Prejudice 1

Question 1

Prejudice:

Answer 1

• Prejudice - “unfavourable attitude towards a social group and its members” (Hogg and Vaughn, 2018)
  
  • From “prejudgement”
  • Prejudice has traditionally been viewed as consisting of three components:
  • Cognitive - beliefs and stereotypes about a social group
  • Affective - strong, usually negative feelings about a social group and the qualities it is believed to possess.
  • Conative - intentions to behave in a certain way towards the social group - not behaviour itself.

Question 2

Prejudice 2:

Answer 2

· Discrimination is not included, because prejudice is not always believed to translate into discriminatory actions (e.g., laws can prevent discrimination)
· But not all researchers adopt this tripartite view of prejudice.
- Other models of prejudice include the behavioural component (discriminatory actions toward a social group) as part of prejudice.

Question 3

Prejudice 3:

Answer 3

· Others view stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination - not interchangeable
· Stereotypes - the cognitive component of attitudes towards a social group, beliefs about what a particular group is like
· Prejudice is affective (feeling)
· Discrimination is behavioural (action) component of an attitude

Question 4

Prejudice 4:

Answer 4

· Prejudice as an unfavourable and devaluing orientation toward members of a group because of their belonging to the group.
· Prejudice seen as core to intergroup inequalities, intergroup conflict and intergroup violence, exploitation, e.g., dehumanisation and genocide.

Question 5

Targets of prejudice:

Answer 5

· Class
· Race
· Ethnicity
· Gender
· Religion
· Sexual orientation

Question 6

Types of prejudice - explicit attitudes:

Answer 6

· Explicit attitudes - attitudes that are controllable, overt, reflective and monitorable. Measured e.g., through self-report measures of attitudes toward a social group.
· Limitation - social desirability concerns can lead people to conceal their real attitudes.
· Behavioural manifestations - hate crimes, hate speech, discriminatory policies and laws, racial profiling, police brutality.

Question 7

Types of prejudice - implicit attitudes:

Answer 7

· Implicit attitudes - attitudes that are reflexive, outside conscious awareness, uncontrollable and subtle. They are inferred based on behavioural task performance.
· Behavioural manifestations - implicit hiring discrimination, implicit glass ceiling at work, implicit housing discrimination.

Question 8

Implicit measures:

Answer 8

· Implicit association tests (IAT):
- E.g., participants rapidly categorize a series of African American vs European American faces paired with either positive words (e.g. good) or negative words (e.g. bad). If the African American + bad task is completed faster and with fewer errors than the African American + good task, this indicates more negative implicit attitudes toward African Americans.

Question 9

Implicit measures 2:

Answer 9

· Racism is measured using both explicit and implicit measures.
· Prejudice can be held at an implicit but not explicit level.
· Aversive racists do not hold racist beliefs at the explicit level but hold racist beliefs at the implicit level.
- Aversive racists support principles of racial equality, sympathize with victims of racism, and view themselves as non-prejudiced. But they also hold negative feelings and beliefs about Blacks often at an unconscious level, acquired through socialization and socio-cultural influences.

Question 10

Explanations of prejudice:

Answer 10

· Individual differences:
- Authoritarian personality and right-wing authoritariansim
- Social dominance orientation
· Intergroup theories:
- Realistic group conflict theory
- Intergroup threats
- Social identity theory

Question 11

The authoritarian personality:

Answer 11

· Historical context - fascism and right-wing ideologies in ww2 - how can we explain prejudice and discrimination?
· Psychoanalytic approach - the authoritarian personality (1950) - Theodor Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford

Question 12

The authoritarian personality 2:

Answer 12

· Autocratic and punitive parenting practices lead to the development of an authoritarian personality, a syndrome characterized by:
- Ethnocentrism
- Negative attitudes toward Jewish and African American people and ethnic minorities generally
- Negative attitudes toward democracy
- Cynical and pessimistic view of human nature
- Conservative economic and political attitudes

Question 13

The authoritarian personality - findings:

Answer 13

· People who are prejudiced against one ethnic minority tend to be prejudiced toward other minorities (e.g. Blacks, Jews, Catholics)
· Authoritarians hold conservative political-economic views and exhibit high levels of generalized ethnocentrism.

