Racism: Social Psychological Perspectives

Martha Augoustinos, School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

Danielle Every, Appleton Institute, CQUniversity, Wayville, SA, Australia
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract

Racism has been a core topic in social psychology since the 1930s. Central to most definitions of racism is the belief in
a biological hierarchy between different social groups based on perceived racial differences. As a complex social issue multiple
social psychological perspectives have been advanced to understand and theorize beliefs, behavior, and social practices that
sustain racial inequality ranging from the individual to the social level of explanation. These include personality theories;
social cognition models; realistic group conflict; social identity theory; critical discursive approaches, studies of White
privilege; and embodied racism. Although these perspectives are frequently argued to be inconsistent with each other, recent
attempts at integration are providing richer accounts of this phenomenon.

Defining Racism a reified and objectified social representation through which

Although many definitions of racism have been proposed, an
all-inclusive definition has yet to be agreed upon, particularly
as researchers have identified a variety of ‘racisms’ (Miles and
Brown, 2003; Richards, 1997). Central to most definitions of
racism is the belief in a biological hierarchy between different
social groups based on race, and the associated practices that
maintain and reproduce social inequalities between groups
based on such beliefs. The belief that different racial groups
reflect a natural evolutionary hierarchy, at the top of which are
European (White) people was central to scientific racism
which was widely promoted as an ideology between 1850 and
1910. During this period, European imperialist expansion and
colonial rule over Indigenous peoples created the ideal
conditions for the proliferation of such Social Darwinist
beliefs (Richards, 1997).
The concept of race is entrenched in both popular usage
and scientific discourse as a taken-for-granted, essentialist
category that categorizes people into groups based on
assumptions that surface phenotypic characteristics such as
skin color reflect deeper genotypic features. Despite its ubiq-
uitous taken-for-granted usage, geneticists and biologists dis-
credited the validity of race as a scientific category as long ago
as the 1930s (Richards, 1997), and more recently via the
mapping of the human genome (McCann-Mortimer et al.,
2004). Nonetheless the concept of race continues to be used
uncritically both in the scientific community and in everyday
discourse as a ‘natural’ kind variable in ways that reinforce the
commonplace view that it is a biological and genetic reality
that reflects real differences between groups.
Although the notion of a biological hierarchy between
groups is generally eschewed today and indeed is associated
with blatant forms of racism, it has been replaced with beliefs
in a cultural hierarchy between groups where the dominant
group’s social values, norms, and practices are represented as
superior to those of less dominant groups. As we will discuss
further below, this has come to be known as the ‘new racism.’
Group differences therefore, whether biological or cultural,
continue to operate as socially meaningful cues by which to
categorize and differentiate people. That is, ‘race’ has become
group differences come to be understood and explained
(Moscovici, 1988).
Prejudice versus Racism
There has been a tendency within psychology to use the terms
prejudice and racism interchangeably. Jones (1997), among
others, argues that racism is distinct from prejudice. Prejudice
has commonly been defined as negative attitudes and behavior
toward a social group and its members. Prejudice is typically
regarded as an individual phenomenon, whereas racism is
a broader construct that links such individual beliefs and
behavior to broader social and institutional norms and prac-
tices that systematically disadvantage particular groups. The
second important difference between prejudice and racism
relates to the role of power. At an individual level, a person can
display prejudice, but this in itself does not necessarily
constitute racism. Central to racism is the ability of dominant
groups to systematically exercise power over outgroups. If we
define racism without reference to power differentials between
groups, it is clear that anyone can engage in ingroup preference
and outgroup bias. ‘Everybody is racist’ is a claim that is often
used to counter accusations of racism (Hage, 1998). Impor-
tantly, the power one group has over another transforms prej-
udice into racism and links individual prejudice with broader
social practices (Jones, 1997).
Racism, practiced at a structural and cultural level, main-
tains and reproduces the power differentials between groups in
the social system. Racism practiced at this broad societal level
has been referred to as institutional and cultural racism (Jones,
1997). Institutional racism refers to the institutional policies
and practices that are put in place to protect and legitimate the
advantages and power one group has over another. Institu-
tional racism can be overt or covert, intentional or uninten-
tional, but the consequences are that racist outcomes are
achieved and reproduced. Cultural racism occurs when the
dominant group defines the norms, values, and standards in
a particular culture. These mainstream ideals permeate all
aspects of the social system and are often fundamentally
antagonistic with those embraced by particular minority

864 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 19 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.24082-8

groups. To participate in society, minority groups often have to
surrender their own cultural heritage and adopt those of the
dominant group (e.g., the White majority).
