prejudice and discrimination Flashcards
prejudice and discrimination in Britain
- large-scale national survey measuring prejudice and discrimination experienced by people with protected characteristics
- protected characteristics:
–> characteristics that are protected under the Equality Act (i.e. discrimination on the basis of these characteristics is unlawful)
–> e.g. age, disability, race, sex, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment
prejudice in Britain (stats)
- 64% of black ethnic background Ps experienced prejudice
- 70% of Muslims experienced prejudice
- 61% of people with a mental health condition experienced prejudice
what is the single component definition of prejudice?
- a negative evaluation of a social group or an individual that is significantly based on the individual’s group membership
what is the traditional three-component definitions of prejudice?
- cognitive: beliefs about a group
- affective: strong feelings (usually negative) about a group
- conative: intentions to behave in certain ways towards the group
what is discrimination?
- inappropriate and potentially unfair treatment of individuals due to group membership
- discrimination includes both negative behaviour towards an outgroup or its members, but also ‘less positive’ behaviour towards an outgroup relative to the ingroup
–> e.g. not being picked for a team AND being picked last are both examples of discrimination
3 forms of discrimination (Pincus, 1996)
- individual:
- actions that are intended to have a differential/harmful impact on specific groups of people - institutional:
- institutional policies (and the behaviour of individuals that run institutions) that are intended to have a differential/harmful impact on specific groups of people - structural:
- policies that appear neutral in terms of intent, but that have negative differential/harmful effects on specific groups of people
example of individual discrimination
graffiti on a wall that is harmful to a group
–> e.g. Nazis are ___
example of institutional discrimination
in March 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled that companies could ban individuals from wearing ‘religious symbols’ (including headscarves, hijabs)
example of structural discrimination
in November 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled that the requirement for police officers in Greece to be >1.7m tall is unlawful (and amounts to sex discrimination)
the ism’s
- terminology used to describe prejudice and/or discrimination against specific groups:
- e.g.
–> sexism
–> ableism
–> racism
–> ageism
–> heterosexism (sexual prejudice)
–> anti-semitism - do not differentiate between discrimination and prejudice
what is intergroup bias?
the systematic tendency to evaluate one’s own membership group (the in-group) or its members more favorably than a non-membership group (the out-group) or its members
the components in intergroup bias (Mackie & Smith, 1998)
- Cognition
- i.e. stereotyping - attitude
- i.e. prejudice - behaviour
- i.e. discrimination
So why do prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup bias exist?
- approaches that implicate personality and individual differences:
- frustration-aggression hypothesis
- the Authoritarian Personality - approaches that emphasise the intergroup context
- realistic conflict theory
- social identity theory
context for the first approaches to prejudice
- 1930s/40s: Need to explain the rise of Hitler’s Fascist regime and the Holocaust
- psychologists noted individuals’ attitudes towards different outgroups tended to be positively correlated…suggesting that there was an ‘individual’ explanation
frustration-aggression hypothesis (Dollard et al., 1939)
- fixed amount of ‘psychic energy’ to enact our goals
- achieving our goals keeps us in balanced psychological state
- if goals are frustrated, unspent energy leaves us in a state of psychological imbalance
- we ‘rebalance’ through acts of aggression directed at scapegoats
–> i.e. a less powerful social group
critiques with the frustration-aggression hypothesis
- frustration isn’t necessary for nor does it inevitably lead to aggression so this approach can only explain some instances of intergroup aggression
- in taking an individual approach, the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis ignores the social context so this approach can’t account for differences in prejudice towards particular social groups
The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950)
- punitive ‘authoritarian’ parenting style (control and punishment) results in children developing a specific set of beliefs
–> e.g. ethnocentrism = the preference for own over other groups
–> e.g. an intolerance of minorities
–> the authoritarian parenting style leads to increased aggression in the child, which is then ‘projected’ on to minority groups
critiques of the authoritarian personality
- acquiescence bias in the F-scale (used to measure authoritarian personality)
–> no items on the scale were reversed, so a tendency to respond ‘yes’ would inflate correlations between items - psychoanalytic (i.e. Freudian) constructs (e.g. ‘projection’) are hard to test empirically
- ignores situational effects on prejudice
Context for later approaches to prejudice
- in the 60s
- personal theories neglected social context
- what was needed was approaches that looked at prejudice and discrimination as an intergroup phenomena
Realistic group conflict theory (e.g., Sheriff, 1966)
conflict and competition for limited resources leads to prejudice and discrimination
most infamous research evidence for the realistic group conflict theory
- Sherif (1966)
- The Robber’s Cave studies
- field experiment involving 12 year old boys at a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma
- evaluated whether conflict between two groups can result in prejudice and discrimination
- and can it be resolved through co-operation towards superordinate goals (goals everyone is involved in)
critiques / ethical issues with the realistic group conflict theory
- are conflict and competition necessary for prejudice and discrimination?
