Prejudice and Hate Flashcards
Prejudice
Traditionally viewed as a negative evaluation of a social group or an individual that is largely based on the individual’s group membership.
Operates as a heuriatic cognitive bias that affects interpersonal relationships
A key feature is the negative stereotypes of that social group
Not all prejudicial behaviour is negative and it is important to look at the function of the behaviour
Awareness of differences between groups and individuals is not prejudice, people are different and it is their value as human beigns that is important. How you act on the information is important.
There are 4 broad aspects - Intergroup context, The psychological bases, Manifestations Engagement with prejudice.
Intergroup relationships
This refers to the ways that people in different social groups view members of other groups.
These intergroup perceptions provide the context within which people develop their attitudes and prejudices.
Hostility between groups is often associated with their belief that they have a conflict of interests. In his classic studies of boys at summer camps, Sherif (1966) showed that any two groups could be created and turned into hostile enemies simply by making them negatively interdependent. Even when there are no direct conflicts of interest, merely assigning people into distinct categories can be sufficient to generate prejudices and discrimination between groups (Tajfel and Turner, 1979).
The psychological bases for prejudice
These include: people’s key values; the ways they see themselves and others; their sense of social identity, and social norms that define who is included in or excluded from social groups.
Prejudice is more likely to develop and persist where: groups have different or conflicting key values (Haddock and Zanna, 1998) and others are seen as different.
People see their identity in terms of belonging to particular groups, (Tajfel and Turner, 1979)
Manifestations of prejudice
There are many ways in which prejudice can be expressed.
Stereotypes can be positive or negative, these can be characterised as traditional hostile attitudes (for example, that women are demanding too much equality) and ‘benevolent’ attitudes. Benevolent sexism is not imbued with negative emotion, indeed it has quite the opposite tone, regarding women as important, to be valued, and indeed cherished. Benevolent prejudice is often highly patronising.
Different stereotypes evoke different emotional responses - derogatory attitudes or overt hostility. People’s use of language, behaviour, emotional reactions and media images can all reflect prejudice too
The effect of experience
This has several dimensions. First, people’s experiences do not always match others’ views about the extent of prejudice - few people express negative prejudice towards older people, yet older people report high levels of prejudice towards them.
Secondly, contact between groups is likely to increase mutual understanding, though it needs to be close and meaningful contact.
A third factor is the extent to which people wish to avoid being prejudiced. This is based on personal values, a wish to avoid disapproval, and wider social norms. Each of these offers a means for potentially preventing the expression of prejudice and discriminatory behaviour.
Integrated threat theory
Stephan and Stephan (1996, 2000) proposed ITT, which classifies threats into four major types:
realistic threat
symbolic threat
intergroup anxiety
negative stereotypes.
Proposes that both, competition or value conflict, can influence outgroup attitudes simultaneously.
Realistic - Threats to power and resources
Symbolic - Religion, values and beliefs (Ideology)
Intergroup anxiety - Uncertainty about how to behave toward them, which makes interactions with outgroups seem threatening
Intergroup anxiety has been demonstrated to be a predictor of out-group attitudes and bias (Ho & Jackson, 2001)
People who tend to be generally high in anxiety often exhibit higher levels of prejudice (Hassan, 1978).
Negative stereotypes generate threat by creating negative expectations concerning the behavior of outgroup members. Thye occur in conjunction with negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger) toward the outgroup, which intensify negative outgroup attitudes.
Riek (2006) - Meta-analysis indicate that intergroup threat types have a positive relationship with negative outgroup attitudes.
Advantage - interrelationships between the threat types can be examined.
Self-report measures neglects potential behavioral responses to intergroup threat. Although all of the threats may result in negative outgroup attitudes, different threats may lead to different behavioral outcomes. Anxiety may cause avoidance, whereas realistic threat may lead to aggressive retaliation.
Biocultural Model of Threat - Neuberg and Cottrell (2002)
Elaborates on our reactions to threat.
They theorized that for adaptive reasons, different intergroup threats lead to different emotional responses, which then lead to different attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.
Divided intergroup threats into two broad categories: threats to group-level resources and threats to group integrity.
The resource threats include threats toward group safety, group possessions, and economic security. These threats parallel realistic threats.
The integrity threats include threats to group values, morality, competence, and reciprocity relations. These threats share commonality with symbolic and social identity threats.
Early study found that white particiapants displayed differecnt perception of threats for different groups and subsequently different emotional responses
The primary advantage is that it focuses on a series of behavioral outcomes that differ depending on the type of threat. Threats to the ingroup’s economic security are predicted to lead to anger and fear, which in turn are expected to promote an aggressive response.
Threats of the ingroup’s competence are expected to lead to envy and anger followed by behaviors that diminishes the outgroup’s accomplishments or bolsters the ingroup’s abilities. This allows for clear and specific predictions associated with different types of intergroup threat.