Although prejudice has been condemned within
psychology as negative and pernicious, it has also been criti-
cized for depoliticizing the issue of racial inequality. Because
the concept of prejudice is primarily seen as located within the
psychology of the individual, it fails to recognize the wider
historical, social, and institutional structures that support racial
inequality. Because of this narrowness, the concept of prejudice
is often challenged as actually part of the problem of racial
inequality – by making it an individual pathology rather than
a political and social reality. As many social theorists have
argued, this has had the net effect of obscuring the political and
ideological dimensions of prejudice. Racism can persist in
institutional structures and policies in the absence of prejudice
at the individual level (Henriques, 1984).
New Racism
Over the past 50 years, social psychologists and social scientists
more broadly have argued that contemporary racism has
become less about beliefs in a biological hierarchy between
groups, and increasingly about beliefs in the cultural superi-
ority of a dominant group’s values, norms, and practices
(Barker, 1981). Survey studies consistently demonstrate that
blunt, hostile, segregationist, and White supremacist beliefs are
less openly acceptable to White majority group members in
Western liberal democracies. However, racial inequality
continues to exist. To explain this, a distinction is therefore
commonly made between ‘old-fashioned racism’ and ‘modern’
(McConahay, 1986) or ‘symbolic racism’ (Kinder and Sears,
1981), which in contrast, is subtle, covert, and paradoxically,
endorses egalitarianism. Modern racism rejects racial segrega-
tion and notions of biological supremacy, and is instead, based
on feelings that certain social groups transgress important
social values such as the work ethic, individualism, self-reli-
ance, and self-discipline: values that are embodied in the
Protestant ethic. Symbolic or modern racism justifies and
legitimates social inequities based on moral feelings that
certain groups violate such traditional values.
Gaertner and Dovidio (1986) have also proposed models of
racism that address the changing and complex nature of
contemporary beliefs about race. Their ‘ambivalent racism’
and ‘aversive racism’ models both posit that contemporary
racial attitudes have become complex, contradictory, and
multidimensional. In the ambivalent racism model, pro-Black
and anti-Black sentiments are seen to coexist within the person
and to reflect different value structures held by the individual.
Pro-Black attitudes reflect humanitarian and egalitarian values
that emphasize equality and social justice, whereas anti-Black
attitudes reflect individualism, the Protestant ethic, hard
work, individual achievement, and self-reliance. Similarly, the
aversive racism model emphasizes the coexistence of a contra-
dictory complex of attitudes: on the one hand, liberal egali-
tarian principles of justice and equality; and on the other,
a residue set of negative feelings and beliefs about particular
groups that are learned early in life, and which are difficult to
completely eradicate. Gaertner and Dovidio (1986: p. 63)
describe these negative feelings as “discomfort, uneasiness,
Racism: Social Psychological Perspectives 865
disgust, and sometimes fear, which tend to motivate avoidance
rather than intentionally destructive behaviors.” In both of
these accounts, individuals strive to maintain a nonprejudiced
image, both to themselves and to others, and struggle uncon-
sciously to resolve the internal psychological ambivalence that
is produced by maintaining a contradictory set of attitudes and
beliefs. By justifying and legitimating social inequalities
between groups on the basis of factors other than race,
members of dominant groups can avoid attributions of racism
and thus maintain and protect a nonprejudiced self-image.
Indeed the psychological and social motivation to dodge
a prejudiced identity is a common thread in contemporary
theorizing on racism.
Contemporary racism, therefore, is seen as more insidious
and difficult to identify because of its subtle and covert nature.
