Chapter 6

Question 1

Values are

Answer 1

the enduring beliefs people hold concerning the goals they aspire to achieve in life and the types of outcomes they should try to avoid

Question 2

Rokeach (1972) proposed the value difference hypothesis, which holds that

Answer 2

prejudice is, in part, based on the perception that an outgroup’s value system differs from one’s own.

Question 3

Three social ideologies that have been studied in relation to prejudice are

Answer 3

authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and political orientation.

Question 4

Despite its early popularity, interest in the authoritarian personality began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s. There were two main reasons for this change

Answer 4

The first was a growing disenchantment among psychologists with psychoanalytic theory, which was the basis for Adorno and colleagues’ (1950) theory, and a simultaneous growth in interest in the cognitive underpinnings of prejudice (Duckitt, 2010). Second, although Adorno and colleagues conceptualized the authoritarian personality as a characteristic of the political far right, their critics pointed out that some people on the far left also exhibited uncritical acceptance of statements made by authority figures and aggression toward people who do not share their beliefs (Stone & Smith, 1993).

Question 5

RWA chart pg 255

Answer 5

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Question 6

People high in RWA view prejudice against groups condemned by authority figures as legitimate, but do not necessarily

Answer 6

find other forms of prejudice to be acceptable

Question 7

views of religious and political authority figures

Answer 7

Some religious and political authority figures condemn lesbians and gay men for violating traditional values. However, most religious and political authority figures do not condemn African Americans; instead, they actively oppose racial prejudice. Because people high in RWA also tend to hold traditional religious beliefs (McCleary et al., 2011), they may be especially responsive to the directions religious authorities set

Question 8

Thus, SDO is related to social power in two ways:

Answer 8

People high in SDO are attracted to high-power professions and socialization into the profession increases SDO.

Question 9

in addition, SDO measured at one point in time predicts prejudice three to five years later, suggesting that

Answer 9

SDO may be a causal factor in prejudice rather than simply being correlated with it

Question 10

An important aspect of social dominance theory is the concept of legitimizing myths,

Answer 10

sets of attitudes and beliefs that people high in SDO can use to justify their dominant position in society

Question 11

amy cuddys stereotype content model thing

Answer 11

Amy Cuddy and colleagues (2007) developed a model of the link between stereotypic beliefs and emotions based on Susan Fiske’s stereotype content model of the nature of stereotypes (Fiske et al., 2002; Fiske, 2018).

Question 12

Values are

Answer 12

beliefs people hold concerning the relative importance of the goals they aspire to achieve in life and the types of outcomes they should try to avoid. Two value orientations have been related to prejudice. Individualism emphasizes the importance of self-reliance, and egalitarianism emphasizes the importance of all people being treated equally and fairly. The link between individualism and prejudice is group stereotypes: Groups that are stereotyped as behaving in ways that violate the principles of individualism are viewed negatively. In contrast, egalitarianism appears to be negatively correlated with all forms of prejudice. Egalitarianism may have its effects by suppressing stereotype activation.

Question 13

Prejudice is also related to the perception that outgroups’ value systems differ from one’s own: Because values guide judgments of what is good or bad, holding different values implies a lack of goodness in the outgroups. People generally believe that members of outgroups hold values that

Answer 13

differ from their own and these perceptions are often related to prejudice. Terror management theory holds that awareness of one’s mortality increases adherence to ingroup cultural values; people who are aware of their mortality express prejudice against groups they see as challenging those views as a way of deflecting that challenge. The attribution-value model holds that groups that are seen as violating values are disliked because they are seen as choosing to violate those values, and so are responsible for their negative (that is, value-violating) behavior. In general, people who are seen as responsible for their negative behaviors and outcomes are liked less than people whose behaviors and outcomes are seen as being due to factors they cannot control.

Question 14

To understand the relationship between religiosity and prejudice, it is important to consider the difference between proscribed and permitted prejudices:

Answer 14

Religions proscribe (that is, forbid) some forms of prejudice, such as racism, but may permit prejudice against people, such as lesbians and gay men, who are perceived to violate the religion’s values. Religious involvement and intrinsic religious orientation, which views faith as an end in itself, have almost no correlation with racial prejudice (a proscribed prejudice) but have positive correlations with anti-gay prejudice (a permitted prejudice). Extrinsic orientation, which views religion as a means for achieving other goals, has a small positive correlation with racial prejudice but no correlation with anti-gay prejudice. Religious fundamentalism is positively correlated with anti-gay prejudice but uncorrelated with racial prejudice.

