Prejudice: Disliking others
What is the nature and power of Prejudice
Prejudice
• A preconceived negative judgment of group and its individual
members.
• an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without
knowledge, thought, or reason.
• any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
• unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile
nature, regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group
Discrimination
• 1. an act or instance of discriminating, or of making a distinction.
• 2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or
against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to
which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit:
racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
Racism/ Racist
• 1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various
human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement,
usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has
the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is
inferior to the others.
• 2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such
a doctrine; discrimination.
• 3.hatred or intolerance of another race or other races
What is the nature and power of prejudice?
• Discrimination
• Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members
• Racism
• Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory/biased behavior towards
people of a given race
• Sexism
• Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior towards people of a
given sex
What is the nature and power of prejudice?
• Defining Prejudice
• Preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members
• Supported by stereotypes
• Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people
• Could a stereotype be accurate?
• What are some? Give examples (French, German, British)
• Some examples of groups that may experience prejudice:
• Gender, racial, religion/atheists, overweight, sexual orientation, elderly,
immigrants,
• Occupations?
Attitude components
• Prejudice – affect
• positive or negative
• Stereotype – belief (is there some truth)?
• What are some positive stereotypes?
• Asians are smart/ well educated?
• Blacks are naturally better at learning to play jazz?
• Discrimination – behavior –acting on a belief/affect
What is the nature and power of prejudice?
Racial Prejudice
Is racial prejudice disappearing?
What is the nature and power of prejudice?
• Gender Prejudice
• Gender stereotypes
• Strong gender stereotypes exist
• Members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes
• Most believe that men and women are different yet equal
• Over time prejudice toward women has decreased as much as with blacks
• A favorable stereotype (most people like women more)
• Women’s work is not devalued
What is the nature and power of prejudice?
• Gender Prejudice
• Sexism: Kind and hostile
• An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward
people of a given sex
• Institutional practices( even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate
people of a given sex.
• Attitudes toward women have changed rapidly
• Most see women as understanding, kind, and helpful
• Gender discrimination
• Disappearing in democratic Western countries
• Non-Western countries gender bias is still strong
What are the social Sources of Prejudice?
• Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice
• Social dominance orientation
• A Motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups
• Being in a dominant high-status position tends to promote this
orientation and justification
What are the social sources of prejudice?
• Socialization
• Authoritarian personality
• Personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and
intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status.
Ethnocentricity
Believing in the
superiority of one’s
own ethnic and cultural
group, and having a
corresponding disdain
for all other groups
What are the social sources of prejudice?
• Socialization
• Religion and prejudice
• In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to approve the present
order
• Use of religion to support injustice helps explain a pair of findings
concerning North American Christianity
• White church members express more racial prejudice than nonmembers
• Those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian beliefs express
more prejudice than those professing more progressive beliefs
What are the social sources of prejudice?
• Socialization
• Conformity
• If prejudice is socially accepted, many people will follow the path of
least resistance and conform to the fashion
• If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as fashions
change and new norms evolve, prejudice can diminish
What are the social sources of prejudice?
• Institutional Supports (marriage, education, religion)
• Government
• Schools
• Magazines and newspapers
• Face-ism v. bodyism?
• Films and television
What are the motivational sources of
prejudice?
• Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory
• Displaced aggression
• Hate crimes
• Realistic group conflict theory
• Prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce
resources
Scapegoat theory
Social identity theory
Social identity is a person's sense of who
they are based on their group membership.
What are the motivational sources of
prejudice?
• Social Identity Theory (Tajfel): Feeling Superior to Others
• The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who
am I?” that comes from our group memberships
• We categorize
• We identify
• We compare
What are the motivational sources of
prejudice?
• Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
• Ingroup bias
• Tendency to favor one’s own group
• Because of our social identifications, we conform to our group norms
• When our group succeeds, we feel better by identifying strongly with
it
• More ingroup bias if part of a small group
• What does this say about school integration
• Racial mix levels?
What are the motivational sources of
prejudice?
• Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
• Need for status, self-regard, and belonging
• Terror management
• People’s self-protective emotional and cognitive responses when confronted
with reminders of their mortality
What are the motivational sources of
prejudice?
• Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
• Motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to modify their
thoughts an actions
• Self-conscious people will feel guilt and try to inhibit their prejudicial
response
What are the cognitive source of prejudice?
• Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
• Spontaneous categorization
• Social identity theory implies that those who feel their social identity keenly will
concern themselves with correctly categorizing people as us or them
• Necessary for prejudice
• Perceived similarities and differences
• Outgroup homogeneity effect
• Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another than are
ingroup members
• Own-race bias
• Tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race
What are the consequences of prejudice?
• Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
• Distinctive events foster illusory correlations
• Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership and
individuals’ presumed characteristics
• Attentiveness to unusual occurrences can create illusory correlations
Just-world
phenomenon
Tendency of people to believe that
the world is just and that people
therefore get what they deserve
and deserve what they get.
What are the consequences of prejudice?
• Attribution: Is It a Just World?
• Group-serving bias
• Group-Serving Bias is the human tendency to consistently attribute a
group's successes to its own efforts, and to attribute failures to
outside interference.
What are the consequences of prejudice?
• Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes/Prejudgments
• Whenever a member of a group behaves as expected, we duly note the fact; our prior belief is
confirmed
• When a member of a group behaves inconsistently with our expectation, we may interpret or
explain away the behavior as due to special circumstances
• Subtyping
•
Accommodating individuals who deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as
“exceptions to the rule”
•
Subgrouping
•
Accommodating individuals who deviate from one's stereotype by forming a new stereotype
• about this subset of the group
• Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Social beliefs can be self-confirming
Prejudice affects its targets
Stereotype Threat
Disruptive concern, when facing a
negative stereotype, that one will
be evaluated based on a negative
stereotype.
What are the consequences of prejudice?
• Do Stereotypes Bias
Judgments of Individuals?
• Yes, but people often
evaluate individuals more
positively than the groups
they compose
•
• Strong Stereotypes Matter
Stereotypes Bias
Interpretations
• Affect how events are
interpreted
• We evaluate people more
extremely when their
behavior violates our
stereotypes