Week 4: Prejudice and Discrimination

Question 1

What is Prejudice?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What is Discrimination?

Answer 2

Discrimination is the unfair or prejudical treatment of individuals based on their group characteristics

Question 3

What is discrimination - manifestions include?

Answer 3

Verbal and non-verbal hostility

Aggressive approach behaviours

Denial of opportunities and access or equal treatment

Question 4

Definitions - stereotyping; prejudice; discrimination

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Waves of Prejudice Research - WAVE 1

Answer 5

Focus on personality and individual differences:
> Authoritarian personality
> Social dominance theory
> System justification theory

Question 6

Waves of Prejudice Research - WAVE 2

Answer 6

Focus on group relations and power
> realistic conflict theory
> relative deprivation theory
> social identity approach

Question 7

Waves of Prejudice Research - WAVE 3

Answer 7

Focus on multi-dimensional aspects of prejudice
> Modern prejudice and aversive racism

Question 8

Blatant / Old Fashioned Prejudice

Answer 8

Direct hostility

No acceptance of intergroup equality

Superiority of ingroup

Strong negative feelings towards outgroup

Question 9

Moving Beyond Blatant Prejudice

Answer 9

> 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

Question 10

Modern/Symbolic Prejudice, but also?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Ambivalent/Aversive Prejudice

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Similarities and differences between ambivalent and modern prejudice

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Dependent on how people are described, how does ambivalent prejudice work?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Ambivalent/Aversive Prejudice - strong, ambiguous, and weak candidate

Answer 14

Strong candidate - black person seen more highly recommendable than white or basically equal

Ambiguous candidate - white more than black

Weak - neither

Question 15

Sexism - Hostile vs. Benevolent Sexism

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Ambivalent Sexism

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Hostile vs. Benevolent Sexism - verbal and non-verbal cues - cooperative task

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Reporting Prejudice

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Taylor et al. (1990) - reporting prejudice

Answer 19

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

Question 20

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

Answer 20

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

Question 21

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

Answer 21

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

Question 22

The Glass Cliff

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Reason for the Glass Cliff

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Support for Glass Cliff Explanation - Ryan and Haslam (2005)

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Glass Cliff - the extent that women are placed on glass cliffs

Answer 25

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

Question 26

The role of the Media - media can perpetuate prejudice

Answer 26

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

Question 27

The role of the media - terriorist attacks

Answer 27

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

Question 28

When do we use the label ‘terrorism’?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Media interventions can have powerful effects in reducing prejudice

Answer 29

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.

Question 30

Countering Prejudice and Discrimination

Answer 30

Privilege awareness
Recategorisation
Norms - legal changes
Intergroup contact

Question 31

Privilege Awareness

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Recategorisation - common ingroup identity model

Answer 32

recategorise at a more superordinate (inclusive) level

reset boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ -> ‘they’ become ‘we’

Former outgroup members become common ingroup members

Question 33

Recategorisation - Caveats

Answer 33

Need to recognize both subgroup and superordinate identities (e.g., Asian Australian and White Australian within ‘Australian’ superordinate identity) - this defuses defensiveness

Question 34

Norms

Answer 34

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

Question 35

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

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Legal Changes

Answer 36

Legalisation of same-sex marriage in the USA -
Americans’ support rate for interracial marriage after the Supreme court legalised interracial marriage in 1967

Question 37

Legal Changes - Legalisation of same-sex marriage in the USA Study

Answer 37

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

Question 38

Legal Changes - Legalisation of same-sex marriage in the USA Study Results

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Intergroup Contact

Answer 39

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)

Question 40

Intergroup Contact - How does it affect minority groups?

Answer 40

• decreased sense of injustice
• lower attention to intergroup inequalities
• reduced collective action
• lower support for reparative policies

Question 41

Prejudice reduction - main agents of change; interventions; psychological process; behavioural outcomes

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Collective Action (Prejudice Reduction) - main agents of change; interventions; psychological processes; behavioural outcomes

Answer 42

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