Week 4: Prejudice and Discrimination Flashcards
What is Prejudice?
An unjustified negative attitude towards an individual based solely on that individual’s membership in that group
An attitude, based in emotion, directed toward people because they belong to a specific group
What is Discrimination?
Discrimination is the unfair or prejudical treatment of individuals based on their group characteristics
What is discrimination - manifestions include?
Verbal and non-verbal hostility
Aggressive approach behaviours
Denial of opportunities and access or equal treatment
Definitions - stereotyping; prejudice; discrimination
Stereotyping - cognitive - cognitive representation of a social group
Prejudice - affective - positive or negative evaluation of a group
Discrimination - behavioural - treating people on the basis of their belonging to a certain group, disregarding individual characteristics
Waves of Prejudice Research - WAVE 1
Focus on personality and individual differences:
> Authoritarian personality
> Social dominance theory
> System justification theory
Waves of Prejudice Research - WAVE 2
Focus on group relations and power
> realistic conflict theory
> relative deprivation theory
> social identity approach
Waves of Prejudice Research - WAVE 3
Focus on multi-dimensional aspects of prejudice
> Modern prejudice and aversive racism
Blatant / Old Fashioned Prejudice
Direct hostility
No acceptance of intergroup equality
Superiority of ingroup
Strong negative feelings towards outgroup
Moving Beyond Blatant Prejudice
> Prejudice includes a sense of ambivalence
- Contains both positive (sympathy) and negative (aversion) elements
- more covert
> The changing nature of prejudice:
- no longer acceptable to be prejudiced openly between groups
- motivation to respond without prejudice
Modern/Symbolic Prejudice, but also?
Negative belief system that one group is inferior to another - often unwilling to express them publicly (expressed in more indirect ways)
Avoids blatant derogration of out groups
But:
- no positive feelings of outgroup
- resenting undeserved priviledges of the other group
- derograte the culture and values of the other group
- opposition to policies actively promoting equality
Ambivalent/Aversive Prejudice
A form of prejudice in which people feel uncomfortable with interacting with members of other group
Tend to avoid intergroup contact
Try to be polite when they do have contact
Has positive attitudes toward miniority that exist along with lingering negative attitudes - this results in ambivalent attitudes and behaviour
Similarities and differences between ambivalent and modern prejudice
Similar: there are no strong negative feelings, but rather uneasiness and discomfort
Different: reject the racist traditional beliefs; are more strongly motivated to see themselves as unprejudiced and egalitarian; react in a prejudiced way only in situations that are ambiguous
Dependent on how people are described, how does ambivalent prejudice work?
Described in more positive or neutral way, people tend to show no prejudiced attitudes, and sometimes even favour minority group members
Described in negative ways, people are more hostile to members of minority groups than to members of the ingroup
- they can legitimize hostility toward minorities by focusing on the person’s unpleasant traits
Ambivalent/Aversive Prejudice - strong, ambiguous, and weak candidate
Strong candidate - black person seen more highly recommendable than white or basically equal
Ambiguous candidate - white more than black
Weak - neither
Sexism - Hostile vs. Benevolent Sexism
Benevolent Sexism: no matter how accomplished he is, a man is not truly complete as a person unless he has the love of a woman; many women have a quality of purity that few men possess; women should be cherished and protected by men
Hostile sexism: many women are actually seeking special favours, such as hiring policies that favour them over men, under the disguise of asking for ‘equality’; most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist; women are too easily offended
Ambivalent Sexism
Sexism has two sub-components
> hostile sexism: blatant negative evaluations of women, especially when do not adhere to traditional gender roles
> Benevolent sexism: evaluations of women in seemingly positive ways, but adheres to traditional gender roles
reinforce traditional gender roles and patriarchal social strcuture
assumes that women are inferior to men and restricts women to lower status
Hostile vs. Benevolent Sexism - verbal and non-verbal cues - cooperative task
Benevolent Sexism: more smiling, more usage of positive words, more patience, more approachable and friendly in their speech
Hostile sexism: less approachable and friendly in their speech
Reporting Prejudice
In contrast to the notion that people are motivated to attribute failure to prejudice (in order to help buffer self-esteem) there is a convergence of evidence that people rarely attribute events to prejudice
Minority groups in general tend to not claim they have been victims of discrimination unless the evidence is completely clear
Taylor et al. (1990) - reporting prejudice
Indian and Haitian Migrants to Canada were asked if (a) they personally experienced discrimination, and (b) if their group as a whole experiences discrimination
Results:
> personal low perceived discrimination
> group high perceived discrimination
Ruggiero and Taylor (1995) got women to perform a test, and led them to believe that either 100% to 0% of the judges were sexist
After failing the test, they were asked to what extent they believe their failure was a result of discrimination.
Only when women had very strong proof that the discrimination was real did they attribute failure to discrimination
Swim & Hyers (1999) gave women a scenario in which they faced obvious sexism and were asked to anticipate what they would do
In a separate experiment, a different group of women were actually placed in that sceanrio
When women are asked what they would do if they came across an example of sexism ,they massively overestimate their willingness to confront the sexism head-on
Maybe there’s good reason for this: when disadvantaged groups attribute negative treatment to prejudice and discrimination -> they are negatively evaluated
The Glass Cliff
TFSE 100 Crainfield Index - ranks companies in terms of the number of women on their board (high rank = more women)
3 of the top 5 companies on Cranfield Index are under-performing
All of the bottom 5 are over-performing
Reason for the Glass Cliff
there is a relationship between company performance and number of women on the board - but is this analysis correct?
