Chapter 13 - Prejudice - Causes, Consequences and Cures

Question 1

Prejudice

Answer 1

A hostile or negative attitude
toward people in a distinguishable
group based solely on their
membership in that group; it
contains cognitive, emotional,
and behavioral components

Question 2

Summarize the three components of prejudice.

Answer 2

Cognitive component - stereotypes
Affective component - emotions
Behavioural component - discrimination

Question 3

Stereotype

Answer 3

A generalization about a group of
people in which certain traits are
assigned to virtually all members
of the group, regardless of actual
variation among the members

Question 4

Discrimination

Answer 4

Unjustified negative or harmful
action toward a member of a group
solely because of his or her membership
in that group

Question 5

bogus pipeline.

Answer 5

A ‘machine’ which people believed would reveal their true attitude if they lied - a way of detecting racial prejudice

Question 6

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Answer 6

A test that measures the speed with which people can pair a target face (eg.black or white, asian or white) with positive or negative stimuli (eg. the words honest or evil) reflecting unconscious (implicit) prejudices

Question 7

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

.

Answer 7

An expectation of one’s own
or another person’s behavior
that comes true because of the
tendency of the person holding it
to act in ways that bring it about

Question 8

Social Identity Threat

Answer 8

The threat elicited when people
perceive that others are evaluating
them as a member of their group
instead of as an individual

Question 9

Describe three aspects of social life that can cause prejudice.

Answer 9

• Pressures to Conform: Normative Rules
• Social Identity Theory: Us versus Them
• Realistic conflict theory

Question 10

Institutional Discrimination

Answer 10

Practices that discriminate, legally
or illegally, against a minority
group by virtue of its ethnicity,
gender, culture, age, sexual
orientation, or other target of
societal or company prejudice

Question 11

Normative Conformity

Answer 11

The tendency to go along with the
group in order to fulfill the group’s
expectations and gain acceptance

Question 12

Social Identity

Answer 12

The part of a person’s self-concept
that is based on his or her
identification with a nation,
religious or political group,
occupation, or other social
affiliation

Question 13

Ethnocentrism

Answer 13

The belief that one’s own ethnic
group, nation, or religion is
superior to all others

Question 14

In-Group Bias

Answer 14

The tendency to favor members
of one’s own group and give them
special preference over people who
belong to other groups; the group
can be temporary and trivial as
well as significant

Question 15

Out-Group Homogeneity

Answer 15

The perception that individuals in
the out-group are more similar to
each other (homogeneous) than
they really are, as well as more
similar than members of the
in-group are

Question 16

Blaming the Victim

Answer 16

The tendency to blame individuals
(make dispositional attributions)
for their victimization, typically
motivated by a desire to see the
world as a fair place

Question 17

Realistic Conflict Theory

Answer 17

The idea that limited resources
lead to conflict between groups
and result in increased prejudice
and discrimination

Question 18

Summarize the conditions that can reduce prejudice.

Answer 18

• The contact hypothesis

Question 19

Interdependence

Answer 19

The situation that exists when two
or more groups need to depend on
one another to accomplish a goal
that is important to each of them

Question 20

Jigsaw Classroom

Answer 20

A classroom setting designed to
reduce prejudice and raise the
self-esteem of children by placing
them in small, multiethnic groups
and making each child dependent
on the other children in the group
to learn the course material

Question 21

Ways of Identifying Suppressed Prejudices

Answer 21

Researchers have developed unobtrusive measures to identify suppressed prejudices, such as sending out identical résumés that vary only the applicant’s name or another identifying feature to see whether employers are biased against a particular
group; or using the “bogus pipeline,” in
which participants believe a machine is registering their real attitudes.

Question 22

Ways of Identifying Implicit Prejudices

Answer 22

A popular method of identifying unconscious (implicit) prejudices
is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a measure of the speed of people’s associations between a target group and negative attributes. However, controversy exists about what the IAT actually measures.

Question 23

Describe some ways that prejudice affects its targets.

Answer 23

• Self-fulfilling prophecy

- Social identity threat

Question 24

Describe three aspects of social life that can cause prejudice.