This has led to the proliferation of implicit measures to
identify and measure this more subtle racial bias (Greenwald
et al., 2003). For example, the Implicit Association Test is
a response latency measure using subliminal primes to test
the strength of association between social categories (e.g.,
‘Black’ or ‘White’) and positive and negative trait
characteristics. Slower responses to stereotype inconsistent
associations (Black þ positive traits and White þ negative
traits) than to stereotype consistent associations
(Black þ negative traits and White þ positive traits) is treated
as evidence for an implicit bias or prejudice toward Blacks.
Indeed the distinction between implicit and explicit racial
bias is now so ubiquitous in social psychology that it is
sometimes (erroneously) assumed that implicit measures
reflect people’s true or real attitudes whereas explicit measures
merely reflect social desirability norms. It has been argued,
however, that implicit measures do not tap racial attitudes or
beliefs per se but deeply ingrained stereotypes strongly asso-
ciated with particular groups. Devine’s (1989) dissociation
model of prejudice is consistent with this view and posits that
stereotypes are more primitive cognitive structures learned
early in life that can be automatically activated, whereas racial
attitudes (prejudice) are learned later in life and can be either
inconsistent or consistent with these stereotypes. The fact that
negative stereotypes can be unconsciously activated even
among people with low levels of explicit prejudice should not
be taken as evidence that prejudice is an inevitable and
natural cognitive tendency in everyone. As we will discuss
below, the inevitability of prejudice perspective is associated
with cognitive models of prejudice.
Theories of Racism
A variety of explanations for prejudice and racism have been
advanced by social psychologists throughout the twentieth
century. The prevalence of particular kinds of explanations has
shifted during this time depending on wider historical and
social factors and the dominance of specific paradigmatic
frameworks within social psychology itself. Here we provide an
overview of six current approaches to racism ranging from the
individual to the social level of explanation: personality theo-
ries; social cognition models; realistic group conflict and social
identity theory; critical discursive approaches, studies of White
privilege; and embodied racism.
866 Racism: Social Psychological Perspectives
Personality Theories
Freudian psychodynamic accounts of prejudice were prevalent
between 1930 and 1960. Prejudice was largely understood as
a product of intrapsychic unconscious impulses primarily
related to sexual and aggressive desires within the person. To
reduce tension, negative emotions such as fear, anger, and
disgust generated by these internal psychological conflicts are
projected outward onto outgroups.
The most well known of these psychodynamic approaches
is The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno et al. (1950). Pub-
lished soon after the end of the Second World War, Adorno
et al. were interested in explicating a theory that accounted for
the widespread support for fascism as was seen in Nazi
Germany. Adorno et al. (1950) argued that parent–child
relationships with severe and punitive parental discipline
produce children with an authoritarian personality charac-
terized by a rigid adherence to conventional social values and
mores, an unquestioning subservience to one’s moral and
social superiors, and a vigilance for, and hostile rejection of,
those who violate conventional social values and mores. The F
Scale was developed to measure levels of authoritarianism
and was widely used as a personality measure. High levels of
authoritarianism were found to be associated with all types of
prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia). Despite the wide-
spread use of the F Scale, by the 1960s, the theory of the
authoritarian personality was strongly criticized for its
emphasis on internal psychological predispositions at the
expense of social and cultural norms that tolerated prejudice
and sanctioned institutionalized racism, for example, racial
segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa
(Pettigrew, 1958).
Interest in authoritarianism was revived in 1981 with
Altemeyer’s theory of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA).
RWA is described as a rigid adherence to social conventions,
submission to established authorities, and a strong rejection of
outgroups who are perceived to be culturally and ethnically
different. Unlike Adorno et al. whose work was heavily influ-
enced by psychodynamic theory, Altemeyer theorized RWA as
an individual personality characteristic that was predomi-
nantly shaped by social learning experiences. RWA has been
found to be a good predictor of racial and ethnic prejudice in
a variety of different settings, more so than the early authori-
tarianism scales.
The most recent personality approach to prejudice is that of
‘social dominance orientation’ or SDO (Sidanius and Pratto,
2001). SDO is purported to be a stable individual difference
that refers to a person’s level of support for group-based hier-
archies in society such as racial/ethnic, gender, and socioeco-
nomic hierarchies. Like RWA, SDO is strongly correlated with
prejudice. SDO scores vary with gender (males score higher),
personality and temperament, education, religion, and whether
one is a member of a dominant or subordinate group.
