Intergroup Relations, Prejudice, and Discrimination Lecture Notes

Vocabulary flashcards focusing on core concepts, theoretical frameworks, methodological terminology, and psychological individual differences in intergroup relations.

Intergroup relations

Any aspect of human interaction that involves individuals perceiving themselves as members of a social category, or being perceived by others as belonging to a social category.

Prejudice

An attitude (favor or disfavour) toward people based solely on their group membership, representing the affective component of intergroup bias.

Stereotype

A belief about a group of people, including their attributes, characteristics, and typical behavior, representing the cognitive component of intergroup bias.

Descriptive stereotypes

Beliefs about what group members are actually like.

Prescriptive stereotypes

Beliefs about what group members should be like.

Discrimination

Behaviors directed toward people on the basis of their group memberships.

Institutional discrimination

Discrimination that occurs when institutional norms, policies, and practices produce different outcomes based on group distinctions.

Organizational discrimination

Discrimination that occurs when norms, policies, and practices associated with an organization produce different outcomes based on group distinctions.

Interpersonal discrimination

Discrimination that occurs when one person treats another differently because of that person's group membership.

Cultural capital

Social assets of a person (such as knowledge, behaviors, and experiences) that promote social mobility and are socially valued.

Social capital

The value obtained from interpersonal relationships and social networks.

Selective exposure

Selectively seeking information that reinforces existing attitudes while avoiding information that contradicts them.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A cycle where an initial expectation about a person or group alters behavior toward them, influencing them to respond in ways that confirm the original expectation.

Phrenology

An early 19th-century movement claiming that skull shape could predict psychological traits and mental abilities.

Johnson-Reed Act (1924)

A U.S. immigration law drawing from eugenics that barred immigration from Asia and imposed major quotas reducing overall immigration by approximately 80%.

Social Darwinism

A theory associated with Herbert Spencer treating existing social disparities as evidence of innate differences between supposedly more and less worthy groups.

Naturalistic fallacy

The logical error of assuming that because something exists naturally, it therefore ought to be morally or socially acceptable.

Ingroup

The social group to which an individual belongs ('us').

Outgroup

People outside of an individual's social group ('them').

Ethnocentrism

Viewing and evaluating other groups strictly from the perspective of one's own group or culture.

Contact hypothesis

Gordon Allport's proposition that intergroup contact can reduce prejudice under specific optimal conditions such as equal status and common goals.

Realistic conflict theory

A theory proposing that intergroup conflict, prejudice, and discrimination arise from real or perceived competition between groups for limited resources.

Superordinate goals

Goals that two or more groups share in common and can only accomplish by cooperating with one another.

Social Identity Theory

Henri Tajfel's theory proposing that an individual's sense of identity and self-esteem is derived from their social group memberships.

Minimal group paradigm

An experimental procedure showing that simply categorizing people into meaningless and arbitrary groups is sufficient to generate ingroup favoritism.

System Justification Theory

A theory developed by Jost and Banaji proposing that people are motivated to maintain and defend existing social structures, even when those structures conflict with personal or group interests.

Social cognition

The study of how mental processes such as perception, memory, and thought shape how individuals understand the social world.

Implicit social cognition

The subfield of social psychology focusing on automatic and often unconscious cognitive processes.

Evaluative priming

A psychological research technique measuring implicit attitudes by assessing how quickly a participant classifies positive or negative target words after being exposed to a prime stimulus.

Experimental control

The degree to which a researcher can strictly regulate and standardize the environment and conditions in an experiment.

Psychological realism

The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment simulate those experienced in everyday real-world situations.

Internal validity

The extent to which a study can rule out alternative explanations and establish that an independent variable directly caused an outcome.

External validity

The extent to which research findings can generalize to other contexts, populations, and historical time periods.

Self-report measures

Direct assessment tools that measure explicit attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs by asking participants to select responses to specific statements or questions.

Indirect measures

Assessment tools that infer underlying attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs from automatic behavior or physiological responses rather than direct self-reports.

Archival analyses

A research methodology utilizing pre-existing datasets to analyze real-world behaviors and social phenomena.

Audit study

A field research design that maintains experimental control by keeping all factors identical while manipulating only a specific social category cue in a real-world setting.

Scientific Racism

The historical perspective (prior to the 1920s) that used scientific or biological research to justify group disparities and White cultural domination.

Psychodynamic theory (of prejudice)

The theoretical perspective attributing prejudice to individual personality differences, unconscious psychic conflicts, frustration, and projection.

Sociocultural theory (of prejudice)

The theoretical perspective asserting that prejudice is a manifestation of cultural norms and environmental social learning.

