Prejudice and Discrimination

Question 1

The trinity of concepts involve Prejudice, Stereotypes and Discrimination. Which is the behaviour, affect and knowledge accordingly?

Answer 1

Prejudice=affect
Stereotypes= knowledge
Discrimination= behaviour

Question 2

The authoritarian personality style is very prejudiced. What traits characterise this style and what did Itemeyer(1981) say about its social environment?

Answer 2

• social and political attitudes are expressions of deep-seated aspects of their personality
• rigid and strict and unmalleable
• overly strict upbringing, obedience to parents, comformity to conventional norms
• simplistic cognitive style, rigid regard for social conventions and submission to authoritative figures.
• Itemeyer (1981) said the social environment that reinforces obedience, conventionalism and aggression lies in attitudes and norms rather than personality.
• social attitudes include: harsh punishments, support for aggressive military force, acceptance of infringement of civil batteries, prejudice towards various social groups

Question 3

Alongside the Authoritarian style, there is also the Social Dominance Orientation which illustrates the desire for hierarchical group relationship, social order that is maintained through discrimination. What are some examples of their kind of mentality?

Answer 3

• Predicts sexism, racism, ageism towards immigrants
• legitimising myths as moral justification for group inequality e.g. meritocracy (power should be vested in individuals almost exclusively according to merit)

Question 4

what is the social dominance orientation scale (pratto et al.1994)

Answer 4

• some people are just more worthy than others
• we should strive to make income more equal
• no one group should dominate in society

Question 5

What is Social Group context? Give a study example

Answer 5

• Authoritarian and SDO vary as a function of social context.
  e.g. women college students were randomly assigned into sorority housing and dormitories. At the beginning of the year, conservation sorority showed high authoritarianism; at the end of the year they showed less.
  In the liberal dorm housing, both beginning and end of term had shown lower authoritarianism than sorority housing.
  e.g. Law students score higher than psychology students on SDO.

Question 6

Groups that violate conventions such as rock stars and drug dealers lead to them being pictured as threatening outgroups; why is that so?

Answer 6

Gives threatening social/group context. Elicits right-wing authoritarianism, leading to negativity towards threatening outgroups.

Question 7

Groups that are subordinate such as disabled or unemployed have negative attitude against them. Explain in terms of resources and competition.

Answer 7

• their lower social group context is more competitive and personalities are tough-minded.
• it is a competitive jungle for resources
• social dominance arise as a result of competition, which leads to negative attitude towards competing or low status outgroups

Question 8

How do we measure prejudice using psychological tests?

Answer 8

1. IAT: subjects categorise words or pictures quickly and the results are used to determine automatic association between concepts and attitudes. e.g. categorising Hispanics with “bad” or “dangerous” would suggest a negative implicit attitudes towards Hispanics.
2. Semantic Priming: Test the implicit accessibility of stereotypes via spreading activation.
   White= ambitious Black=athletic (positive)
   White= stubborn Black=lazy (negative)
   White=wooden Black=metallic (non person description)
   - This tests how quickly the subject is able to access the implicit stereotypes through a series of negative, positive and non-person descriptions to accurately judge stereotypes. Instead of being one + and -, we have a comparison.

Question 9

Explain the shooter bias:

Answer 9

Police officer’s dilemma is to judge as quickly as possible whether an offence is carrying a gun or not.
The result turns out to be:
- higher error shooting an unarmed black than unarmed white;
- higher error shooting in an armed white than armed black.

Question 10

Interventions to reduce prejudice include 1. intergroup contact and 2. extended contact and 3. awareness training. Explain them briefly

Answer 10

1. intergroup contact: one has an acquaintance potential, takes under conditions of equal status, involves cooperation towards a common goal, takes place in supportive, normative climate.
2. extended contact: more knowledge that an ingroup member has a close relationship with an outgroup member can improve outgroup attitudes.
3. awareness training: companies use BaFa to reinforce positive aspects of cultural diversity to prepare employees for overseas assignments.