Perhaps women are only given senior positions when companies are doing poorly.
Support for Glass Cliff Explanation - Ryan and Haslam (2005)
Detailed archival examination of FTSE 100 companies in 2003 provided support for this alternative interpretation:
period prior to women’s appointment to company boards is characterised by poor company performance
Glass Cliff - the extent that women are placed on glass cliffs
a. they are more likely to be ‘in the spotlight’
b. there is a differential likelihood that they will fail, and
c. it is likely they will be blamed for negative outcomes that are not their fault
may help explain why women’s tenure of senior leadership positions is typically much shorter than men’s
The role of the Media - media can perpetuate prejudice
Overrepresent Black Americans as criminals
Negative portrayals of refugees in Western nations - viewed as a threat
- greater media attention on terror attacks carried out by Muslims - receiving 356% more press attention compared to those committed by non-muslims
- media more likely to be label violent attacks in the US as ‘terriorism’ when perpetrator is Muslim than non-Muslim
Exposure to negative media coverage is linked to prejudice
The role of the media - terriorist attacks
in vivid cases such as 9/11 attacks, terrorists can feed prejudices and form a false association
attentiveness to unusal occurrences can create illusory correlations
- minority members are, by definition, low frequency
- negative behaviours also occur less frequently than positive
When do we use the label ‘terrorism’?
White, non-Muslim British people recruited as participants
read a newspaper article about a mass violent attack
perpetrator was either - a white, non-Muslim man or a non-white, Muslim man
Higher percentage of respondents said - non-white, muslim man
Media interventions can have powerful effects in reducing prejudice
Paluck (2009) conducted a year-long media intervention in Rwanda using radio soap operas (modelled positive intergroup relations) reduced prejudice
Media interventions can vary in effectiveness
- Moore- Berg et al. (2022) examined the efficacy of various media interventions aimed to reduce Islamophobia and found that video pointing out media bias was most effective.
Countering Prejudice and Discrimination
Privilege awareness
Recategorisation
Norms - legal changes
Intergroup contact
Privilege Awareness
Can increase a sense of collective guilt and prompt action
However, might also backfire and does not work for everyone
- white people who were highly identified with their racial group exhibited increased racism in response to thoughts of White privilege
- framing inequality as outgroup disadvantage is more effective than highlighting ingroup privilege; it does not promote identity threat
Recategorisation - common ingroup identity model
recategorise at a more superordinate (inclusive) level
reset boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ -> ‘they’ become ‘we’
Former outgroup members become common ingroup members
Recategorisation - Caveats
Need to recognize both subgroup and superordinate identities (e.g., Asian Australian and White Australian within ‘Australian’ superordinate identity) - this defuses defensiveness
Norms
Norms -> group standards of behaviours
Groups vary in levels of normative acceptance of prejudice (e.g., drunk drivers, KKK members, environmentalists, homeless people, elderly people, Jews)
Expression of prejudice is highly correlated with perceived nroms - > higher normative appropriateness of prejudice, higher reported level of prejudice
Norms - peer pressure against prejudice - In 5 randomly assigned high students, student leaders (‘Peer Trainers’) were trained to confront prejudice (5-month period); In 5 control schools, students recruited to be Peer Trainers waited to be trained
Measured - peer nominations about who is most likely to confront prejudice
Results:
Peer trainers in treatment schools were more likely to be nominated by close friends and more distal peers as people likely to confront prejudice in their school
Peer Trainers’ anti-prejudice behaviour spread to these friends and peers, in the form of publicly standing up against prejudice on a gay rights internet petition
Legal Changes
Legalisation of same-sex marriage in the USA -
Americans’ support rate for interracial marriage after the Supreme court legalised interracial marriage in 1967
Legal Changes - Legalisation of same-sex marriage in the USA Study
Can institutional change affect people’s nroms perceptions and attitudes?
Study 1 - participants read an article that suggested the Supreme court will rule in favour or against same-sex marriage
Study 2- Longitudinal survery before and after announcement of Supreme Court ruling
In both studies, measured perceived norms and personal attributes
Legal Changes - Legalisation of same-sex marriage in the USA Study Results
Study 1 + 2 (significant changes in perceived norms in both studies)
Positive-ruling in Study 1 led to a personal attitude increase, however, there was no change in study 2
Intergroup Contact
Suggests that the best way to reduce tension and hostility between groups is through positive interaction across group lines
- More contact, less prejudice
- Intergroup contact changes how we feel about the other group (promoting positive feelings - empathy and trust; reduces negative feelings - anxiety)
Intergroup Contact - How does it affect minority groups?
- decreased sense of injustice
- lower attention to intergroup inequalities
- reduced collective action
- lower support for reparative policies
Prejudice reduction - main agents of change; interventions; psychological process; behavioural outcomes
Main agents of change - members of advantaged groups
Interventions - intergroup contact; perspective- taking
Psychological process - reduce stereotype; more positive affect; decreased salience of group boundaries
Behavioural outcomes - reduction of discriminatory acts ; reduction of intergroup conflict
Collective Action (Prejudice Reduction) - main agents of change; interventions; psychological processes; behavioural outcomes
Agents - members of disadvantaged
Interventions - consciousness raising; coalitition building
Psychological processes - sense of injustice; group-based anger; increased salience of group boundaries
Behavioural outcomes - collective action to challenge the status quo; legislative and systematic changes
