Lecture 6 - Prejudice

Question 1

What are the three components of prejudice?

Answer 1

1. Cognitive
   
   • beliefs about the attitude object (stereotype)
2. Affective
   
   • strong feelings (usually negative) about the group
3. Behavioural
   
   • treat people badly/deny people opportunities on
     the basis of their group (discrimination)
   • intentions to behave in negative ways toward the
     group and its members

Question 2

List the origins of Prejudice

10

Answer 2

Parenting
Histories of conflict
Societal norms
Transformative personal experience
Evolutionary forces
Symbolic threat
Practical threat
Desire to release frustration
Desire to legitimize dominance
Pseudo-science/eugenics

Question 3

Give explanation for parenting?

Answer 3

Authoritarian personality derived from strict parents. They grow up both hating and loving their parents, however they can’t show that hate towards parents thus displace anger on outgroup members.

Or

Parents pass down prejudice attitudes to their children

Question 4

Give explanation for societal norms?

Answer 4

Changes in societal norms changes prejudice attitudes. The normative environment persuades one’s attitude.

Question 5

Give explanation for histories of conflict?

Answer 5

Prejudice trickles down from conflict that happened some time ago.

Question 6

Give explanation for transformative personal experience?

Answer 6

Very quick changes in attitude due to experience.
Mean boss of a racial minority can be a transformative experience in how you view someone.

Negative experiences stick more than positive ones, even though each experience happens equally.

Question 7

Give explanation for evolutionary forces?

Answer 7

Certain parts of our psychology that are developed to protect the survival of our DNA, tribe, reproductive fitness, and if it makes a mistake it errs on the side of caution. SMOKE ALARM ANALOGY.

Our brain is hardwired to have innate suspicions about outsiders as a means of threat response

Question 8

Give explanation for symbolic threats

Answer 8

The ethics of outgroups don’t fit with your worldview

Question 9

Give explanation for practical threats

Answer 9

They see outsiders as threat to their jobs, resources.

This is in line with REALISTIC CONFLICT THEORY - Sheriff argued that intergroup aggression is caused by competition of scarce resources rather than feelings of frustration or personality factors.

REALISTIC CONFLICT THEORY: it is when there are mutually exclusive goals (i.e. only one group can win) that intergroup relations deteriorate.

Question 10

Give explanation for desire to release frustration

Answer 10

Frustration can come from economic hardships
(lynchings and price of cotton)
When things are good people don’t lash out but when things are bad people do lash out

Frustration-aggression theory
Berkowitz argued that aggression (both interpersonal and intergroup) is caused by feelings of frustration which can stem from (a) heat, (b) economic hardship, (c) overcrowding

Question 11

Give explanation for desire to legitimize dominance

Answer 11

Convenient to rationalise the status quo; that people behave in a certain way

Useful disguises

1) Individualism/Meritocracy (to hide inequity)
2) Equity
3) host-guest argument: you expect outsiders to act a certain way (like a guest)
4) cultural defense arguments: principal of apartheid (keep racial groups apart to celebrate own cultures)

Question 12

Give explanation for peusdo-science/eugenics

Answer 12

The science WAS sexist and racist. There was no study of prejudice at the time.

Question 13

Warmth = Competitiveness (Threat)
Competence = Status

Answer 13

Paternalistic stereotype = high warmth/low competence, not competitive, low status

Admiration stereotype = high warmth/high competence,
not competitive, high status

Envious stereotype = low warmth/high competence,
competitive, high status

Contemptuous stereotype = low warmth/low competence, not competitive, low status. (these people are looked down upon)

Question 14

What is hostile sexisim?

feminazis

Answer 14

An antagonistic attitude toward women, who are often viewed as TRYING TO CONTROL MEN through feminist ideology.

This is hostile sexisim is directed mostly toward who stray from traditional paths - career women, feminists, athletes, lesbians.

Question 15

What is benevolent sexisim?

Answer 15

An attitude that puts women on a pedestal, but reinforce their subordination

Question 16

What is the Think Manager - Think Male

Answer 16

female leaders tend to receive less favourable evaluations compared with their male counterparts, even for identical behaviour, & many male managers remain sceptical of women’s leadership ability

Question 17

What is Think Crisis - Think Female?

Answer 17

Women are preferentially selected when company is in crisis?

Question 18

What did Goff et al., (2008) do?

Setting up chairs

Answer 18

They had White Ps interact with two white partners or two black partners on the topic of “love and relationships” or “racial profiling”

Ps were asked to set up chairs in the room prior to interaction

Participants set the chairs farther apart when interacting with Black partners rather than White partners and particularly when the topic was racial profiling.