Question 14

The authoritarian personality - limitations:

Answer 14

· Situational and sociocultural factors have a powerful effect on ethnocentrism.
· Pettigrew (1958): although White US Northerners are less racist than White US Southerners and White South Africans, they have similar authoritarianism scores. A culture of prejudice is therefore sufficient for discrimination to occur.
· Ethnocentrism can arise quicker than child rearing practices have time to change: e.g. extreme anti-semitism arose quickly in Germany between the two wars.

Question 15

Right wing authoritarianism:

Answer 15

· Research on authoritarianism was revived by Bob Altemeyer (1988): he devised the Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale to overcome previous methodological limitations. RWA measures three dimensions:
- Authoritarian submission - submission to society’s established authorities
- Conventionalism - adherence to social conventions adopted by existing authorities
- Punitiveness against deviants - support for aggression toward deviants

Question 16

Right wing authoritarianism 2:

Answer 16

· Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is an ideological orientation that varies from individual to individual. For those high in RWA:
- Social conventions are deemed moral
- Acquiring power and authority results from following social conventions
- Questioning power and authority is therefore immoral

Question 17

Right wing authoritarianism 3:

Answer 17

· RWA correlates with prejudice against gay people, immigrants, foreigners, blacks and jews
· Those who are politically conservative tend to score more highly on RWA.

Question 18

Overview of SDT:

Answer 18

· All human societies organize themselves socially along group-based hierarchies
- Dominant groups: they have disproportionate power and special privileges (e.g. housing, health, good employment)
- Subordinate groups: they have little political power or ease in their way of life (e.g. poor housing, poor health, unemployment etc).
- Although who is on top and who is at the bottom may change, group-based hierarchies re-emerge

Question 19

Overview of SDT 2:

Answer 19

· Prejudice, discrimination and intergroup conflict result from human societies’ tendency to be organized along social group-based hierarchies.
· How do dominant groups maintain their power over subordinate groups?
- System-wide level processes
- Person level processes
- Intergroup level processes

Question 20

System-wide level processing:

Answer 20

· There are counterbalancing forces in all societies that either push to enhance hierarchies or to attenuate them:
- Hierarchy enhancing and hierarchy attenuating social institutions
- Hierarchy enhancing and hierarchy attenuating legitimizing myths

Question 21

Social institutions:

Answer 21

· Hierarchy enhancing (HE) - allocate resources disproportionately to the advantage of the dominant groups and disadvantage of subordinate groups (sections of the criminal justice system, police, large corporations)
· Hierarchy attenuating (HA) - allocate resources to the advantage of subordinate groups and to the disadvantage of dominant groups but with a view to restore equality (human rights and civil rights groups and organizations)

Question 22

Legitimising myths:

Answer 22

· widely shared ideologies that organize and justify hierarchies (stereotypes, discourses, shared social representations etc).
- Hierarchy enhancing (HE) - e.g. ideas or discourse that help justify racism, sexism, sectarianism, classism
- Hierarchy attenuating (HA) - e.g. charter of universal human rights, feminist, socialist ideas

Question 23

Person level:

Answer 23

· Aggregated individual acts of discrimination help maintain group-based hierarchies
· Values, personality variables, political ideologies, temperaments, empathy, influence how discriminatory people are. SDT focuses on a particular individual difference variable:
· Social dominance orientation.

Question 24

Social dominance orientation (SDO):

Answer 24

· measure of a person’s orientation toward group-based hierarchies. High SDOs prefer group-based inequalities whereas low SDOs reject group-based inequalities.
· Example of an SDO scale:
- In setting priorities, we must consider all groups (reversed)
- We should not push for equality between groups
- Group equality should be our ideal” (reversed)
- Superior groups should dominate inferior groups

Question 25

Overview of SDT 3:

Answer 25

· High SDOs should be more supportive of Hierarchy enhancing legitimizing myths and policies.
· Low SDOs should be more supportive of hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing myths and policies.