Cognitive theory (of prejudice)

The perspective that prejudice and stereotypes stem from normal, efficient mental shortcuts such as categorization and schemas.

Evolutionary theory (of prejudice)

The perspective that psychological tendencies underlying prejudice developed as cognitive adaptations to ancestral survival and threat-avoidance challenges.

Intergroup relations theory

The perspective proposing that prejudice develops and reinforces itself through structural relationships and social positioning between groups.

Schema

An unconscious cognitive structure or framework used to organize and process information efficiently.

Authoritarian personality

A set of personality traits characterized by rigid adherence to authority, psychic conflict, and hostility toward subordinate or minority groups.

Social identity

The portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in relevant social groups.

Optimal Distinctiveness Theory

Marilynn Brewer's model proposing that individuals strategically balance their dual needs for group inclusion and personal individuality.

Basking in reflected glory

Enhancing one's self-esteem by celebrating and identifying with the accomplishments of an ingroup.

Relative deprivation

The belief that one or one's group is receiving less than is deserved compared to an applicable reference group or standard.

Distributive justice

The perceived fairness regarding how rewards and costs are distributed across individuals or groups.

Procedural justice

The perceived fairness of the rules, mechanisms, and procedures used to allocate rewards and resources.

Group relative deprivation

The perception that one's ingroup as a whole is deprived relative to an outgroup, which directly predicts anti-immigrant prejudice and intergroup hostility.

Social Dominance Theory

A framework stating that group-based social hierarchies are universal across human societies and that intergroup conflicts stem from tendencies to maintain these hierarchies.

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)

An individual difference trait measuring how strongly a person desires and supports group-based social hierarchies and inequality.

Positive empathy

Experiencing positive affective states in response to witnessing another person's good fortune or success.

Schadenfreude

Experiencing pleasure or satisfaction in response to witnessing another person's misfortune or suffering.

Scarcity mindset

A psychological condition resulting from resource or financial deficit that captures mental bandwidth, causing intense focus on immediate pressing problems at the expense of long-term planning.

Likert scale

A rating scale technique developed by Rensis Likert that quantifies attitudes by having respondents express degrees of agreement on an ordered continuum.

Symbolic / modern racism

A form of racial prejudice based on the belief that racial minority groups violate traditional moral values (such as hard work) rather than explicit claims of biological inferiority.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)

Robert Altemeyer's individual difference construct assessing submission to established authorities, strict adherence to societal conventions, and hostility toward non-conformists.

Need for closure

An individual difference reflecting a strong desire for definite, unambiguous answers and a high discomfort with ambiguity.

Old-fashioned prejudice

Explicit prejudice characterized by endorsement of biological superiority, formal segregation, and open governmental enforcement of group subordination.

Aversive racism

A subtle prejudice style where individuals hold non-prejudiced explicit egalitarian values alongside automatic implicit biases and feelings of discomfort around outgroups.

Ambivalent prejudice

The state of holding simultaneously positive (sympathetic) and negative (hostile or averse) feelings toward a specific social group.

Response amplification

Displaying disproportionately positive or negative reactions toward a stigmatized group member to reduce the uncomfortable tension caused by ambivalent feelings.

Explicit prejudice

Conscious, deliberate, and self-reportable attitudes toward a social group.

Implicit prejudice

Automatic, fast, and relatively uncontrollable evaluative associations formed toward a social group.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A computer-based reaction-time task that measures the relative strength of implicit automatic associations between target categories and evaluative attributes.

Adversarial collaboration

A joint research practice where scholars holding competing theoretical viewpoints collaboratively design a study to ensure a rigorous and mutually accepted empirical test.

Discretion

The latitude to make decisions based on personal judgment when evaluation criteria are ambiguous, creating increased opportunity for bias to influence choices.

Internal motivation to control prejudice

The drive to act in a non-prejudiced manner because doing so aligns with one's personal values and internal self-concept.

External motivation to control prejudice

The drive to avoid appearing prejudiced due to external social expectations, normative pressure, and fear of negative feedback.

Extended contact

The indirect contact phenomenon where knowing that an ingroup member has a friendship with an outgroup member reduces prejudice toward that outgroup.

Imagined contact

Mentally simulating a positive, peaceful intergroup interaction to lower intergroup anxiety and prejudice.

Parasocial contact

Indirect intergroup exposure mediated through mass media, television, celebrities, or films that fosters more favorable outgroup attitudes.

Negative intergroup contact

Unfavorable encounters with outgroup members that increase prejudice, which tend to be generalized more broadly across the outgroup than positive contact experiences.

Willingness to work in solidarity

The willingness of individuals across different social groups to form alliances to actively challenge inequality and advance social justice.