Although the concept of SDO is embedded within a wider
social theory, it too has been criticized for reducing prejudice to
a psychological trait rather than a social phenomenon that
requires a social/structural explanation. Perhaps the most
controversial aspect of SDO is the claim that group-based
hierarchies and the legitimating beliefs that support them have
an evolutionary basis.
Significant limitations have been identified with personality
accounts of prejudice. Most notably is the issue of why certain
groups rather than others become the targets for prejudice by
authoritarians, those high on RWA and/or SDO. In addition,
although such theories recognize that economic, historical, and
social factors contribute to these predispositions, the potential
interplay between individual psychology and social structural
factors is rarely dealt with explicitly or integrated thoroughly
into these models.
Social Cognitive Theories
Gordon Allport’s seminal work, The Nature of Prejudice (1954),
provides the foundational basis for social cognitive models of
prejudice which have become dominant and influential in
social psychology since the 1980s. Allport’s definition of prej-
udice as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible
generalization” (1954: p. 9), about a social group and its
members emphasizes the prominent role that social categori-
zation and stereotyping as perceptual–cognitive processes are
given in social cognition models. According to these models,
categorizing people into their respective group memberships
(such as race, gender, age) is driven by our cognitive need to
simplify the overwhelming amount of stimulus information
we receive from our environment. This group-based or
category-based perception is seen as distorting reality because
people are not viewed as individuals in their own right but
rather as prototypical group members. In turn, this leads to
stereotyping, which recent social cognition research suggests
can occur automatically and outside conscious awareness
(Nosek et al., 2011). Stereotyping of course is just one step
away from prejudice – literally prejudging someone based
solely on their group membership. This inextricable relation-
ship between categorization, stereotyping, and prejudice is
central to social cognition models of prejudice and notwith-
standing some of the qualifications that recent research has
placed on this directional, and by implication, causative link
between these three processes (e.g., Devine, 1989, see above), it
is nonetheless the case that categorization in and of itself is seen
as the cognitive basis for prejudice, driven primarily by our
limited processing capacities.
Social cognition models have been criticized for normal-
izing prejudice and racism as inevitable products of our
cognitive hard-wiring. Critics have also argued that by treating
racial categories and racial categorization as natural rather
than social and ideological constructs, social cognition
models themselves reproduce racism in psychology (Hopkins
et al., 1997).
Realistic Group Conflict and Social Identity Theory
Realistic group conflict theory and social identity theory are
intergroup approaches to racism in social psychology that
emphasize the role that relations of power and dominance
between different social groups play in determining patterns of
intergroup hostility. As the name suggests, realistic group
conflict views intergroup hostility as arising from competition
between social groups for economic, social, and cultural
resources. Unlike personality theories that see racism and

prejudice as outcomes of internal psychological drives or
differences in personality, in this approach conflict is viewed as
emerging from ‘real’ group-based interests. The famous boys’
camp field studies by Sherif et al. (1961) demonstrated how the
creation of two competing groups was able to produce ingroup
favoring and outgroup derogating attitudes and behavior
between the two groups. When the social conditions were
changed, however, and the two groups were required to
cooperate to obtain resources or to complete valued tasks,
intergroup hostility began to diminish.
Another series of famous studies, the minimal group
experiments by Henri Tajfel and his colleagues formed the
foundations upon which social Identity theory (SIT) was built
(Tajfel and Turner, 1986). Many social psychologists have
concluded erroneously from the minimal group experiments
that the mere categorization of people into ingroups and out-
groups is sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination and
prejudice. Although SIT stresses the psychological importance
for groups to differentiate themselves positively from other
groups this does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with ingroup
enhancement and outgroup derogation though regrettably
these are all too frequent occurrences. Groups can maintain
a positive social identity without threatening the social identity
of others. SIT posits that groups and their members strive to
achieve some sort of differentiation from other groups, in ways
that are shaped by the nature of the intergroup context and on
dimensions of importance to them. Sometimes those dimen-
sions of importance emphasize tolerance, generosity, and
beneficence, but again all too often these dimensions empha-
size superiority, dominance, and preserving ingroup privilege
(Ellemers and Haslam, 2012).