Question 15

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) represents a tendency to unquestioningly follow the lead of authorities and to uphold traditional norms and values. People high in RWA are prejudiced against

Answer 15

a wide variety of groups, especially groups that are perceived to violate traditional values and groups that authority figures condemn. A number of psychological characteristics may predispose people high in RWA to prejudice, including mental inflexibility, a lack of interest in experiencing new things, a perception of the world as a dangerous place, and a tendency to organize their worldview in terms of ingroups and outgroups.

Question 16

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a belief system that leads people to want their ingroup to dominate in society and be superior to outgroups. It is composed of group-based dominance, the belief that one’s ingroup should dominate in society, and opposition to equality, the belief that societies should be structured so that one group dominates others. Generally, members of groups that hold more power in a society exhibit higher levels of SDO. People high in SDO are prejudiced against a variety of groups, especially those that challenge social inequality. Psychological characteristics that might predispose people high in SDO to be prejudiced include seeing the world in competitive terms, belief that other groups’ successes necessarily come at their ingroup’s expense, and low empathy. People high in SDO justify their prejudices with

Answer 16

legitimizing myths—belief systems, such as group stereotypes that portray outgroups as inferior to the ingroup. Although SDO may appear to be similar to RWA, the two concepts differ in a number of ways.

Question 17

Endorsement of a conservative political orientation is positively correlated with prejudice, perhaps because conservatism is correlated with SDO: With SDO controlled, the conservatism–prejudice correlation is greatly reduced. From the SDO perspective, conservative beliefs may constitute one form of legitimizing myths that people high in SDO can use to justify their prejudice. A second explanation for the relationship lies in the attribution-value model of prejudice. Compared to liberals, conservatives are more likely to see people as being responsible for negative outcomes they experience, such as poverty and unemployment, and so are more likely to attribute the outcome to a factor under group members’ control. In contrast, liberals are more likely to

Answer 17

attribute the outcome to factors beyond individuals’ control. Thus, conservatives may be likely to be prejudiced because they are more likely to perceive others as violating an important social value and dislike them for it. However, the correlation between conservatism and prejudice does not mean that liberals are unprejudiced: Both liberals and conservatives express negative views of groups that they perceive as not sharing their values.

Question 18

Emotions are linked to stereotypes through two general characteristics of stereotypes—

Answer 18

the degree to which a group is seen as warm and friendly versus cold and unfriendly and the degree to which a group is seen as competent versus incompetent. Perceptions of warmth lead to positive emotions whereas perceptions of coldness lead to negative emotions. However, people differ in the extent to which they experience emotions, so that a given stereotype may have stronger emotional and behavioral effects on some people than on others.

Question 19

intergroup anxiety is the feeling of discomfort many people experience when interacting with members of other groups; the anxiety derives from the expectation that intergroup interactions will have unpleasant outcomes. People with high levels of intergroup anxiety tend to be prejudiced against the groups that arouse their anxiety. A particular strength of the intergroup anxiety concept is that it encompasses minority group members’ attitudes toward the majority group as well as majority group members’ attitudes toward minority groups. The relationship between intergroup anxiety and prejudice is self-reinforcing:

Answer 19

The anxiety motivates avoidance of outgroup members, but avoidance of outgroup members lessens the likelihood of having the positive intergroup contacts that can undermine negative expectations and stereotypes.

Question 20

Empathy is the ability to feel the emotions that others experience; this ability arises from being able to see the world from the other person’s point of view. People who are high on empathy are low on prejudice, and experimentally manipulating empathy can reduce prejudice. Empathy reduces prejudice because

Answer 20

vicariously sharing other groups’ experiences by seeing the world from their point of view leads people to see members of that group as similar to themselves. This psychological identification of self and other then leads the perceivers to ascribe their own (almost always positive) self-evaluations to the other person and to that person’s group.