Infrahumanisation –
Demoulin et al, 2004
Lay people define human nature with a relatively small set of characteristics: Intelligence, Uniquely Human Emotions, and Language. Denying the possession of only one of these characteristics is sufficient to consider others less human than oneself.
Infra-humanisation is the belief in a ‘‘less human essence’’ of outgroups (Leyens et al., 2000).
At a deeper level than stereotypes essences are thought to explain differences between groups (Yzerbyt et al., 2000).
From this perspective, infra-humanisation of outgroups is a sign of distinctiveness between the ingroup and the outgroups. It combines both ingroup favouritism (enhancing ingroups by attributing to them or associating them with positive characteristics) and outgroup derogation (attribute to them or associate them with negative features) (Leyens et al., 2003).
Given widespread ethnocentrism (Jahoda, 2002) , it is not surprising that individuals reserve ‘‘the human essence’’ for their ingroup, while other groups are attributed a lesser humanity.
Members of groups not only attribute more secondary emotions to their ingroup than to outgroups, but are also reluctant to associate these emotions with outgroups.
Dehumanisation
Dehumanization is arguably most often mentioned in relation to ethnicity, race, and related topics such as immigration and genocide.
A consistent theme in this work is the likening of people to animals.
It has played (plays) a role in facilitating and motivating genocide (Smith, 2011)
A primary focus is the ways in which Jews in the Holocaust and Tutsis in Rwanda were dehumanized during and beforehand through ideologies that likened the victims to vermin.
In a productive recent line of research on “infra-humanization,” (Leyens et al., 2003; Leyens et al., 2001) has shown that people commonly attribute more uniquely human “secondary” emotions to their ingroup than to outgroups but do not differentially attribute the primary emotions that we share with other animals.
Infra-humanization is a particularly interesting form of dehumanization because it is subtle, requiring no explicit likening of outgroup members to animals,
Two forms of dehumanization are proposed, involving the denial to others of distinct senses of humanness:
Denying uniquely human attributes (refinement, moral sensibility, and higher cognition) to others represents them as animal-like
Denying human nature (Warmth, cognitive openness and emotional responsiveness) to others represents them as objects or automata.
The animalistic form of dehumanization, in which others are denied UH characteristics, is best exemplified in the context of interethnic hostility (e.g., genocide, racial stereotyping, attitudes toward immigrants).
Hate
Perhaps one of the most powerful forces (although certainly not the only force) underlying mass killings is hate, hate that is carefully nurtured and shaped to accomplish ends that are mindfully, planfully, and systematically conceived. Hate applies to whatever one calls the killings, from terrorism to massacres, genocides, and ethnic cleansing
Typically, perhaps, hate is thought of as a single emotion.
According to the proposed theory, hate potentially comprises three components, Negation of intimacy (distancing), Passion in hate: Anger–fear and Decision–commitment in hate. The three components of hate generate, in various combinations, seven different types of hate
The triangular theory of the structure of hate speculatively holds that hate is related to terrorism, massacres, and genocides through the number of components of hate experienced.
Danger Level 0, no hate-based danger, results when none of the components of hate are present.
Danger Level 1, mild hate-based danger, results when one of the components of hate is present.
Danger Level 2, moderate hatebased danger, results when two of the components of hate are present.
Danger Level 3, severe hate-based danger, results when three of the components of hate are present.
Hate has storylike properties, with a beginning (often introduced by propaganda), a middle (characterized by action), and, sometimes, an ending (often induced by eliminating the object from one’s life or, less often, reconciliation). Stories of hate tend to have two fairly stable roles: perpetrator and victim.
As pointed out by Baumeister (1996), people who do evil things tend to see themselves as victims of those they persecute! Stories of hate are fomented largely by socialization through propaganda. To a large extent, then, hate is learned (Blum, 1996)
Any theory of hate as a precursor to genocide will need to be able to account in part for the Nazi genocides. German propaganda accused the Jews of being enemies, criminals, rapists and animals (Rhodes, 1993). At the same time that members of the hated group are portrayed through negative stories, members of the preferred group are portrayed positively.
First, the theory is not and could not possibly be a complete account of terrorism, massacres, genocides, and their development. The origins of such events are undoubtedly extremely complex, and no one-factor theory will fully account for them. Terrorism, massacres, and genocides may have their origins partially in hate, but their occurrence also depends on political, economic, sociological, and other psychological factors that go beyond hate
Not all massacres are perpetrated on the basis of hate, as pointed out by Browning (1993) and as suggested by Arendt (1963) and Milgram (1974). Ordinary people can be propelled by unfortunate circumstances into behaviors in which, under more nearly normal circumstances, they might never engage