Critical Discursive Research
Critical discursive research views racism as interactive and
communicative and as located within the language practices
and discourses of a society. This body of work emphasizes the
ambivalent and contradictory nature of contemporary racism,
but explicitly avoids making claims about the psychology of
individual perceivers. Discursive studies analyze how people
talk, discuss, and debate matters to do with ‘race’ and
intergroup relations in both formal and informal settings
(van den Berg et al., 2003).
It is through everyday language practices, both in formal
and informal talk that relations of power, dominance, and
exploitation become reproduced and legitimated. The analytic
site for discursive research is how discursive resources and
rhetorical arguments are put together to construct different
social and ‘racial’ identities, and to provide accounts that
legitimate these differences and identities as ‘real’ and ‘natural.’
Discursive studies locate these language practices or ‘ways of
talking’ at a societal level, as products of a racist society rather
than as individual psychological and/or cognitive products.
The analytic site therefore is not the prejudiced or racist indi-
vidual, but the discursive and linguistic resources that are
available within an inequitable society (Wetherell and Potter,
1992). This approach has been able to identify how linguistic
resources are combined in flexible and contradictory ways to
reproduce and justify racist outcomes in modern liberal
democracies. In some instances, existing relations of power,
Racism: Social Psychological Perspectives 867
dominance, and privilege are maintained through overt racial
ideology, but given the increasing opprobrium against the
expression of such views, social inequalities are more
commonly legitimated through the flexible and contradictory
use of liberal egalitarian arguments that draw on principles
such as freedom, individual rights, and equality. Discursive
studies in several Western countries including Australia, Britain,
Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States
have demonstrated how majority group members express
negative and even hostile views of minorities by the use of self-
sufficient rhetorical arguments premised on liberal and egali-
tarian values such as treating everybody equally.
Critical discursive research has demonstrated the varied
ways the category of racism is itself highly contested in
everyday life: that is, defining what is and what is not racist is
far from being a value-free, neutral assessment. Rather, the
category of racism itself is constructed flexibly and variably,
and can be used to manage the moral accountability and
identity of an individual or group. van Dijk (1992) docu-
ments the ubiquitous nature of denials of racism through the
use of disclaimers such as “I’m not racist but . .” Contem-
porary race talk therefore, is strategically organized to deny
prejudice and racism. By redrawing the boundaries of what
may be legitimately defined as ‘racist,’ the category of racism
may be used to position a person or group as ‘not racist’
by placing their own behavior and views outside of
these boundaries.
These language practices are forms of power that are prod-
ucts of particular historical, hierarchical relationships between
groups of people, in which some people have unjustly and
unfoundedly claimed dominance over others. Understood as
power relationships, racism shapes the lives of everyone within
these hierarchies, both the oppressed and the oppressors. In
this sense, ‘race’ is a form of categorization that reflects partic-
ular forms of power relations between groups of people, rather
than reflecting the actual attributes (whether they be physical or
behavioral) of any particular group of people.
Embodied Racism
While critical discursive research has been invaluable for
elucidating the perpetuation and legitimation of racism, it has
also been criticized for its privileging of discourse; for ignoring
the materiality of oppression. Discursive work has tended to
become heavily involved in identifying the rhetorical aspects of
racism and oppression, but has been less concerned with the
nexus between discourse, space, and place. Such a research
focus has been taken up by Durrheim and Dixon (2005) in
South Africa.
Durrheim and Dixon (2005) combine discourse analysis
with ethnographic mapping to identify the ways in which
discourses are embodied in people’s use of public places such
as beaches. They demonstrate that, even in post-Apartheid
South Africa, there remains significant physical segregation
on South Africa’s beaches – Whites and Blacks use different
areas of the beach, and use the beach at different times. These
spatial practices are legitimated through discourses about
‘appropriate beach behavior’ with White beach-goers explain-
ing that they leave the beach because Black beach-goers are too
loud, create mess, and do not respect personal space. Their
868 Racism: Social Psychological Perspectives
research demonstrates the interdependence of discourse and
embodied practices and how “‘race relations’ are constructed
both in language and in located bodily practices, emphasising
how people describe and account for the racialised features of
social life that they participate in” (Durrheim and Dixon, 2005:
p. 459). They argue that without such a combined approach,
research on racism cannot capture the lived experience of
racism, or of anti-racism. Their observations and interviews
capture the ongoing nature of racism in everyday life, even
where overt official structures maintaining inequality are
dismantled.
