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Prejudice

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Title: Prejudice


1
Prejudice
  • Do we dislike each other?
  • Why?
  • Trying to educate a bigot is like shining a
    light into the pupil of an eye it constricts.
    (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)

2
Key Terms
  • Stereotype many ways to define term
  • A generalization.
  • A structured set of beliefs about the personal
    attributes of a group of people (Ashmore Del
    Boca).
  • Stereotypes are heuristics and are more likely to
    be used when we are pressed for time, tired,
    preoccupied, and/or emotionally aroused.
  • Kernel of Truth concept that many stereotypes
    are based upon some element of truth
  • However, problem arises when they are
    overgeneralized.

3
Key Terms
  • Prejudice
  • A negative prejudgment of a group and its
    members.
  • An attitudinal bias.
  • A hostile or negative attitude toward a
    distinguishable group based on generalizations
    derived from faulty or incomplete information.
  • Discrimination
  • Negative behaviors aimed toward a group and its
    members.
  • Institutional forms of discrimination may not be
    motivated by prejudice (e.g., hiring through word
    of mouth practices).

4
Is Racial Prejudice Still an Issue?
  • Stunning reduction in blatant discrimination in
    last 50 years.
  • African-American attitudes toward blacks have
    also become more positive.
  • Clark and Clark (1947) demonstrated anti-black
    attitudes among blacks. This was the basis of
    the 1954 Brown vs. The Board of Education Supreme
    Court decision.

5
Modern Prejudice
  • Although blatant prejudice is greatly reduced,
    subtle forms of prejudice still exist.
  • Prejudice and discrimination seem to manifest
    when motives can be hidden.
  • For example, not hating Africans, but hating
    immigrants.
  • Modern prejudice also demonstrated with
    exaggerated race sensitivity (e.g., over praise
    or criticism of a minority).

6
Subtlety of Bias
  • Darley and Gross (1983)
  • Show a picture of young Hannah dressed as an
    upper or lower class citizen.
  • Subjects refuse to use her class background to
    prejudge her academic ability.
  • However, if subsequently shown taking an oral
    achievement test, subjects view upper class
    Hannah as rating above grade level and remember
    her getting more correct answers than she did.

7
Modern Prejudice
  • Harber (1998) provide participants with poorly
    written essays.
  • White students rated these essays higher if led
    to believe that black students wrote them.
  • Also, provided much less criticism.
  • Thus, creates a combination of inflated praise
    and lower standards.
  • What are the potential academic effects of such
    behavior for minority students?

8
Automatic Prejudice
  • Dual attitude system implicit vs. explicit
    attitudes.
  • Banaji, Fazio, Greenwald, Bargh have all
    demonstrated that non-prejudiced people
    demonstrate prejudicial thought at an unconscious
    or automatic level.
  • For instance, when primed with an image of an
    African American it takes whites longer to
    identify words like peace and paradise as good.

9
Gender Prejudice
  • Gender stereotypes are pervasive and generally
    embraced by the stereotyped group!
  • Janet Swims research suggests that gender
    stereotypes are generally accurate (kernel of
    truth). However
  • Stereotypes can still be misapplied.
  • Tend to exaggerate small differences between the
    groups.

10
Gender Prejudice and Discrimination
  • Eagly has demonstrated that attitudes toward
    women are generally positive.
  • Yet, Glick and Fiske point out the ambivalent
    nature of gender stereotypes
  • Benevolent sexism vs. hostile sexism.
  • Undeniable differences exist however in starting
    salary, likelihood of promotion, and attributions
    of success.

11
Sources of Prejudice
  • (1) Economic and Political Competition/Unequal
    Status/Realistic Group Conflict Theory
  • 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

12
Stereotype Threat
  • Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson
  • Tried to explain gap in test scores between
    whites and blacks
  • Argued that blacks in test situations may feel
    apprehension about confirming existing negative
    stereotypes of intellectual inferiority
  • They labeled this Stereotype Threat
  • Demonstrated that black students did as well as
    whites on the GRE verbal when led to believe that
    the test itself, and not the student, was being
    tested
  • Good news is that positive stereotypes enhance
    behavior (e.g., Asian students on math tests)

13
Competition for Resources
  • 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.

14
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
  • Social beliefs can be self-confirming.
  • Word, Zanna, and Cooper (1974)
  • Observed whites interviewing black and white
    confederates. Whites were provided with more
    positive cues (e.g., distance, eye contact).
  • In second study, trained interviewers treated new
    interviewees as either black or white (all
    participants were white).
  • Quality of interviews of subjects treated as
    black were rated lower by a group of observers
    who were unaware of the manipulation or
    hypothesis.

15
Sources of Prejudice
  • (2) Social Identity Theory Proposed by Tajfel
    and Turner
  • Key concept is that self-esteem can be increased
    through our group identifications.
  • Assumptions of the theory
  • We categorize
  • We identify (associate self with in-group)
  • We compare (evaluate group against outgroup).

16
Social Identity Theory
  • Ingroup biases tend to increase when our group is
    small, easily identifiable, and lower in status
    relative to the outgroup.
  • Outgroup homogeneity tendency to view everyone
    in the other group as being the same.

17
Sources of Prejudice
  • (3) 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 in the armed
    forces.

18
Sources of Prejudice
  • (4) Misplaced Aggression/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

19
Sources of Prejudice
  • (5) Personality Factors
  • 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

20
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

21
Sources of Prejudice
  • (6) Cognitive Factors
  • Solo or minority figure in a group appears more
    prominent and influential. We view them as
    causing whatever happens.
  • Leads to availability heuristic. Vivid cases are
    more memorable. We tend to base our assumptions
    off of vivid memories not reality.
  • For example, common belief is that welfare is
    the greatest scam going.

22
Sources of Prejudice
  • (7) Attribution errors
  • Group-serving bias (Pettigrew, 1979). Much like
    self-serving bias. In-group successes are
    dispositional, outgroup are situational.
  • Just World Phenomenon. The belief that people
    get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
    For example, the tendency to blame rape victims
    is stronger in those with a Just World
    perspective.
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