4 and 5 - Prominent theories Flashcards
1- Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination
- No single “unified” theory of prejudice & discrimination
o Partly because prejudice and discrimination has many
different causes, many different explanations (individual, interpersonal, structural, etc.). - All of these theories are still used in some form today
2- Scientific Racism
Dominant time period: Before 1920s
Context: Use of scientific research to justify White
cultural domination.
Focus: Identifying exotic & negative differences in
non-White people.
View of prejudice: Justified by data.
Phrenology
* Belief that the brain has multiple “organs” that correspond to different abilities or traits.
* Grew in popularity in the US during the 1830’s and 1840’s, where many Americans were looking for a scientific justification to continue
practicing slavery.
* Samuel Morton, an American doctor, popularized the idea that race could be correlated with skull size, which reflected group differences
in intelligence.
Examples of it being brought back today: AI face recognition to identify the ‘best candidates’, AI ‘gaydar’
3- Psychodynamic Theories
Dominant time period: 1920s-1950s
Context: Prevalence of explicit racism, aftermath of the Holocaust.
Focus: Identifying why individuals are prejudiced.
View of prejudice: Irrational and unjustifiable, rooted in
individual differences
o Personality
o Unconscious defense mechanisms
o Projection of frustrations onto minorities
Displaced Frustration and Aggression:
People experience FRUSTRATION when one of their goal’s is blocked. Following frustration, people feel AGGRESSION, which creates an intention to harm.
However, aggression is usually DISPLACED, because the source of the frustration is too powerful.
As a result, aggression is then displaced on to a WEAKER TARGET (even the self).
The weaker the target, the more satisfying the release of aggression.
The Authoritarian Personality:
Adorno et al. 1950: A set of personality traits associated
with belief in obedience to authority and oppression of
subordinate groups.
o Psychodynamic explanation: The “id” produces negative impulses, which cannot be properly
controlled by one’s “ego”.
o This “psychic conflict” then projects those negative
impulses onto minority groups and greater respect
for authority.
Sample Items:
“Young people sometimes get rebellious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and settle down.”
“An insult to our country’s honor should always be punished.”
“Most people don’t realize how much our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places.”
“Nobody ever learned anything really important except through suffering.”
- State of research today:
o Similar personality traits, but no “psychodynamic” explanations
o New: Authoritarians have increased sensitivity to societal threats (Ex: Trump supporters)
4- Sociocultural Theories
Dominant time period: 1960s-1970s
Context: Civil Rights Movement
Focus: Social and cultural influences on prejudice.
View of prejudice: Prejudice is a manifestation of
cultural norms.
Clark & Clark (1947)
* TV demonstration (2008)
(choosing white baby doll instead of black one)
Prejudice As An Expression of Cultural Norms
“why are black women so”
autofill=angry, loud…
googling “beautiful woman” and it shows white women
googling “person” and it shows men
5- Cognitive Theories
Dominant time period: 1980s - Present
Context: Prejudice appears to be a universal phenomenon that emerges from a low-level mental processes
Focus: How prejudice arises from “ordinary” aspects
of cognition.
View of prejudice: Prejudice is a feature of the mind,
not an unintended “bug”.
Stereotypes & Schemas
* Schema Theory argues that people organize information in their minds by unconsciously
creating categories and scripts through experience or exposure.
* Schema Theory then explains stereotypes as ”schemas gone wrong”, by arguing that we naturally categorize people into groups and make generalizations about those groups.
6- Evolutionary Theories
Time period: 1990s - Present
Context: Prejudice appears to be a universal phenomenon that emerged from challenges in evolutionary history.
Focus: How prejudice may have been evolutionary adaptive.
View of prejudice: Prejudice helped address social problems in our evolutionary past (and may or may not in the present).
Prediction: Across cultures, prejudice is stronger against social group members that are men than women due to increased probably of intergroup violence (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). Evidence: well not always…
All psychological phenomena, including those concerning intergroup relations, have to begin with the question:
What “adaptations” would have lead our ancestors to reproduce?
