10. Prejudice, intergroup relations, and conflict

Question 1

Prejudice

Answer 1

A preconceived negative judgement of a group and its individual members. Has to come out of stereotypes and their group membership. Has to be negative judgement.

Question 2

Intergroup relations

Answer 2

When two or more groups (or their members) interact.

Question 3

Discrimination

Answer 3

Behavioural manifestation of prejudice.
Unjustified negative behaviour towards a group or its member.

Question 4

Difference between prejudice and discrimination

Answer 4

Prejudice is the attitudes. Discrimination is the behaviour.

Question 5

Racism

Answer 5

An individuals prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour towards people of a given race.
Institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race.

Question 6

Sexism

Answer 6

An individuals prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour towards people of a given gender.
Institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given gender.

Question 7

The prejudiced personality (Adorno et al., 1950)

Answer 7

Hostility towards one group often coexisted with hostility towards other minorities.
Authoritarian personality or right-wing authoritarianism: a personality that is disposed to favour obedience to authority and intolerance for outgroups and those of lower status.
Intolerance to weakness, punitive attitudes, submissive respect for ingroup authorities.

Question 8

Social dominance theory (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)

Answer 8

How people respond to the social hierarchy depends on their social dominance orientation - a motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups.
This motivation results in prejudice and discrimination.
This can also be the motivation from people higher-status groups to seek to maintain the status quo and resistance to change. It doesn’t benefit them to change the system.

Question 9

Social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987)

Answer 9

Stereotypes - a simplified representation of social groups - have a strong link with prejudice.
Social identification -> internalising group norms -> stereotypes about others
However, group identification does not necessarily lead to outgroup derogation. Prejudice occurs when intergroup comparison threatens the ingroup’s positive distinctiveness.
Intergroup differentiation- about liking our group, not necessarily disliking another group.

Question 10

Discursive psychology and prejudice

Answer 10

Categorisation as a discursive process: discursive psychology argues that social groups, their meanings, and categorisations are produced in language. Instead of inner cognitive motives of prejudice, they examine the expression of prejudice in language as prejudice itself.

Question 11

The ideology of prejudice

Answer 11

Michael Billig (1985) challenges the cognitive equilibrium of prejudice and bigotry. For instance, Nazi Germany’s stereotypes of Jews as parasites who deserve to be killed, are not comparable with University of Exeter students’ stereotypes about the University of Plymouth.

Question 12

Old racism

Answer 12

Explicit, blatant forms and practices of racism.

Question 13

New racism

Answer 13

Implicit, subtle, often disguised forms and practices of racism.

Question 14

The “taboo” of prejudice

Answer 14

Old racism is the taboo so engage in new racism instead.

Question 15

Types of subtle racism

Answer 15

Symbolic racism
Ambivalent racism
Modern racism
Aversive racism

Question 16

Symbolic racism

Answer 16

Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly.
(e.g. as opposition to policies that help racial minorities)

Question 17

Ambivalent racism

Answer 17

Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings
towards stigmatised racial groups.

Question 18

Modern racism

Answer 18

Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making too many unfair
demands or receiving too many resources.

Question 19

Aversive racism

Answer 19

Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial inequality but have a personal
aversion towards racial minorities.

Question 20

Implicit prejudice

Answer 20

Implicit association test
Measures reaction times to see how quickly people react to a face.
Reveals implicit attitudes
Longer someone pauses, the more likely they have implicit attitudes.

Question 21

Gender attitudes

Answer 21

Gender attitudes are often ambivalent.

Question 22

Benevolent sexism

Answer 22

The idea that women are beautiful and delicate creatures, who thus should be put on a pedestal and looked after by men.

Question 23

Intergroup behaviour

Answer 23

Is behaviour based on the perception that individuals belong to distinct social groups.

Question 24

Conflict

Answer 24

Is a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals or values between two or more parties.

Question 25

Intergroup conflict

Answer 25

Negative relations between social groups.

Question 26

Zero sum beliefs

Answer 26

If another group gains it is at my loss. These underlie most of the conflicts.

Question 27

Purpose of conflicts

Answer 27

Conflicts are necessary for development and change. Conflict in itself is not evil. The problem is the means and weapons often used to solve or reduce that conflict.

