegoating

• Laboratory experiments reveal that we scapegoat
  the following
• Groups that are generally disliked
• Groups that are visible
• Groups that are relatively powerless

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The Prejudiced Personality

• Are there individual differences in the tendency
  to hate?
• Adorno and his research on the Authoritarian
  Personality suggests yes
• Authoritarian Personality has these
  characteristics
• Adherence to conventional values (e.g.,
  government, church, parents, middle-class)
• Contempt toward outgroups
• Superstition

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Authoritarian Personality

• Further characteristics
• Resistance to change
• Belief in censorship and strict laws (people need
  to be controlled)
• Intolerant of weakness
• Highly punitive
• Extremely respectful of authority
• Appears to stem from harsh and
• threatening parental discipline

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Prejudice through Conformity

• Pettigrew suggests that discrimination arrives
  predominately from social conformity
• Prejudiced individuals, particularly Southerners,
  who enter the army tend to become less prejudiced
  
• More non-prejudicial norms to follow
• Laws and customs may provide the notion that one
  group is inferior to another
• Segregation laws

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Possible Solution?

• Interdependence
• Sherif finally reduced the conflict between his
  groups of boy scouts by leading them into a
  cooperative task where everyone was important
• Currently, are all countries viewed as equally
  important even when working on cooperative
  tasks?
• Consider the design of the United Nations

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How do we grieve?

• Memorials
• Benefit concerts
• Moments of silence
• Rebirth of patriotism (jingoism?)
• Increases in religiosity?

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How are our lives changed?

• Flying
• Increased fears
• More difficult due to security concerns
• Racial Profiling?
• Intergroup relations
• Increased awareness of international affairs?
• Heightened sense of mortality?