- not getting involved in conflict is an issue
- in studies where conflict and competition is tested, ethics is a huge issue
–> morally wrong to set up and not get involved
social identity theory (e.g., Turner & Tajfel, 1986)
- society consists of different social groups with specific power/status relations
- self-concept = personal identity + social identity
–> i.e. our membership and identification with specific groups - engaging in favourable comparisons/behaviours that benefit the ingroup relative to the outgroup can help us maintain positive self-concept
–> i.e. the benefits of ingroup favourtism
evidence for the social identity theory
- ‘minimal groups studies’
- Ps assigned to a group based on a meaningless distinction
–> e.g. preference for paintings - tasked with allocating points/money to a member of their ingroup and a member of the outgroup (from a selection of different options)
- Ps tended to favour ingroup in a way that maximised the ingroup profit while also maximising the difference between the outgroup and ingroup
traditional prejudice and discrimination
- use of ethnophaulisms –> i.e. ethnic slurs, racial epithets
- overt discrimination
–> e.g. segregation - persecution
–> e.g. violence and genocide
two faces of prejudice and discrimination
- traditional forms of bias are:
- overt
- blatant
- obvious - modern forms of bias are:
- covert
- subtle
- ambiguous
examples of traditional prejudice and discrimination
- segregation on buses, Montgomery Alabama (1900-1956)
–> 1900: Montgomery buses were segregated by race
–> bus drivers would ask people of colour to stand, if there were no ‘white-only’ seats left
modern prejudice and discrimination
- resentment about ‘positive discrimination’
- denial of continuing discrimination
- antagonism about perceived group demands
- defence of traditional values
- denial of positive emotions
- exaggerated cultural differences
how do we measure prejudice?
- prejudice is an attitude so we measure it in the same way we measure attitudes
–> explicit measures
–> implicit measures
explicit measures of prejudice
- semantic differentials
–> participants rate the target group according to pairs of opposing evaluative words (e.g. good vs bad, pleasant vs unpleasant) - Likert scales
–> prejudice questionnaires that tap into traditional and modern forms of prejudice - blatant prejudice scales
- subtle prejudice scales
- traditional sexism scale
- modern sexisim scale
implicit measures of prejudice and bias
- covert measures
–> behavioural measures = based on behavioural observations (e.g. seating distance, eye contact, body posture, approach and avoidance measures)
–> affective measures = the implicit association test (our attitudes will make us quicker/slower to match pictures to certain words)
how do we measure modern discrimination?
- manifests as a range of (often subtle) behaviours
- examples:
–> individual discrimination = microaggressions
–> institutional = tokenism
what are microaggressions?
- brief and commonplace (daily)
- verbal, behavioural or environmental
- intentional or unintentional
- communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights and insights
- perpetrators are often unaware that they engage in such communications
different forms of microaggression (Sue et al., 2007)
- microinvalidation
- actions (often unconscious) that invalidate the experiences, thoughts or feelings of people of colour (e.g. “I don’t see colour” ) - microinsults
- actions (often unconscious) that demean racial identity or are otherwise rude or insensitive (e.g, asking a person of colour how they got their job; following a person of colour around a shop) - microassualts
- racially-motivated actions (often conscious) meant to cause hurt (e.g. name calling, use of racial epithets, purposeful discriminatory behaviour)
what is tokenism?
- the practice of publicly making small concessions to a minority group in order to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination
- an intergroup context in which very few members of a disadvantaged group are accepted into positions usually reserved for members of the advantaged group, while access is systematically denied for the vast majority of qualified disadvantaged group members
–> e.g. employing one woman on the board
what is the glass cliff effect? (tokenism)
- women are more likely to be placed in precarious leadership roles
- i.e. where there is a high risk of failure
evidence for the glass cliff effect
- archival study of FTSE 100 companies before and after the appointment of a male or female board member
- companies appointing women on the board were more likely to have performed consistently poorly in the preceding 5 months, relative to those that appointed men
- similar results in the domain of politics re hard to win seats