Racism as White Privilege
While traditional research on racism focuses on attitudes and
practices toward minorities, recent research on White privilege
turns the gaze from minorities to the majority group. Thus
there is a shift in focus – the gaze moves away from those who
bear the brunt of racism, and toward the discourses and insti-
tutional practices of those who benefit from racism (Aveling,
2004). This body of work focuses on White identity construc-
tion (e.g., Carter, 1997). It also examines the ways in which
whiteness is produced and reproduced in different social and
cultural sites; and the implications of these constructions for
intergroup relations and anti-racism (e.g., Hage, 1998).
Whiteness studies is primarily concerned with how White
people’s identities are shaped by broader institutionalized
forms of racism and brings to the fore both the benefits that
White people accrue because of their privileged position in
society and the responsibilities they have for addressing racism
(Giroux, 1997).
Clearly the category ‘White’ or ‘White people’ is prob-
lematic as a way of referencing the dominant majority in
Western liberal democracies as it fails to adequately reflect
the ethnic and cultural heterogeneity of group members that
may identify as ‛White.’ Nonetheless by marking ‘whiteness’
(not only as a category of skin color, but of cultural capital
(Hage, 1998)), there is an attempt to make visible the
unearned power and privilege that accrues to the dominant
majority, especially those that have access to the highest
cultural and social capital – in terms of appearance, ancestry,
religion, socioeconomic status, education, and employment
(Hage, 1998).
Broadly speaking, whiteness is “. the production and
reproduction of dominance rather than subordination, nor-
mativity rather than marginality, and privilege rather than
disadvantage.” In this definition, whiteness is something that
places White people in normative positions and grants White
people unfair privileges. These positions and privileges are
often invisible to White people, because of this normativity.
Indeed, it is this normativity that gives whiteness its power
(Frankenberg, 1993: p. 236).
Integrating Multiple Perspectives
This overview of social psychological approaches to racism
always raises the difficult question of whether it is possible to
integrate these different theories. This question has always been
a bone of contention within psychology, as analytic frame-
works differ significantly in their epistemological assumptions
and orientations. It also raises the question of whether inte-
gration is desirable.
Duckitt (1992) argues that these multiple social psycho-
logical perspectives are not necessarily competing paradigms,
but rather each is a valid response to different aspects of this
social phenomenon: unconscious processes, personality,
cognitions, social norms and linguistic practices, power, social
structure, and intergroup relations.
Duckitt (1992) has proposed an integrative framework
that identifies four primary causal processes of prejudice:
internal psychological processes; social and intergroup
dynamics; social transmission; and individual differences. He
argues that each of these causal processes provides a partial
but essential contribution to the explanation of prejudice:
psychological processes build a human propensity for prej-
udice; social and intergroup dynamics elaborate this
propensity into socially shared patterns of interaction; these
patterns are socially transmitted throughout social groups;
and individual differences in susceptibility to prejudice
modify these social norms. Each theory is limited on its own
as it focuses on and seeks to elaborate just one of these
causal processes.
While Duckitt’s integrative framework has considerable
appeal more recent critical approaches that focus on racial
discourse, power, whiteness, and embodiment are largely
ignored in this model. Bringing all of these together we
conclude that social psychology has conceptualized racism to
be a normative, often invisible system of social practices,
cognitions, emotions, and discourses that are perpetuated
through all levels (individual, interpersonal, intergroup, insti-
tutional) that privilege one social group and disadvantage and
marginalize other social groups. These practices can be overt
assertions of biological difference, but in today’s social and
political climate, are more likely to be covert and implicit.
See also: Authoritarian Personality; Critical Psychology;
Desegregation; Embodied Social Cognition; Ethnicity and
Migration in Europe; Immigration: Social Psychological
Aspects; Intergroup Relations; Levels of Analysis in Social
Psychology; Social Categorization; Social Cognition; Social
Dominance Orientation; Social Identity in Social Psychology;
Social Psychology; Stereotypes in Social Psychology;
Xenophobia: Social Psychological Aspects.
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