Doesn’t correlate with prejudice. Non-prejudice do this just as much as prejudice people, it is correlated with awareness of White’s being negatively stereotyped as racists (so it is almost like an anxiety)

Question 19

What did Weitz (1972) do?
Vocal warmth and eagerness to work with minority
This relates to authenticity

Answer 19

got White Ps to eave a brief voice message for another student they were to meet and rate how much they wanted to work with that person. They could tell if the other student was Black or White based on a photo.

Then different set of Ps listened to that message and rated it for vocal warmth (how friendly they seemed). They found that the more you (White person) said you wanted to work with Black person, the LESS warm their voice sounded.

The more you rated your eagerness to work with a racial minority the less warm your voice sounded.

Question 20

What are forms of prejudice? (7)

Answer 20

1) Deliberate direct comments (Being Black, you asked for it)
2) Jokes and taunts (Leave ur shoelaces so u can hang urself)
3) Threats (If u little Black bastards move I’ll shoot youse)
4) Ignoring (The only reason I didn’t see u cos u weren’t standing in the light)
5) Segregation and avoidance (keep away from them - keep away from us)
6) Assault (They always get a bashing from the police)
7) Discrimination

Question 21

What did Sigall and Page (1971) do?
People don’t say what they feel
(Bogus Pipeline)

Answer 21

Got White Americans to rate the extent to which certain traits were characteristic of Whites and the extent to which certain traits were characteristic of Blacks

They responded either

(a) in a normal questionnaire format, or
(b) While hooked up to what they believed was a lie detector test (bogus pipeline)

They found that in a normal questionnaire u get reverse prejudice (so Blacks were rated as more honest, less lazy, less stupid, less happy-go-lucky, than Whites).

When u get the bogus pipeline then the effect reversed. Blacks were rated as less honest, more lazy, more stupid, and more happy-go-lucky, than Whites.

Question 22

What did Vanman et al., (1997)?

Spontaneous non-verbal behaviour (facial muscle tell)

Answer 22

Examined prejudice by looking at the extent to which people, unconsciously, use the frown muscles in their face and smile muscles in their face.

White volunteers viewed slides of White and Black people with whom they had to imagine interacting.

Direct self-report measures showed pro-Black bias. Reverse discrimination

But indirect measure (facial measure), more frown muscles for the Black photos and more smile muscles for the White photos.

Question 23

Covert expression of prejudice?

Answer 23

1) Modern (or symbolic) prejudice
It comes out in terms of POLICY ATTITUDES
Sears (1988), negative feelings about Blacks (based on early learned fears and stereotypes) blend with moral values embodied in the Protestant ethic to justify some anti-Black attitudes and therefore legitimize their expression.

2) Ambivalent prejudice (context cues racism)
According to Katz et al. (1986), White people harbour both pro-Black and anti-Black sentiment. Two attitudes (positive and negative) about racial minorities. And the racism comes out is when the situation cues the negative set of attitudes.

Linville & Jones (1980) asked White participants to evaluate a law school application containing incidental information about the applicant’s race.

When the application credentials were positive, the
Black applicant was evaluated more favourably than the White applicant. When the application credentials were weak, the Black applicant was evaluated more negatively.

3) Aversive prejudice
People are desperate to come across as cool about race. They don’t want to be thought of as racist, even if there are lingering negative attitudes in the back of their mind. PREJUDICE IS GONNA COME OUT WHEN U CAN JUSTIFY UR BEHAVIOUR AS NON-PREJUDICE

Gaertner & Dovidio (1977) had White participants fill out a questionnaire either alone or with two other people. While completing the questionnaire, participants heard what sounded like a person have an accident.

When alone, Ps were equally likely to help White and Black people. But when they were with two other people, more Ps tended to help Whites than Blacks

Question 24

What did Crosby et al. (1980) find?

face-to-face contact and bias

Answer 24

They reviewed naturalistic studies of helping behaviour in inter-ethnic settings.

50% showed more help was given to someone of same ethnicity vs. outgroup (whether Black or White).

For White participants effects moderated by context …
If there was face-to-face contact, 33% showed bias
If there was no face-to-face contact, 75% showed bias.

Question 25

What is the evidence for aversive racsim?

The Candidate study

Answer 25

When people are described in negative ways, people are more hostile to members of minority groups than members of ingroup.

Study: give one negative characteristic to White and Black candidate (cheats on wife) which is among a list of positive characteristics.

Flawed Black candidate is RATED MORE NEGATIVELY than a flawed White candidate. They use the ‘cheat on his wife’ to justify why they rate Black guy more negatively.