Answer 24

Causes of Prejudice Three aspects of social life that increase the likelihood of prejudice are conformity to social rules, the importance of social identities and “us/them” thinking, and realistic conflict over resources or power.

Question 25

Frijters& Mujcic(2013) Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You’re Black or White!

Answer 25

Trained testers who differed in ethnic appearance asked Brisbane bus drivers for a free ride on the basis that their bus pass was faulty (which it was). 1,552 trials.
IV –ethnic appearance
One group was defined as “black,’’ including Indigenous Australians, Africans, African Americans and Pacific Islanders; the second group was Indians; the third fair-skinned Asians; and the final group fair-skinned Caucasians.
DV –would bus driver allow a free ride?
RESULTS
Number of free rides allowed:
-White 72%
-“Black” (Indigenous Australians, Africans, African Americans and Pacific Islanders)36%
-Indian 51%
-Asian 73%
Wearing army uniform:
-White 97%
-Black 77%
Hypothetically speaking
-86% said they would give a free ride to the Black individual (actual number 36%)

Question 26

Booth, A., Leigh, A., & Varganova, E. (2010). Does racial and ethnic discrimination vary across minority groups? Evidence from a field experiment.

Answer 26

Submitted four applications to each advertised job, with names that denoted different ethnic background: Anglo-Saxon, Indigenous Australian, Italian, Chinese, Middle-Eastern. 4210 applications.
Call-back rates:
Anglo-Saxon name –35%
Indigenous name –26%
Chinese –21%
Italian –32%
Middle-Eastern –22%

Question 27

DOLLS TEST Clark & Clark, 1939 (societal racism)

Answer 27

Preference for white dolls over black in (black children)

Question 28

Bogus pipeline (Sigall and Page, 1971)

Answer 28

Only prejudiced result was for ‘negroes’ in bogus pipeline condition

Question 29

Hippel, C., Henry, J. D., Terrett, G., Mercuri, K., McAlear, K., & Rendell, P. G. (2017). Stereotype threat and social function in opioid substitution therapy patients.

Answer 29

• Stigmatization of people with a history of substance abuse -> stereotype threat
• Compared drug users on opioid substitution therapy with controls matched on gender and age.
• Measured mental health and social function, and stereotype threat (this variable only in opioid substitution group).
• Higher negative affect and schizotypyand poorer social functioning in opioid group correlated with feelings of stereotype threat, which contributed significant unique variance.
• Limitation that this is correlational and we don’t know the direction of causation.

Question 30

explain the link between prejudice and depression

Answer 30

Negative stereotypes (schemas) are activated in a source, who expresses prejudice towards the target, causing the target to experience depression

Question 31

Explanations for prejudice

Answer 31

• Personality approach
– Authoritarianism, Social Dominance
• Cognitive approach
– Accentuation effects, outgroup homogeneity, illusory correlation, cognitive misers
• Group approaches
– Realistic conflict (competition for resources), social identification (us and them), group conformity.

Question 32

Authoritarian personality Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950

Answer 32

“Berkeley” research program to explain what happened in Nazi Germany.
Psychodynamic model: repression of instinctive drives
1) Authoritarian parenting
Emphasis on conformity; Excessively strict
2) Simultaneous love and hate which is
repressed and displaced.
3) Authoritarian personality consists of:
Deference to authority; Intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty; Hostility to outgroup members

Question 33

What is the controversy over the IAT

Answer 33

IAT does not necessarily correlate with behaviour. Might be taking stereotypical knowledge rather than prejudice but on the other hand stereotyping is part of prejudice.

Question 34

STEREOTYPE THREAT -

Answer 34

anxiety that negative group stereotype applies to self. can impact on performance. depends on salience of category

Question 35

Describe the F-scale (in terms of parenting styles) - pre-fascist tendencies

Answer 35

• “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn” (authoritarian submission)
• “Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished” (aggression towards deviant groups)
• “The wild sex life of the Greeks and Romans was tame compared to some of the goings-on in this country, even in places where people might least expect it” (projection of sexual impulses)
• Correlates with prejudice
• Association with rigid thinking
• Evidence of parental relationships

Question 36

Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1993)

Answer 36

− human tendency to form group-based hierarchies
− ‘legitimizing myths’ provide moral justification for group inequality (e.g., black people or women as intellectually inferior)

Question 37

what is Social Dominance Orientation scale.