Question 26

Overview of SDT 4:

Answer 26

· High SDO is associated with across many nations with: higher forms of prejudice toward outgroups (sexism, heterosexism, racism, nationalism) and hierarchy-enhancing policies.
· Low SDO is associated with greater tolerance, egalitarianism, and support for hierarchy-attenuating policies such as respect for human rights (e.g. Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006).

Question 27

Group status:

Answer 27

· across various samples and nations, members of salient dominant groups were found to have greater SDO than members of subordinate groups.

Question 28

Study with UCLA students:

Answer 28

· Classification of majors by independent sample:
· Hierarchy-enhancing:
- Serves - the socially powerful/wealthy
- Majors - business management, marketing, accounting, business economics
· Hierarchy-attenuating:
- Serves - subordinate social groups
- Majors - anthropology, Latin American studies, public health, sociology, special education, womens studies
· Results - HE majors were found to have higher anti-egalitarian beliefs (SDO and racism) than HA majors.

Question 29

Overview of SDT 5:

Answer 29

· Assortment of people into HE and HA social institutions and roles: members of dominant groups are disproportionately found in Hierarchy Enhancing roles:
- Hierarchy-Enhancing organizations (e.g. police forces) tend to be staffed by those high on anti-egalitarian beliefs whereas
- Hierarchy Attenuating organizations (e.g. civil liberties organizations) tend to be staffed by those with relatively democratic beliefs.
- Students pursuing degrees typically leading to Hierarchy Enhancing careers (e.g. business or law) hold relatively more anti-egalitarian views compared to those pursuing Hierarchy Attenuating careers (e.g. humanities and social sciences).

Question 30

Overview of SDT - why?:

Answer 30

· Self-selection
· Institutional discrimination in hiring
· Ideological socialisation on the job
· Differential feedback and attrition

Question 31

Ideological socialisation on the job:

Answer 31

· Gatto et al. (2009) found that a sample of police officers with one year training hold more anti-egalitarian attitudes than newly recruited police officers.

Question 32

Differential feedback and attrition:

Answer 32

· Leitner and Sedlacek (1976) found that campus police officers who are more racist tend to receive more positive performance evaluations from their supervisors.

Question 33

Overview of SDT - intergroup level - behavioural asymmetry:

Answer 33

· members of subordinate groups behave in ways that are less beneficial to self and ingroup compared to the behaviour of dominant groups in stable group-based hierarchies.

Question 34

Overview of SDT - behavioural asymmetry examples:

Answer 34

· Subordinates sometimes favor dominants over their own ingroups (outgroup favoritism):
- Clarke and Clarke (1947) doll experiments + see “A girl like me” documentary (2005)
· Self-debilitation - subordinates show higher levels of self-destructive behaviours than dominants do (e.g. internalization of negative ingroup stereotypes-low expectations of ingroup members, self-fulfilling prophecies)

Question 35

Implication:

Answer 35

· group-based hierarchies are maintained not only by powerful groups
· but also by the behaviour of the subordinate groups (although their agency is constrained).

Question 36

Origins of RCT:

Answer 36

· Intergroup conflicts are characterized by ethnocentrism: evaluative preference for all aspects of our own group (ingroup) relative to other groups (outgroups).
· Prior to the 1960s many perspectives on prejudice, discrimination and intergroup behaviour emphasized individual or interpersonal processes in the origins of ethnocentrism (e.g. authoritarian personality)

Question 37

Origins of the theory:

Answer 37

· Muzafer Sherif, a social psychologist: the origins of ethnocentrism lie in the nature of intergroup relations and not the properties of individuals.
· Ideas tested in a series of field experiments in 1949, 1953, 1954 at summer camps for young American boys.
· Most famous study is the 1954 Robbers Cave Experiment

Question 38

Robbers cave experiment:

Answer 38

· Muzafer Sherif and colleagues carefully selected 22 twelve-year old boys to participate in a summer camp. The boys were similar in many ways, did not know each other and thus had no history of conflict.
· Participants were randomly divided into two groups and brought separately into a state park known as Robbers Cave in Oklahoma.
· Phase 1: For various days the two groups were unaware of each other’s presence. Meanwhile they bonded through typical summer camp activities (making meals, canoeing, swimming etc).