We want to approach friends, family…
We want to avoid threats like bears, tigers, snakes…
Avoid/approach task: slower to approach negative words and faster to avoid negative words, faster to approach positive words and slower to avoid positive words
Are we quicker/slower to approach/avoid ingroup and outgroup members based on group membership?
Same thing but with white and black faces:
* Participants had faster avoidance than approach
reaction times for Black faces.
* Participants were faster to avoid Black compared to
White faces.
Now italian vs slavic names:
* For Slavic names avoidance movements were faster
than approach movements.
* For Italian names approach movements were faster
than avoidance movements.
Difficulties:
What are some alternative explanations for these results?
How do we know this is related to an evolutionary-based threat?
7- Intergroup Relations Theories
Dominant time period: 1970s
Context: Persistence of group conflicts in the U.S. and
around the world.
Focus: How social structure reinforces prejudice.
View of prejudice: Prejudice is a manifestation of
relationships between groups.
Prediction: Prejudice is weaker when groups are integrated and have opportunity for friendships
(compared to being segregated; Landis, 1984).
Salma Mousa and ‘social trust’.
Randomly assigned Iraqi Christian soccer players to teams with no Muslims or made up of 25% Muslims.
Exploring whether intergroup relations can be changed
following new forms of contact that are:
1) Cooperative (training together)
2) Equal (no status differences on team)
3) Endorsed by community authorities (one’s church)
4) Has a shared goal (win the soccer league).
8- Intergroup Theories of Prejudice & Discrimination:
Social Identity Theory
Social Identity: The aspect of our self-concept that is derived from our group memberships.
People fundamentally want to:
1. Achieve and maintain a positive social identity.
2. Distinguish our own social groups from other social groups.
Which of your group memberships are most important for making up your social identity?
Tajfel on Social Identity Theory
-driven by their motivation to feel positively about themselves
-they will also be motivated to differentiate themselves from outsiders
(read full quotes maybe)
Distinguishing Your Social Group from Others
Ex: mcgill squirrels
Could even meaningless groups produce bias?
Minimal Group Paradigm:
Creating artificial & arbitrary ingroups/outgroups
* Minimal Groups Study (Tajfel et al., 1971)
o Divided into meaningless groups
* “Klee” people and “Kandinsky” people
o Distribute “money” to other participants
o Only given ID and group info
o Results: People favored own group
Self-Categorization and Identity Salience
Self-Categorization—- Social Identity
Self-Categorization is Situational
* Voting
o Focus: Being a Canadian citizen
* Class Lecture
o Focus: Being a student
Prof:
American in Montreal ‘Canadian’ in Denver
Threats to the ingroup make identity salient
* E.g., 9/11 → increase in importance of American identity
Self-Categorization Can Be Strategic
Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (Brewer, 1993)):
People want to strike a balance between their group identities and their
personal identities
‘Be a Pepper’ Advertising Campaign
Express your individualism by joining this group!
Also iPods, Burger King ad…
NOT DISTINCT ENOUGH
* Lack individuality
* Too constraining
OPTIMAL DISTINCTIVENESS
* Distinct, but not too distinct
TOO DISTINCT
* Stigma
* Not included
* Undesirable
deviant
People want to strike a balance between their group identities and their personal identities
Self-Esteem Hypothesis (Hogg & Abrams, 1990)
Self-esteem is intrinsically linked to group identity
Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRGing):
Celebrating ingroup’s success as your own, but derogation following failure.
* Students more likely to wear college apparel
after a football win than football loss (Cialdini, 1976)
* After a tough loss: They blew our chance to
win a championship!
Derogating outgroups can increase self-esteem
Derogate outgroup=
Increased relative standing
for ingroup= More positive
social identity= Increased self esteem.
Lowered self-esteem increases the tendency to
discriminate against outgroups
* Threats to self-esteem increase outgroup derogation
* People with chronically lower self-esteem are more
likely to derogate outgroups
9- Intergroup Theories of Prejudice & Discrimination: Relative Deprivation Theory
Option 1: Make $40,000 while your co-worker makes $60,000.
OR
Option 2: Make $39,000 while your co-worker makes $20,000.
