10. Prejudice, intergroup relations, and conflict Flashcards
Prejudice
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.
Intergroup relations
When two or more groups (or their members) interact.
Discrimination
Behavioural manifestation of prejudice.
Unjustified negative behaviour towards a group or its member.
Difference between prejudice and discrimination
Prejudice is the attitudes. Discrimination is the behaviour.
Racism
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.
Sexism
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.
The prejudiced personality (Adorno et al., 1950)
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.
Social dominance theory (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)
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.
Social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987)
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.
Discursive psychology and prejudice
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.
The ideology of prejudice
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.
Old racism
Explicit, blatant forms and practices of racism.
New racism
Implicit, subtle, often disguised forms and practices of racism.
The “taboo” of prejudice
Old racism is the taboo so engage in new racism instead.
Types of subtle racism
Symbolic racism
Ambivalent racism
Modern racism
Aversive racism
Symbolic racism
Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly.
(e.g. as opposition to policies that help racial minorities)
Ambivalent racism
Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings
towards stigmatised racial groups.
Modern racism
Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making too many unfair
demands or receiving too many resources.
Aversive racism
Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial inequality but have a personal
aversion towards racial minorities.
Implicit prejudice
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.
Gender attitudes
Gender attitudes are often ambivalent.
Benevolent sexism
The idea that women are beautiful and delicate creatures, who thus should be put on a pedestal and looked after by men.
Intergroup behaviour
Is behaviour based on the perception that individuals belong to distinct social groups.
Conflict
Is a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals or values between two or more parties.
Intergroup conflict
Negative relations between social groups.
Zero sum beliefs
If another group gains it is at my loss. These underlie most of the conflicts.
Purpose of conflicts
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.
Realistic conflict theory (Sherif, 1958)
Competition for scarce resources leads to intergroup conflict. Reason for conflict is competition over scarce resources.
Robbers cave experiment
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.
Categorisation, stereotyping, and social groups
Tajfel and colleagues argue people can favour their ingroup and be hostile to the outgroup even when there is no reward for doing so.
Ingroup favouritism
Competition is not over resources but to distinguish one’s group favourably in comparison to others.
Social comparison
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.
Motivations for social comparison
To maintain positive self-esteem
To reduce uncertainty
To have optimal distinctiveness
The group mind
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.
Problems with Le Bon’s theory
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.
De-individuation (Festinger, 1952)
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.
The Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 1971)
Participants who were assigned ‘prison guard’ and ‘prisoner’ roles internalised these roles. The ‘guards’ became aggressive and brutal.
Emergent Norm theory (Turner & Killian, 1972)
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.
Social identity theory and crowds
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.
Contact to improve intergroup harmony
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.
Allport’s (1954) optimal conditions
- Contact must be frequent and prolonged
- Contact must be with stereotypical members of the group
- Contact must be made with a genuine aspiration to improve relations
- Contact must occur between individuals of equal status
- Contact must be free from competition
- Contact must be supported by formal structures (e.g. education, government policy)
- Contact must be organised around the achievement of superordinate goals
Strategies to improve intergroup harmony
Desegregation
Cross-group friendship
Superordinate goals
Common ingroup identity model
Desegregation
Racial contact and inclusive communities is key for intergroup harmony.
Cross-group friendship
Those who form friendships with outgroup members develop more positive attitudes towards the outgroup as a whole.
Superordinate goals
A shared goal that necessitates cooperative effort may override different agendas and conflict.
Common ingroup identity model
When members of different social groups re-categorise themselves into one broader group, negative attitudes decrease.
