Antisocial Relations and Prejudice

Antisocial Relations

  • Focus on social psychology and its exploration of prejudice and aggression.

  • Questions raised include:

    • What are the roots of prejudice?

    • What causes individuals to hate, harm, love, and help others?

    • When conflicts occur, how can societies move toward just peace?

  • Insights into antisocial relations derived from research on prejudice and aggression.

Prejudice

Definitions

  • Prejudice: Defined as "prejudgment"; an unjustifiable and typically negative attitude toward a group of people, commonly based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

  • Attitudes: Composed of feelings influenced by beliefs, predispose us to act in certain ways.

Components of Prejudice

  • Prejudice comprises a mixture of three ingredients:

    1. Negative emotions: Hostility or fear toward a group.

    2. Stereotypes: Generalized beliefs about a group, which may sometimes reflect reality but often overgeneralize or exaggerate.

      • Example: Texas Senator Ted Cruz (2018) noted that while it is a stereotype that Texans like barbecue, it broadly aligns with reality.

      • Current Politicization: Strong partisanship exemplified by Republicans and Democrats leads to a “perception gap” where each side exaggerates the extremism of the other (Yudkin et al., 2019a).

    3. Predisposition to discriminate: Involves acting negatively towards members of said group, which can be blatant or subtle (microaggressions).

      • Example: Bias in jury decisions towards a White police officer who kills a Black man (Cooley et al., 2019).

      • Subtle forms include preferential treatment in service provision based on names indicating race (Edelman et al., 2017; Ge et al., 2016).

Body Weight Bias

  • Explicit bias against sex, disability, age, or race is considerably overshadowed by biases based on body weight (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019).

Explicit and Implicit Prejudice

Cognitive Processing of Prejudice

  • Humans process thoughts, memories, and attitudes in explicit and implicit manners:

    • Explicit Prejudice: Conscious thoughts and attitudes on the radar of awareness.

    • Implicit Prejudice: Automatic responses that operate below awareness, influencing behavior without conscious intent.

    • The Supreme Court acknowledged implicit bias in the Fair Housing Act, recognizing "unconscious prejudices" can lead to discrimination.

Research Methods for Studying Implicit Prejudice

  1. Testing Unconscious Group Associations:

    • The Implicit Association Test (IAT) shows that individuals may have negative associations even when denying racial prejudice (Greenwald & Banaji, 2017). Critics argue about its reliability (Oswald et al., 2015; Schimmack, 2019), while proponents note its predictive validity for various behaviors (Cvencek et al., 2021; Forscher et al., 2019; Jost, 2019).

  2. Evaluating Unconscious Patronization:

    • In studies where White university women graded flawed essays attributed to either White or Black students, the evaluations were stricter for the White student, while the same essays rated more favorably when the alleged author was Black (Harber, 1998).

  3. Monitoring Bodily Responses:

    • Neuroscientific studies revealed implicit biases may influence physiological responses, such as facial muscle reactions or amygdala activation when viewing faces of other ethnic groups (Cunningham et al., 2004; Eberhardt, 2005; Stanley et al., 2008).

Targets of Prejudice

Racial and Ethnic Prejudice

  • Attitudes towards race have changed; support for interracial marriage increased from 4% in 1959 to 87% in 2013 (Saad, 2019a).

  • Significant majority of Americans now view racial diversity positively, with 75% agreeing it benefits the nation (Horowitz, 2019)._

  • Despite declines in overt racism, subtle forms of prejudice remain, such as:\n - Colorism: Discrimination based on skin tone leads to darker-skinned individuals facing harsher attitudes within disadvantaged communities (Bettache, 2020; Gonzales-Barrera, 2019).

    • Criminal Stereotypes: Black individuals face harsher judgments for crimes perceived to be typical of their race compared to similar actions taken by White individuals (Petsko & Bodenhausen, 2019).

    • Medical Care Disparities: Health treatments favor White patients over equally unhealthy Black patients (Obermeyer et al., 2019). Such disparities are evident in disproportionate COVID-19 death rates among Black Americans (COVID Tracking Project, 2020).

Prejudice Persistence

  • Prejudice persists due in part to people's hesitance to challenge racist or prejudicial speech (Kawakami et al., 2009).

  • An IAT indicated that many White individuals take longer to associate positive words with Black-sounding names vs. White-sounding names (Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003).

Gender Prejudice

  • Overt gender prejudice is declining, with 95% supporting a qualified woman for presidency in 2012 compared to only one-third in 1937 (Jones, 2012).

  • Despite formal equality, implicit and explicit gender discrimination is prevalent:

    • Pay disparities favor typically male jobs over female caregiving professions.

    • Women underrepresented in leadership roles, with a significant disparity in film directorship (Smith et al., 2017).

    • Societal expectations reflect gender bias in perceived intelligence, e.g. fathers viewed as more intelligent than mothers (Furnham, 2016).

LGBTQ Prejudice

  • Many LGBTQ individuals face societal barriers, with only 28 countries legalizing same-sex marriage by 2019.

  • Prejudice is especially prevalent in men and older, less educated demographics, with 39% of LGBTQ individuals feeling rejected by family or friends (Pew, 2013b).

  • Lack of legal protections correlates with increased rates of psychological disorders among LGBTQ individuals (Hatzenbuehler, 2014).

Roots of Prejudice

Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Origins

  • Prejudice arises from social inequalities, emotional responses, and cognitive mechanisms:

  1. Social Inequalities: The "just-world phenomenon" leads individuals to justify their social positions, rationalizing why the wealthy are good (successful) while the poor must have deserved their circumstances.

    • Stereotypes rationalize existing social inequalities.

  2. Negative Emotions: Fear and frustration lead to stronger ingroup bonds and scapegoating the outgroup, particularly in stressful environments or societal unrest (Pyszczynski et al., 2002).

  3. Cognitive Shortcuts: Humans are programmed for rapid assessments of threat versus safety; this evolutionary mechanism predisposes impartiality in social interactions, often casting outgroups in a negative light (Kteily & Bruneau, 2017).

General Conclusions

  • Understanding anti-social behavior and its roots is essential for addressing prejudice and promoting social harmony.

  • Identifying and challenging biases is vital for fostering inclusivity and reducing societal tensions.