Chapter 5 Flashcards
The concept of implicit prejudice refers to intergroup stereotypes and attitudes that are activated automatically in a person’s memory so that
the person responds without thinking about the meaning of the response.
In contrast, explicit prejudice refers to
intergroup stereotypes and attitudes that people intentionally retrieve from memory, such as when asked for their opinion on an issue. Because of their intentional nature, explicit prejudices reflect beliefs that people are willing to personally endorse and lead to deliberate, intentional behavior
This activation process is illustrated by the Affect Misattribution Procedure
In the AMP, people see pictures of faces of people from their ingroup and their outgroup, after which they rate the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a neutral stimulus, such as a Chinese character. For people who have an implicit prejudice against the outgroup, exposure to a picture of the member of that group activates the prejudice. The negative emotions associated with the prejudice are expressed behaviorally in ratings of the neutral stimulus: People with higher levels of implicit prejudice rate the neutral stimulus as unpleasant more frequently after seeing an outgroup face than after seeing an ingroup face.
The belief system of modern-symbolic prejudice is characterized by
five themes that justify opposition to social policies designed to promote intergroup equality while still endorsing equality as an abstract principle (Sears & Henry, 2005):
A second meaning of equality is equality of outcome
the belief that government should ensure that everyone, regardless of their personal resources, should receive an equal, or at least a reasonable, share of society’s resources.
The theory of aversive prejudice makes a number of rather specific predictions about behavior. The predicted behaviors include
avoidance of intergroup contact, overly positive intergroup behavior when situational norms call for polite behavior, a pro-ingroup bias in ambiguous situations, and discrimination when the behavior can be justified as unprejudiced.
Another motive for avoidance and anxiety might be concern that members of one’s ingroup will think less of them for associating with a member of a negatively viewed group. For example,
Michelle Hebl and Laura Mannix (2003) found that a man sitting next to an overweight woman was rated more negatively than a man seated next to an average-weight woman.
Unprejudiced people also exhibit a broad scope of moral inclusion, seeing everyone as
members of a single group for whose welfare they have a moral responsibility (McFarland, 2017) and, in terms of personality, tend to be open to having new experiences
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Although overt expressions of prejudice have declined in the United States since the mid-1940s, research indicates that prejudice and discrimination continue to exist. Two factors seem to have contributed to this apparent contradiction.
On the one hand, a social norm has developed that condemns racial prejudice. On the other hand, White Americans, at least, have grown up in a culture that still has remnants of prejudice left over from America’s history of racism and have unconsciously absorbed some of that prejudice. As a result, many White Americans experience a conflict between a genuine belief in equality as a desirable social goal and feelings, often difficult to articulate, of dislike for and discomfort around members of minority groups. This conflict provides the basis for theories of contemporary prejudice.
Implicit prejudice refers to intergroup attitudes that are activated automatically in a person’s memory so that the person responds without thinking about the meaning of the response. In contrast, explicit prejudice refers to
intergroup stereotypes and attitudes that people intentionally retrieve from memory. Implicit prejudices develop from children’s immersion in a culture permeated with messages that portray outgroups in stereotypic and often negative ways; these prejudices begin to form at an early age and endure even as levels of explicit prejudice decline from childhood to adulthood. Although implicit prejudices are not consciously activated, they do influence a variety of behaviors.
Old-fashioned prejudice is characterized by lack of acceptance of group equality, endorsement of traditional racist beliefs such as the innate superiority of White people, and strong negative emotions toward members of minority groups. Modern-symbolic prejudice is characterized by
high acceptance of equality of opportunity for minority groups but rejection of equality of outcome. People with this kind of prejudice reject most traditional racist beliefs but retain some, such as negative stereotypes. They strongly endorse the traditional beliefs of their culture, which are interpreted in terms of race, deny that minority groups still experience discrimination, believe that minority groups demand and receive special favors, and believe that White people are treated unfairly. They also tend to have mild to moderate negative emotional responses to members of minority groups and tend to oppose social policies that benefit minority groups and show anti-minority bias if the behavior can be justified as unprejudiced.
Aversive prejudice is characterized by acceptance of both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Although people with aversive prejudice see themselves as unprejudiced, they tend to have
mildly negative emotional responses toward members of minority groups and experience anxiety during intergroup contact and so try to avoid intergroup contact. They often show a pro-minority bias to avoid appearing prejudiced, a pro-ingroup bias in ambiguous situations, and an anti-minority bias if it can be justified as unprejudiced.
Ambivalent prejudice is also characterized by acceptance of both aspects of equality, but people with ambivalent prejudice also experience conflict between
their beliefs in individualism and egalitarianism or between positive and negative stereotypes of minority groups. They tend to experience both positive and negative emotional responses to minority groups and to feel discomfort when they become aware of the inconsistency. To reduce the discomfort, they exhibit response amplification, overdoing both positive and negative.
Benevolent prejudice is superficially positive, but it has an effect similar to that of
hostile prejudice of putting outgroups in a subordinate position and restricting the social roles outgroup members can hold.
