Chapter 6
Prejudice
Components of Group Antagonism
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Stereotypes (cognitive)
Prejudice (affective)
Discrimination (behavioral)
Stereotypes
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Beliefs about the personal attributes
shared by people in a particular group
or social category.
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May have a “grain of truth.”
Usually contain much inaccuracy
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Over-generalized
Overemphasize negative attributes
Underestimate group variability
Stereotypes
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Knowing that one may be stereotyped
by others can create a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
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Others’ behavior can influence the
target.
The mere expectation of being
stereotyped can create stereotype
threat.
Stereotypes
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Steele & Aronson (1995)
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Blacks and whites completed a test that
was described as either “real” or as a lab
exercise
Only when the test was described as
“real” did blacks perform worse.
Illustrates impact of stereotype threat.
Prejudice

The evaluation of a group or an
individual based mainly on group
membership
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Not necessarily negative: ethnocentrism
is positive prejudice towards one’s ingroup
Prejudice
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Prejudice affects public policy
preferences
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prejudiced whites oppose affirmative
action and bilingual education
prejudiced straights favor restrictions
on HIV-positive individuals.
Prejudice
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In the real world, prejudice and
stereotyping tend to go together
However, unprejudiced people do
know the most common stereotypes
even though they don’t believe them.
Discrimination
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Negative behaviors towards
individuals based on their group
membership.
May be blatant or subtle; both can be
damaging
Discrimination
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Discrimination disguised as something
else leads to attributional ambiguity.
Being able to blame outcomes on
discrimination decreases the impact
of negative evaluations
Discrimination
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Attributional Ambiguity: Crocker & Major (1989)
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White evaluator rated blacks.
Evaluator could or could not see other.
Blacks rated negatively by a white who
could see them attributed rating to
discrimination and suffered less damage
to self-esteem.
Learning Prejudice
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According to social learning theory,
we learn prejudice the same way we
learn other attitudes and values
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Socialization
The Media
Learning Prejudice
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Socialization is the process by which
children learn the social norms of
their surroundings.
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By age 4 or 5, most urban whites begin
to show prejudices, and these prejudices
further develop during grade school.
By adolescence, prejudice is hard to
change.
Learning Prejudice
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Media coverage reflects and
reinforces stereotypes.
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E.g., Gilens (1999) found that the media
presents an inaccurate picture of people
on welfare, showing them as much more
likely to be black and unemployed than is
the case in reality.
Motives for Prejudice
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Psychodynamic Approaches
Intergroup Competition
Motives: Psychodynamic
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Prejudice is viewed by some as
displaced aggression onto a group
that serves as a scapegoat.
Motives: Psychodynamic
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The authoritarian personality theory
treats prejudice as a personality
disorder
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A modern reinterpretation suggests that
right-wing authoritarianism may stem
from social learning rather than
psychopathology
Motives: Intergroup Competition
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Realistic group conflict theory views
prejudice as an inevitable
consequence of conflict between
groups for limited resources
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Relative deprivation is key
Privileged groups have a sense of group
position and work to protect their status
Motives: Intergroup Competition
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Dominant groups maintain their
privileged position by two mechanisms
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On an interpersonal level, the dominant
group acts paternalistic while the
subordinate shows deference
Dominant groups create legitimizing
myths to explain why change is
impossible
Motives: Intergroup Competition
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Ideological justifications for gender
inequality create ambivalent sexism
(Glick & Fiske, 2001)
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This mixes “benevolent sexism” with
“hostile sexism”
Motives: Intergroup Competition
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Group interest, not self-interest, has
the greater effect on prejudiced
attitudes
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E.g., opposition to affirmative action by
whites is not based on fears of personal
job loss
Cognitive Bases of Prejudice
Systematic cognitive biases occur
because we need to simplify a
complex world
Cognitive Bases of Prejudice
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People categorize others into groups on the
basis of perceptually salient
characteristics
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(e.g., race, gender, language)
Subtyping then occurs on the basis of more
subtle characteristics
Social norms provide a basis for
categorization based on other attributes
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(e.g., religion)
Cognitive Bases of Prejudice
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In category-based processing, the
perceiver attends to individual
characteristics only to determine if they
are consistent with a social category
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This is very efficient compared with the
alternative, attribute-based processing.
Category-based processing is automatic.
Category labels tend to be emotionally charged.
Cognitive Bases of Prejudice
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Category-based processing is
influenced by the accessibility of
categories
Ambiguous or inadequate information
is especially likely to lead people to
rely on stereotypes
Cognitive Bases of Prejudice
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People tend to believe they should
judge others as individuals rather
than by using stereotypes.
However, people only need to believe
they have considered information
about the other to feel justified in
their judgments.