Answer 37

Measures orientation to group hierarchy vs equality.
- correlates with prejudice
− uncorrelated with right-wing authoritarianism
− BUT potential for ‘lethal combination’ of
social dominators and Right wing authoritarians

Question 38

What are the limitations to pesonality as an explanation?

Answer 38

• Methodological concerns
– Reliance on self- reports
• Role of situation, culture, and history

Question 39

What are the effects of categorisation?

Answer 39

• Accentuation effects
– Exaggerate similarities within and differences between groups on distinguishing dimension
• Outgroup homogeneity effect
– Similarities within groups exaggerated when viewing outgroup.
• Illusory correlation:
– Less frequent behaviours in minority group stand out. This leads to illusion they happen more in that group.
– For example, if members of the majority group and members of a minority group are both rude on 10% of occasions, perceivers will judge the minority group as more often rude than the majority group (because the minority stand out more).

Question 40

Devine’s (1989) Automatic and controlled components of prejudice model:

Answer 40

– Dissociation between automatic and controlled components of prejudice. Once stereotype is activated automatically, stereotypic response is not inevitable because people may control it, but they need time and motivation to do so.

Question 41

Summer Camp Studies
Sherif (1966) Theory of intergroup conflict.
Sherif and Sherif, 1953; Sherif et al., 1955, 1961.

Answer 41

• 12 year old boys
• Stage 1: Group formation: divide into groups
• Stage 2: Intergroup conflict: competition
• Stage 3: Conflict reduction: superordinate goals

Question 42

How does social identity theory relate to prejudice?

Answer 42

– The important point is that minimum group paradigm participants choose maximum difference rather than maximum ingroup profit.
– The insight that comes from this is that people want their own group to seem better than other groups, in a positive way. Positive differentiation.
– People who identify more strongly show more ingroup bias.
– Is it ingroup love or outgroup hate? (Brewer, 1999)
• Bias is towards preference for ingroup rather than damage to outgroup.
• But how does this feel if you are an “outgroup” member??? It may not seem so benign!

Question 43

Reducing prejudice how?

Answer 43

• Contact hypothesis

* Categorisation approaches

Question 44

Contact hypothesis:

Answer 44

Allport (1954) proposed that contact can be beneficial, but only under particular circumstances:
– Equal status
– Common goals
– Cooperation
– Institutional support

Question 45

what is positive negative assymetry i contact hypothesis

Answer 45

• There is evidence for more impact of negative contact (increasing prejudice) than for positive contact (decreasing prejudice) (Barlow et al, 2012)
• Need to be very careful that contact situations do not backfire.

Question 46

Do effects of contact generalise?

Answer 46

• Wilder (1984): effect of typicality:
– pleasant contact with typical (representative) group member led to more positive evaluation of group than if interacted with atypical member.
• More generally, there is evidence for “hedging off the outlier” where people’s stereotypes don’t change if they meet someone they consider atypical of a group.
– Say the stereotype is accountants are scroogy, and someone meets a generous accountant, they think this person is an exception to the rule.

Question 47

Categorisation approaches in contact

Answer 47

• Decategorisation: Focus on personalised contact, so group boundaries are not salient.
• Recategorisation (Common Ingroup Identity): Focus on a superordinate category (e.g., “We’re both female”, instead of “She’s Indian and I’m Australian”).
– This may not help as people treasure their identifications. So…
• Dual categorisation – try to make both subgroup and superordinate group identity simultaneously salient.

Question 48

Personality accounts for prejudice include

Answer 48

authoritarian personality, right wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation

Question 49

Cognitive accounts focus on

Answer 49

effects of categorization and automatic and controlled processes.

Question 50

Group accounts look at

Answer 50

conflict between groups and effects of social identification.