Question 28

Realistic conflict theory (Sherif, 1958)

Answer 28

Competition for scarce resources leads to intergroup conflict. Reason for conflict is competition over scarce resources.

Question 29

Robbers cave experiment

Answer 29

If competition for resources was the basis for intergroup conflict, could it be reduced by bringing the groups together to work co-operatively for shared resources?
When competition between groups began, hostility arose. As the groups were brought together through the introduction of superordinate goals requiring collective work, prejudice ceased.

Question 30

Categorisation, stereotyping, and social groups

Answer 30

Tajfel and colleagues argue people can favour their ingroup and be hostile to the outgroup even when there is no reward for doing so.

Question 31

Ingroup favouritism

Answer 31

Competition is not over resources but to distinguish one’s group favourably in comparison to others.

Question 32

Social comparison

Answer 32

Groups engage in social comparisons to make their own group membership meaningful, and they strive to do so in ways that make their own group seem favourable.

Question 33

Motivations for social comparison

Answer 33

To maintain positive self-esteem
To reduce uncertainty
To have optimal distinctiveness

Question 34

The group mind

Answer 34

Le Bon (1895) argued that people behaved like barbarians in crowds due to a loss of conscious rationality.
Deindividuation -> anonymity -> contagion: loss of individuality leads to losing individual responsibility, and it leads to the transmission of unconscious primitive behaviours.
Almost like a hypnotic state where individuals follow others actions and do things they would never normally do.

Question 35

Problems with Le Bon’s theory

Answer 35

The crowd is removed from the circumstances under which it arose.
Assumes crowds have a fixed set of behaviours that are released.
It gives no indication of ‘who’ will be affected.
Assumes crowd member are anonymous and irrational.

Question 36

De-individuation (Festinger, 1952)

Answer 36

Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension; occurs in group situations where responsiveness to positive or group norms are fostered or where anonymity is increased.

Question 37

The Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 1971)

Answer 37

Participants who were assigned ‘prison guard’ and ‘prisoner’ roles internalised these roles. The ‘guards’ became aggressive and brutal.

Question 38

Emergent Norm theory (Turner & Killian, 1972)

Answer 38

Crowds are just an extreme form of groups - only distinctions groups have established norms and history.
When crowds are spontaneously gathered in novel social situations, some individuals become prominent and create group norms with their leadership.

Question 39

Social identity theory and crowds

Answer 39

Crowd members behave in a way that is consistent with their social identity. In most cases, crowd members have established norms on the basis of their shared social identity.
Crowd behaviours are not ‘out-of-control’ mob behaviours, nor emerge with the loss of individual identity: it is about an increase in a shared social identity.
A sense of collective empowerment is the key to understanding crowd behaviours.

Question 40

Contact to improve intergroup harmony

Answer 40

Might putting two conflicting individuals or groups into close contact enable them to know and like each other? -> Mostly yes (approximately 90% of studies support contact hypothesis): increased contact predicted decreased prejudice.
However, Allport (1954) stated that contact should be done under a series of ‘optimal conditions’.
Not all contact can end up with positive change.
Some contact can end up with worse intergroup relations.

Question 41

Allport’s (1954) optimal conditions

Answer 41

1. Contact must be frequent and prolonged
   
   2. Contact must be with stereotypical members of the group
   3. Contact must be made with a genuine aspiration to improve relations
   4. Contact must occur between individuals of equal status
   5. Contact must be free from competition
   6. Contact must be supported by formal structures (e.g. education, government policy)
   7. Contact must be organised around the achievement of superordinate goals

Question 42

Strategies to improve intergroup harmony

Answer 42

Desegregation
Cross-group friendship
Superordinate goals
Common ingroup identity model

Question 43

Desegregation

Answer 43

Racial contact and inclusive communities is key for intergroup harmony.

Question 44

Cross-group friendship

Answer 44

Those who form friendships with outgroup members develop more positive attitudes towards the outgroup as a whole.

Question 45

Superordinate goals

Answer 45

A shared goal that necessitates cooperative effort may override different agendas and conflict.

Question 46

Common ingroup identity model

Answer 46

When members of different social groups re-categorise themselves into one broader group, negative attitudes decrease.