Psychology 331 Social Psychology

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Psychology 331Social Psychology

• Prejudice
• Chapter 9

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Prejudice

• Clark Clark (1947)
• Conclusions
• Children understand racial difference
• Children preferred the white doll
• 1/3 of children rejected their own group
  affiliation

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How pervasive is prejudice?

• Less blatant, but still widespread
• Measures of subtle prejudice
• Bogus pipeline
• IAT Implicit Association Test
• www.yale.edu/implicit

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Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination

• Prejudice
• The Affective Component
• A hostile or negative attitude toward a
  distinguishable group or people, based solely on
  their membership in that group.

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Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination

• Stereotyping
• The Cognitive Component
• A generalization about a group of people in which
  identical characteristics are assigned to
  virtually all members of the group, regardless of
  actual variation among the members.
• Allports (1954) law of least effort
  stereotypes simplify a complex world

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Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination

• Discrimination
• The Behavioral Component
• An unjustified negative or harmful action towards
  a member of a group, simply because of his or her
  membership in that group.
• Bond (1988)

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What Causes Prejudice?

• Cognitive Sources
• Emotional Sources
• Social Sources

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Social Categorization and Social Identity Theory
  Us vs Them
• Ingroup Bias
• Tendency to favor ones own group
• Minimal Group Paradigm (Tajfel)
• Ingroup bias leads to self-esteem maintenance and
  enhancement

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Social Categorization and Social Identity Theory
  Us vs Them
• Outgroup Homogeneity Bias
• The perception that those in the outgroup are
  more similar to each other than they really are
• Quattrone Jones (1980) Rutgers vs Princeton
  study

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• The Activation of Stereotypes
• Automatic and controlled information processing
  (Devine, 1989)
• Stereotypes are automatic
• Low prejudice decide not to use them

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Illusory Correlation
• Tendency to see relationships, or correlations,
  between events that are actually unrelated
• Hamilton Gifford (1976)

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Dispositional vs Situational Explanations
• Grouping-Serving Bias
• Explaining away outgroup members positive
  behaviors and attributing negative behaviors to
  their dispositions
• Bodenhausen (1988)
• Also called Ultimate Attribution Error

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Dispositional vs Situational Explanations
• Blaming the Victim
• Blame individuals for their victimization
• Janoff-Bulman et al. (1985) rape study

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Dispositional vs Situational Explanations
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• We find proof for our stereotypes by behaving in
  a way to create stereotypical behavior in
  outgroup members
• Word, Zanna, Cooper (1974)
• Interview studies

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Dispositional vs Situational Explanations
• Stereotype Threat
• Apprehension experienced by members of a minority
  group that they may behave in a manner that
  confirms an existing stereotype of their group
• Steele Aronson (1995) Blacks intelligence
• Spencer Steele (1995) Women math
• Also called stereotype vulnerability

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• What can you do if you experience discrimination?
• Individual Mobility
• Social Creativity
• Social Competition

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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

• Revising Stereotypical Beliefs
• Bookkeeping model
• Each piece leads to small change
• Conversion model
• Strong piece leads to radical change
• Subtyping model
• Subgroups are created

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Emotional Sources of Prejudice

• The Way We Allocate Resources Realistic
  Conflict Theory
• Limited resources lead to conflict between
  groups, and result in increased prejudice and
  discrimination
• Four Theories

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Emotional Sources of Prejudice

• The Way We Allocate Resources
• Economic and Political Competition
• Holvand Sears (1940)
• Price of cotton and lynchings
• Sherif et al. (1961)
• Robbers Cave experiment

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Emotional Sources of Prejudice

• The Way We Allocate Resources
• Role of the Scapegoat
• Tendency for individuals, when frustrated or
  unhappy, to displace aggression onto groups that
  are disliked, visible, and relatively powerless
• Rogers Prentice-Dunn (1981)

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Emotional Sources of Prejudice

• The Way We Allocate Resources
• Frustration-Aggression Theory
• Prejudice as displaced aggression caused by the
  frustrations of life
• Relative Deprivation Theory
• People become discontented when they perceive a
  negative discrepancy between their current
  standard of living and the standard of living
  they believe they deserve.

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Emotional Sources of Prejudice

• Authoritarian Personality
• Someone extremely respectful to and obeying of
  authority figures and conventional moral standard
  but hostile towards deviants and outsiders

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Social Sources of Prejudice

• Social Learning Theory
• Institutionalized Racism
• Institutionalized Sexism

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Social Sources of Prejudice

• Belief Congruence
• Perception that others hold different beliefs

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Social Sources of Prejudice

• Conformity
• Tendency to go along with the group in order to
  fulfill their expectations and gain acceptance
• Pettigrew (1958) miners study

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How Can We Reduce Prejudice?

• The Contact Hypothesis
• Bringing members of different groups together
  will reduce prejudice
• Deutsch Collins (1951)
• Housing study

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When does contact reduce prejudice? (Allport,
1954)

• Six conditions are necessary
• Mutual interdependence
• Successful completion of a common goal
• Equal status of group members
• Having informal interpersonal contact
• Having multiple contacts with several members of
  the outgroup
• Social norms that promote equality

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How Can We Reduce Prejudice?

• Cooperation and Interdependence
• Stephen (1978)
• Aronsons Jigsaw Classroom
• Gaertner et al. (1990)

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How Can We Reduce Prejudice?

• But we develop stereotypes about groups with
  which we have had little or no contact!

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How Can We Reduce Prejudice?

• Influence of Consensus Information
• Individuals stereotypes develop and change
  according to their perceptions about the beliefs
  of other people
• Sechrist Stangor (2001)
• Consensus information changes intergroup
  attitudes and behavior

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Sechrist Stangor (2001)

• Pre-selected Participants as High and Low
  Prejudice
• Received High or Low Consensus Information
• High Consensus 81 of students agree
• Low Consensus 19 of students agree
• Assessed Behavior (seating distance)
• Completed Attitude Measure

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Mean Seating Distance Between Participants and
Target
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Mean Attitude Ratings (Higher numbers indicate
more favorable attitudes)