Prejudice and Discrimination

Question 1

What is the ‘Contact hypothesis’

Answer 1

Gordon Allport (1954) - ‘It has sometimes been held that merely by assembling people without 
regard for race, color, religion, or national origin, we can thereby 
destroy stereotypes and develop friendly attitudes."

Question 2

Results of the IAT in the U.S. - Strong automatic preference for White people, moderate, slight, no preference, slight for Black, moderate, and strong.

Answer 2

27%, 27%, 16%, 17%, 6%, 4%, 2%

Question 3

Percent heritability of intelligence within White population.

Answer 3

Ca. 60% (Murray & Hernstein, 1994)

Question 4

The Flynn effect

Answer 4

IQ levels rise by about 3 points every 10 years worldwide.

Question 5

The Doll experiment

Answer 5

Kenneth and Mamie Clark (1944) - evidence of internalized racism caused by stigmatization (white dolls good/beautiful, black dolls bad/ugly)

Question 6

Evidence that the greatest prejudice is seen in the most intimate social realms:

Answer 6

In 1988 3% of Whites wouldn’t want their child to attend integrated school, 57%
unhappy if their child married a Black person.

Question 7

Evidence for subtle forms of racism.

Answer 7

Duncan (1976) - White students shown video of one man
lightly shoving another in a brief argument. When a White shoved
a Black man 13% rated it as ‘violent’ but 73% rated it violent when
a Black shoved a White man.

Question 8

The scapegoat story

Answer 8

Bible: a goat that the priest would
hold while reciting all the sins of the
tribe. The goat was cast out into the wilderness, sometimes also pushed over a cliff, literally taking on the sins of the community.

Question 9

Evidence that frustration increases prejudice and discrimination.

Answer 9

In the US between 1882-1930 more lynchings of African-Americans
took place in years cotton prices were low (Hepworth & West 1988)‏;
Miller and Bugelski (1948) asked college-age men working in a summer camp about their attitudes towards Mexicans and Japanese. Before and after some were forced to stay in the camp to take
tests rather than go out (frustration)‏. Prejudicial attitudes increased in the deprived group.

Question 10

Mimesis

Answer 10

A powerful mechanism of defence in the natural world (to camouflage, the blend in,
freezing if we sense danger) has become perverted in the modern world. Freud claimed that
civilization has resulted in an ever increasing suppression of instinctual behaviour. Mimesis now
takes the form of domination and paranoid control over nature, as a defence against becoming like
it (mimesis), now repressed (touching, smelling, feeling). “Impulses which the subject will not admit
as his own, even though they are most assuredly so, are attributed to the object – the prospective
victim… In Fascism this behaviour is made political; the object of the illness is deemed true to
reality; and the mad system becomes the reasonable norm in the world, and deviation from it, a
neurosis.

Question 11

Projective identification

Answer 11

The unwanted or unaccepted parts of the self are split off and
projected into an other who is now felt to contain it and is therefore feared and hated. When
internal objects are split this also results in a splitting (and therefore weakening) of the ego. In a
benign circuit the parent or analyst takes in the projection, works it through and gives it back in a
modified form easier for the subject to integrate.

Question 12

The four psychoanalytic characteristics of racism according to Robert Young:

Answer 12

splitting
violent projective identification
stereotyping
scapegoating