Question 39

Robbers cave experiment 2:

Answer 39

· Both groups adopted different names: The Rattlers and the Eagles.
· After a week or so, the groups discovered the presence of one another. At this point some competitive and hostile emotions erupted between the two groups (embryonic ethnocentrism).

Question 40

Robbers cave experiment 3:

Answer 40

· Phase 2 - Organized competition between the two groups took place. They were fighting over tournament prizes that would be given only to the winning team (a mutually exclusive goal).
· During this phase, intergroup hostility grew even outside the competitions, e.g.:
- Name-calling (insults)
- Tearing down each other’s flags
- Secretly amassing weapons

Question 41

Robbers cave experiment 4:

Answer 41

· Phase 3 - the experimenters created superordinate goals for participants without them knowing: goals desired by both groups but which can only be achieved if the groups cooperate, e.g. collecting money together to get a movie they all wanted to watch, unblocking a faucet to secure water for the camp.
· Result - the cooperative activities led to gradual improvement of intergroup relations.

Question 42

Importance:

Answer 42

· The boys did not have authoritarian or dogmatic personalities
· The origins of intergroup conflict lie elsewhere

Question 43

Realistic conflict theory - core propositions:

Answer 43

· Developed by Sherif (1961): intergroup conflict results from fighting over desirable resources that are scarce and can only be obtained by one group (zero-sum) or they are perceived as such.

Question 44

RCT - core propositions:

Answer 44

· Goals which are mutually exclusive (e.g. acquiring a scarce resource) lead to realistic intergroup conflict and ethnocentrism (negative interdependence).
· Goals which require interdependence (cooperation) for their achievement encourage intergroup harmony and reduce conflict (positive interdependence).
- Prejudice is the result of conflicts of interests between groups.

Question 45

Threat perceptions:

Answer 45

· Threat perceptions play an important role in explaining prejudice toward outgroups.
· Various types of threats.

Question 46

Threat perceptions - intergroup threat theory:

Answer 46

Threat can arise because group members perceive themselves to be competing with the outgroup over scarce material resources or when they feel that their physical safety or power is endangered: realistic threats

Question 47

Threat perceptions - intergroup threat theory 2:

Answer 47

· Group members can also feel threatened if they perceive the outgroup to be a threat to their cultural values, religion, belief system, ideology, philosophy, morality or world: symbolic threat.
· Meta-analytic findings: (Riek et al., 2006): realistic and symbolic threats are associated with negative outgroup attitudes.

Question 48

Threat perceptions - Dovidio and Esses, 2001:

Answer 48

· immigrants can be seen as a threat regardless of their success in the host country:
- If unsuccessful, they are perceived as a threat to the country’s economic standing.
- If successful, they are viewed as competing with the host society with jobs and other resources.

Question 49

Threat perceptions 2:

Answer 49

· Threats need not be real, but need to be perceived as such.
- Politicians sometimes blame immigrants for any negative socioeconomic development, e.g. unemployment, deficits in the health system, problems in education: scapegoating of immigrants.
- This leads to increased prejudice toward immigrants.

Question 50

Threat perceptions 3:

Answer 50

· Media can have a big influence on perceptions of threat and immigrant attitudes.
- Brosius and Esser (1995) found a significant relationship between media presentations of immigrants in Germany in the 1990s and hate crimes one week later (see also Koopmans & Olzack, 2004).