Cognitive Bases of Prejudice
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Advantages of
Category-Based
Processing
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Reduced the amount
of data to process
Allows us to go
beyond the
information given
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Disadvantages of
Category-Based
Processing
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Oversimplify and
over-generalize
Stereotypes foster
prejudice
Can generate false
memories
Social Identity
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Perceiving people as members of ingroups and out-groups leads to
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In-group favoritism and group-serving
biases
The assumed-similarity effect
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Other in-group members are seen as more similar
to the self than out-group members
The outgroup homogeneity effect
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“They are all alike, while we are diverse.”
Social Identity
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Tajfel’s (1969) minimal intergroup
situation randomly assigns people to
two groups on an arbitrary basis
Merely being categorized into groups
leads people to show more favorable
attitudes and behavior towards ingroup than out-group members
Social Identity
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Assumptions of Social Identity Theory:
1. People categorize the world into ingroups and out-groups.
2. People derive self-esteem from their
social identity as in-group members.
3. People’s self-esteem depends partly on
how they evaluate the in-group relative to
other groups.
Social Identity
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In-group favoritism enhances selfesteem.
However, low self-esteem doesn’t
foster in-group favoritism.
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People with low self-esteem are more
prejudiced against out-groups, but they
are negative about the in-group as well.
Comparison of Theories
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There is some truth to each of the
theories (social learning, motivational,
cognitive, social identity), and
generally they complement each
other.
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The major disagreement is whether
cultural differences in prejudice stem
from competition for resources or from
other sources.
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Declining Old-Fashioned Prejudices
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Most whites now endorse racial equality
Anti-Semitism has decreased
Anti-gay prejudice is also declining
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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However, there is still resistance to
full equality
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Negative stereotypes persist
Whites give only weak support to
government action to promote racial
equality
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Is the apparent decline in racism real
or illusory?
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Because there are few differences
between responses to face-to-face
interviews and private, anonymous survey
questionnaires, most social scientists
believe the decline is real.
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Some believe that old-fashioned racism has
been replaced by symbolic racism
Symbolic racism reflects these beliefs:
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discrimination is no longer a major obstacle
blacks do not make enough effort to help
themselves
demands for special treatment by blacks are
unwarranted (and resented)
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Symbolic racism is correlated with
old-fashioned prejudice and is a
stronger predictor of white’s
opposition to policies such as
affirmative action.
Similar concepts have been applied to
other prejudices, e.g. neosexism
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Aversive Racism results from support for
racial equality mixed with negative feelings
towards blacks.
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Aversive racism leads whites to avoid blacks
because they feel ashamed of having negative
feelings and allows them to protect their selfimage as unprejudiced.
Aversive racism may allow whites to
discriminate against blacks when there is a
plausible non-racist justification for their
actions.
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Implicit stereotypes are
automatically activated without
awareness of their influence.
The Changing Face of Prejudice
Measuring Implicit Stereotypes
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Example: people are asked to categorize
words as + or -.
If a picture of a black face before the
word “lazy” speeds the response, while a
black face before the word “intelligent”
slows the response, this indicates that
the person possesses an implicit
stereotype.
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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There is much enthusiasm about
implicit stereotype measures.
However, they have not yet met all
the standard criteria for good
measurement.
The Changing Face of Prejudice
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Explicit measures of prejudice may
correlate with deliberative judgments
while implicit measures correlate with
spontaneous, involuntary responses.
Reducing Prejudice
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Socialization
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Much change is happening spontaneously
as target groups change and levels of
education rise.
Reducing Prejudice
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Socialization
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Patricia Devine’s two-process “dissociation
model:” Many people learn stereotypes early in
life (which then are automatically activated)
and tolerance later (a controlled process).
When these people are distracted, they may
display unintended prejudiced responses, which
they then feel guilty about.
Reducing Prejudice
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Intergroup Contact
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Blacks and whites are still quite
segregated in the U.S.
Mere contact between groups will not
necessarily reduce prejudice.
Reducing Prejudice
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Intergroup Contact
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Gordon Allport’s contact theory:
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Cooperative interdependence
Equal status
Sufficient frequency, duration, closeness
Institutional support
Reducing Prejudice
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Intergroup contact is likely to
decrease prejudice only if the
conditions of Allport’s theory are
met.
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E.g., Aronson’s “jigsaw technique” has been
shown to lead to decreased prejudice,
increased self-esteem and academic
performance.
However, many efforts at intergroup
contact do not meet the conditions.
Reducing Prejudice
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Recategorization

Encouraging people to recategorize members of
the in-group and the out-group as members of a
larger, more inclusive group may reduce
prejudice.
 Superordinate group
 E.g., praying together as observant
Christians at a game
 Cross-cutting categories
 E.g., members of different churches
who belong to the same soccer team.
Reducing Prejudice
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Modern nations face the tension between
desires for sub-group recognition and
autonomy (e.g., multiculturalism) versus
national integration and loyalty (e.g., colorblind society).
This tension makes reducing prejudice
more important than ever; but no one
approach will solve the problem.