Module 77: Prejudice and Discrimination Flashcards
Prejudice
An unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members - who are often people of a particular racial or ethnic group, gender, sexual orientation, or belied system.
Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negatively feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.
What are the factors involved in prejudice?
Negative Emotions: Holding emotions like hostility or fear
Stereotypes: Generalized beliefs about a group of people
Predisposition to Discrimination: Acting in negative and unjustifiable ways toward members of a group
What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination?
Prejudice is a negative belief, often supported by stereotypes. A belief that all elderly people are forgetful and that Mr. Kelly, whose age predates recorded time, must be forgetful because he is old, is a stereotype
Discrimination is negative behavior.
Choosing not to date a person because of their race, or not hiring a person because of their age is discrimination
Ethnocentrism
Assuming the superiority of one’s ethnic group
To believe that a person of another ethnicity is somehow inferior or threatening, and to feel dislike for that person, is to be prejudiced.
What is the difference between implicit and explicit prejudice?
The brain processes thoughts, memories, and attitudes on two different tracks - dual processing. Sometimes that processing is explicit - on the radar screen of our awareness.
More often, it is implicit - an unthinking knee-jerk response operating below the radar, leaving us unaware of how our attitudes are influencing our behavior.
Unconscious prejudices can cause discrimination even when people do not consciously intend to discriminate.
How might body language indicate prejudice?
Even people who consciously express little prejudice may give of telltale signals as their body responds selectively to an image of a person from another ethnic group.
Neuroscientists can detect signals of implicit prejudice in the viewer’s facial-muscle responses and in the activation of the emotion-processing amygdala.
Note:
Racial attitudes have changed over time, but subtle prejudice lingers.
People with darker skin tones experience greater criticism and accusations of immoral behavior.
in one study of white medical students and residents, i in 3 believed “black people’s skin” is thicker than white people’s since “which led them to make harmful treatment recommendations.
Although many people say they would feel upset with someone making racist or homophobic slurs, they respond indifferently when they actually hear prejudice-laden language.
Does race prime our perceptions?
In experiments by Keith Payne (2006), people viewed a white or black face immediately followed by a flashed gun or hand tool, which was then followed by a masking screen.
Priming people with flashed Black face rather than a White face also made them more likely to misperceive a flashed tool as a gun.
When the time provided to respond was increased, almost all participants were able to correctly identify the tool or gun.
The implications for law enforcement was significant
How has gender prejudice changed over time?
Overt gender prejudice has declined sharply. The one-third of Americans who in 1937 told Gallup pollster that they would vote for a qualified woman whom this party nominated for president soared to 95% in 2012. 65% of all people now say it is very important that women have the same rights as men.
How does sexual orientation prejudice persist?
Explicit anti-gay prejudice, though declining in Western countries, persists. When experimenters sent thousands of responses to employment ads, those whose resumes included “Treasurer, Progressive and Socialist Alliance” received more replies than did resumes that specified “Treasurer, Gay and Lesbian Alliance”
How does just world phenomenon lead to prejudice?
the just-world phenomenon reflects the common idea that good is rewarded and evil is punished. it is easy then to assume that those who succeed must be good and those who suffer must be bad.
This reasoning for example, might enable the rich to see both their own wealth and the poor’s misfortune as justly deserved.
When slavery existed in the United States, slaveholders perceived slaves as innately lazy, ignorant, and irresponsible - as having the very traits that justified enslaving them.
The “in group” and “out group”
“us” -people with whom we share a common identity…
For example, your athletic team, your ethnicity or regionality, or your sex.
“them” - those perceived as different or apart from our in-group…
For example, your rival high school, those kids over there, the other sex
Group Bias
Once we have identified “us” and “them”, an in group bias - a favoring of our own group - soon follows.
Outside the lab, discrimination is often triggered not by out-group hostility, but by un group networking and mutual support, such as hiring a friend’s child at the expense of the other candidates.
Negative Emotions and Prejudice
When facing death, fearing threats, or experiencing frustration, people cling more tightly to thier in group and their friends.
As fears of terrorism heighten patriotism, they also produce loathing and aggression towards “them” - those who threaten our world.
What is Scapegoating?
Scapegoat theory notes that when things go wrong, finding someone to blame can provide a target for our negative emotions.
For instance, following the 9/11 attacks, some outraged people lashed out at innocent Arab-Americans. More than a decade later, anti-Muslim animosities still flare.
