Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class Chapter 3

The Scapegoat Hypothesis

People deal with personal failure by expressing anger on substitute targets

Theory of Authoritarian Personality

Links prejudice to early childhood experiance and personality structure

Criticized for not taking social settings into account

Stereotypes

Generalizations about groups of people that are exaggerated

Selective Perception

The tendency to see only what one expects to see

Reinforces stereotypes

Robber's Cave

2 groups of campers were pitted against each other and formed immense hatred, only coming together in times of distress

Marxism

Theory of social inequality

Elites who control means of production create stereotypes/prejudice to justify the inequality

Split Labor Market Theory

the theory that ethnic and racial conflicts often emerge when two racial or ethnic groups compete for the same jobs

Herbert Blumer

Prejudice is activated when groups feel threatened by groups they feel are below them

Social Distance

Degree of intimacy that a person is willing to accept in his or her relations with members of other groups

Seven degrees of Social Distance

Close kinship by marriage

To my club as a personal chums

To my street as neighbors

To employment in my occupation

To citizenship in my country

As visitors only in my country

Would exclude from my country

Modern Racism

subtle, less obvious racism

Equal Status Contact Hypothesis

Intergroup contact prejudice will decrease if 4 conditions are met

Equal Status Contact Hypothesis Conditions

Equal Status

Common Goals

Intergroup Cooperation and Intensive Integration

Support of Authority, Law, or Customs

Jigsaw Method

Students were each given a part of the lesson and had to teach it to the others and they would all be tested on everything

Satisfies all characteristics for positive contact