Relative Deprivation: Belief that one is getting less than they deserve relative to:
o Other people or groups
o Some other standard (e.g., the past, expectations)
We are more likely to compare ourselves against people who are:
* Similar
* Relevant
* Proximal
How relative deprivation arises:
Perceive discrepancy between desired outcome and actual outcome.
Belief that discrepancy is undeserved.
Ex: monkey video
What makes people believe a discrepancy is
undeserved?
A perceived lack of..
Distributive Justice: Rewards & costs are justly allocated (e.g., equal work = equal pay)
Procedural Justice: Fairness of procedures for distributing rewards & costs (e.g., meritocracy)
The ‘Occupy’ Movement & Distributive Justice
The rich avoid paying taxes
The rich use their money to
purchase political influence
Consequences of relative deprivation
Emotions: Discontent, frustration, resentment
Hostility toward perceived source of deprivation
Relative Deprivation & Anti-Immigrant Prejudice
* 7,000+ European survey respondents over 15 years
* Measure personal and group relative deprivation ( “How has immigration impacted…”
o Personal: You vs. other British people like you?
o Group: British people like you vs. West Indians living in Britain?
Main Point: Group
deprivation is relevant for
prejudice, personal deprivation is not
Example:
* Most people don’t think that undocumented immigrants have personally taken one of their jobs (personal deprivation).
* However, the common concern is that undocumented immigrants are stealing jobs away from Americans like them as a group (group deprivation)
* Aside: Empirical evidence suggests undocumented immigrants don’t take away
jobs from Americans as a group
o Demonstrates the power of PERCEPTION over objective reality
Relative Deprivation & Intergroup Behavior
“According to a recent report, in 2018, White homebuyers received roughly $386.4 billion in mortgage loans from banks, while Latino homebuyers only received around $12.6 billion in
mortgage loans overall”).
Equality-Enhancing Condition:
Several banks propose increasing the total amount of mortgage loans to Latino homebuyers by $7.3 billion and not changing the total amount of mortgage loan funding to White homebuyers.
Status Quo Condition:
Several banks propose not changing mortgage loan funding over the next year.
Results:
Equality-enhancing policies were rated as more harmful among White participants.
Other example:
Random assignment to one of two teams: Eagles vs. Rattlers (everyone actually a Rattler). Rattlers received more bonuses (126) than had Eagles (79) in previous weeks.
Win-Win Policy Condition
50 more bonuses to Eagles, 5 more bonuses to Rattlers.
Lose-Lose Policy Condition
50 fewer bonuses to Eagles, 5 fewer bonuses to Rattlers.
Among Rattler participants, Win-Win policy was seen as more harmful than the Lose-Lose policy. In other words, people preferred increasing intergroup inequality (but getting fewer rewards for their own group) than decreasing intergroup inequality (but getting more rewards for their own group).
Prioritizing relative differences across groups was not consistently related to things like:
Explicit racial preferences (e.g., preferences for White over Latino people)
Social Dominance Orientation (i.e., preference for hierarchy – more on this soon!)
Political orientation (i.e., conservatives versus liberals)
10- Intergroup Theories of Prejudice & Discrimination: Realistic Conflict Theory
Realistic Conflict Theory: Intergroup prejudice & discrimination arises from conflicting goals &
competition over limited resources
Sherif’s (1961) Robbers Cave Study
Three stages of the experiment:
Stage 1: Experimental Ingroup Formation
Stage 2: Friction Between Groups
Stage 3: Integration Between Groups
According to Realistic Conflict Theory, intergroup prejudice is amplified when:
The relationship between groups is perceived as “zero-sum” (think of the tug-of-war in Eagles vs. Rattlers).
There is objective resource scarcity.
There is perceived resource scarcity.
More prejudice when bigger economic recession (objective scarcity)
Undocumented immigrants
& stealing jobs… Believing there are only a “fixed” pie of jobs
11- Review of Intergroup Relations Theories
Social Identity Theory: Prejudice from mere ingroup/outgroup
Relative Deprivation: Prejudice from victimized ingroup
Realistic Conflict: Prejudice from competition
