Social Psychology - Chapter 9

Prejudice

a preconceived, negative judgment of a group and its individual members

ABCs

Affect - feelings (dislike, fear, disgust)

Behavior tendency - inclination to act (discrimination is a behavior associated with prejudice)

Cognitions - beliefs (stereotypes)

• i.e. a prejudiced person may feel negative feelings towards a group, act in a discriminatory manner, believing that there are reasons to view them negatively

Cluster Group research - Bergh (2022)

1. marginalized people (Black, Asian, homeless, immigrants, Muslims, people in poverty)

2. unconventional groups (gays, lesbians, transgender, people, atheists, and liberals)

3. privileged or conservative groups (Christians, conservatives, athletes, White people, wealthy people)

Stereotypes

negative evaluations that mark prejudice often supported by social beliefs about groups of people

Explicit Prejudice

• conscious, deliberate, and controllable

• measured by self-report surveys

• has declined sharply on many measures since the mid-20th century

• shaped by social norms - people will likely conceal prejudiced views because there is less social approval for expressing them

• may change with education

Implicit Prejudice

• automatic, often unintentional associations

• measured by reaction-time tasks such as the IAT

• can coexist with sincere egalitarian beliefs

• people can hold “dual attitudes” toward the same target (Wilson et al., 2000) - would not really create cognitive dissonance

• may linger, changing only when we form new habits through practice

IAT: Implicit Association Test

When you see a hammer, what do you associate it with? Looking at WHAT the reaction is and the time it took to get here

How do inequality, socialization, institutions and our own needs feed prejudice?

• social inequality and status

• socialization: personality, religion, conformity

• institutional supports

• frustration and scapegoating

• social identity and ingroup bias

• motivation to avoid prejudice

The Three Roots of Prejudice

(1) Social Sources

• unequal status, socialization and institutions that teach and maintain prejudice

(2) Motivation Sources

• frustration, the need to belong and the need to feel good about ourselves and our groups

(3) Cognitive Sources

• How normal thinking, categorizing, noticing, explaining, creates and sustains stereotypes that can lead to prejudice

Factors of Socialization that Influence Prejudice:

• Ethnocentrism

  • Believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group, with corresponding disdain for outgroups

• Authoritarian personality

  • Adorno (1950): intolerance of weakness, punitiveness and submission to ingroup authority predicted prejudice toward many groups

• Social dominance orientation

  • a preference for group hierarchy. people high in SDO favor policies that keep their group on top

Extrinsic religiosity

religion as a means to an end - status, belonging, security

Intrinsic religiosity

faith as an end in itself is deeply internalized, associated with lower prejudice and GREATER TOLERANCE, highly committed members are often less prejudiced than nominal ones

Institutional Supports

• media: portrayals that repeatedly link groups with crime, terrorism, or narrow roles reinforce stereotypes

• Segregation

• Policies and practices

  • criteria with unequal impact

Motivational Sources of Prejudice

• Frustration and Scapegoating

• Social Identity Theory

• Motivation to Avoid Prejudice

Frustration and Scapegoating

• Hovland & Sears (1940) - realistic group conflict theory adds that competition for scarce resources breeds prejudice

  • not about the PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES, but the PRESENCE OF RESOURCE SCARCITY

Social Identity Theory

• Tajfel & Turner (1979): art of who we are comes from our groups.

• ingroup bias - favoring our own group - follows, especially when personal or group esteem is threatened

  • mere categorization is enough to produce ingroup favoritism

  • bias does not require hostility, history, or competition - just us and them

Motivation to Avoid Prejudice

• Devine (1989): nearly everyone knows the cultural stereotypes. what differs is whether we act on them

  • in order to really not be prejudiced, we all have to engage in controlled response… system 1 and system 2 again

Spontaneous categorizing

we automatically classify people by race, gender, and age. it saves mental effort, but it invites stereotyping (does not always create prejudice, sometimes we like what is different)

Outgroup homogeneity

“they” seem alike; “we” seem diverse

• we perceive outgroup members as more similar to one another than ingroup members

• a foundation for negative stereotyping

Group-Serving Bias

• also called “the ultimate attribution error”

  • an outgroup’s bad acts —> that’s their character

  • an outgroup’s good acts —> luck, effort, or an exception to the general outgroup rule

  • the ingroup gets the opposite, flattering explanations, justifications for bad behavior, “they’re only trying to do what is right”

• prejudice inherently shifts us to one side through the group-serving bias

Just-World Phenomenon

• the belief that people get what they deserve

• we don’t challenge prejudice, because we look at prejudice as justice in the world for people getting what they deserve

• encourages blaming victims of poverty, assault, or discrimination

Cooperation and Superordinate Goals

• shared goals that neither group can achieve along recast “them” as a part of “us”

• most social psychologists and political psychologists agree that this is the best way to improve division in the United States political system

Recategorization

• builds a common ingroup identity so former outgroup members become “us”

• aligns with cooperation and superordinate goals

Deep Canvassing

• 10-minute conversations encouraging perspective-taking reduced anti-transgender prejudice for months

• effort to communicate with those who hold prejudice

Habit Breaking

treating bias as a habit

Perspective-taking

imagining the world from another’s viewpoint increases empathy and reduces stereotyping