David Myers

11e
Chapter 9 Prejudice

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Racism / Racist (definition)
 1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among
the various human racial groups determine cultural or
individual achievement, usually involving the idea that
one's own race is superior and has the right to
dominate others or that a particular racial group is
inferior to the others.
 2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or
fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
 3.hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

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Discrimination (defined)
 1. an act or instance of discriminating, or of making a
distinction.
 2. treatment or consideration of, or making a
distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing
based on the group, class, or category to which that
person or thing belongs rather than on individual
merit: racial and religious intolerance and
discrimination.
 3. the power of making fine distinctions;
discriminating judgment:
 She chose the colors with great discrimination.
 4. Archaic. something that serves to differentiate.
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Chapter Nine
 Prejudice: Disliking Others
 Defined:
 1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed
beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or
reason.
 2. any preconceived opinion or feeling, either
favorable or unfavorable.
 3. unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes,
especially of a hostile nature, regarding an ethnic,
racial, social, or religious group
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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Defining Prejudice
 Discrimination
 Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members
 Racism (definition changes over time)
 Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward
people of a given race
 Sexism
 Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward
people of a given sex

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What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice?
(an attitude)
 Defining Prejudice
 Preconceived negative judgment of a group and its
individual members
 Supported by stereotypes
 Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people

 Could a stereotype be accurate?

 What are some? Give examples

 Some examples of groups that may experience prejudice:

 Gender, racial, religion/atheists, overweight, sexual
orientation, elderly, immigrants,
 Occupations?
 Others?
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 Attitude components (3)
 Prejudice – affect
 positive or negative
 Stereotype – belief (is there some truth)?
 Jussim et al., (2015) Current Directions in Psychological Science
 Attributing characteristics of an individual based on their group membership
 Positive or negative / accurate or inaccurate
 What are some positive stereotypes?
 Asians are smart/ well educated?
 Blacks are naturally better at learning to play jazz?
 We need them to negotiate a complex world

 Why?
 “accuracy dominates bias” (90 % correct)
 Discrimination – behavior –acting on a belief/affect

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit
 Dual attitude system
 Explicit
 Conscious (central channel)

 Implicit
 Automatic (peripheral channel)

 Implicit Associations Test (IAT)

 Try it out – (click here)

 See also Moskovitch, M. (2016) Human

Neuropsychology & Cognitive Science Lab
 Psychology’s favorite too is not up to the job

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Racial Prejudice
 Is racial prejudice
disappearing?

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Racial prejudice
 Is there a difference between?
 A preference for
 Will always vote for
 A preference not for
 Will always vote against
 What percent of Blacks voted for Obama in 2012?
 95% - report most exit polls
 What percent of women will vote for Hillary?

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Racial Prejudice and discrimination
 Subtle forms of prejudice
 Labor market discrimination
 Patronization
 Avoiding criticisms

 Overpraising accomplishments

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Racial Prejudice
 Automatic prejudice
 Involves primitive regions of the brain associated with fear
(amygdala)
 Critics note that unconscious associations may only indicate
cultural assumptions, perhaps without prejudice

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Gender Prejudice
 Gender stereotypes
 Strong gender stereotypes exist
 Members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes
 Most believe that men and women are different yet equal
 Over time prejudice toward women has decreased as much as
with blacks
 A favorable stereotype (most people like women more)
 Women’s work is not devalued

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Gender Prejudice
 Sexism: Benevolent and hostile
 Attitudes toward women have changed rapidly
 Most see women as understanding, kind, and helpful
 Gender discrimination
 Disappearing in democratic Western countries
 Non-Western countries gender bias is still strong

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
 Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice
 Social dominance orientation
 Motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups
 Being in a dominant high-status position tends to promote
this orientation and justification

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
 Socialization
 Authoritarian personality
 Personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority
and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status
 Ethnocentricity

 Believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural

group, and having a corresponding disdain for all other
groups
 Dogmatic authoritarianism – on the left
 See “Vision of the Anointed” – by T. Sowell

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
 Socialization
 Religion and prejudice
 In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to sanctify the
present order
 Use of religion to support injustice helps explain a pair of
findings concerning North American Christianity
 White church members express more racial prejudice than
nonmembers
 Those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian
beliefs express more prejudice than those professing more
progressive beliefs

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
 Socialization
 Conformity
 If prejudice is socially accepted, many people will follow the
path of least resistance and conform to the fashion
 If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as
fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can
diminish

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
 Institutional Supports
 Government
 Schools
 Magazines and newspapers
 Face-ism v. bodyism?
 Films and television

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What Are the Motivational Sources of
Prejudice?
 Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory
 Displaced aggression
 Hate crimes
 Realistic group conflict theory
 Prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce
resources

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
 Social Identity Theory (Tajfel): Feeling Superior to Others
 The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our
answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group
memberships
 We categorize
 We identify
 We compare

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
 Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
 Ingroup bias
 Tendency to favor one’s own group
 Because of our social identifications, we conform to our group
norms
 When our group succeeds, we feel better by identifying
strongly with it
 More ingroup bias if part of a small group
 What does this say about school integration

 Racial mix levels?

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
 Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
 Need for status, self-regard, and belonging
 Terror management
 People’s self-protective emotional and cognitive responses
when confronted with reminders of their mortality

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
 Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
 Motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to modify
their thoughts an actions
 Self-conscious people will feel guilt and try to inhibit their
prejudicial response

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
 Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
 Spontaneous categorization
 Social identity theory implies that those who feel their social
identity keenly will concern themselves with correctly
categorizing people as us or them
 Necessary for prejudice

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
 Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
 Perceived similarities and differences
 Outgroup homogeneity effect
 Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one
another than are ingroup members
 Own-race bias
 Tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their
own race

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice?
 Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
 Distinctive people
 Feeds on self-consciousness
 Dartmouth women with “disfigured faces”

 - (Kleck & Strenta, ‘80)

 - What did the “disfigured women” they believe about

others reactions?
 How may this be related to “micro-aggressions”?

Majority beliefs about what minorities stereotypes of them are

“meta stereotypes”
 Stigma consciousness
 Person’s expectation of being victimized by prejudice or
discrimination
 Double edged sword

 Live with the stress but use it as a buffer (don’t take it 27

What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
 Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
 Vivid cases
 Given limited experience with a particular social group, we
recall examples of it and generalize
 What % of Americans are Muslim?

 1%; 10%; 15%;20%

 What % of people are exclusively homosexual?

 1-3%; 4-6%; 7-12%; 13-25%

 Can prime the stereotype

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
 Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
 Distinctive events foster illusory correlations
 Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership
and individuals’ presumed characteristics
 Attentiveness to unusual occurrences can create illusory
correlations

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
 Attribution: Is It a Just World?
 Group-serving bias
 Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also
attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions
 Just-world phenomenon
 Tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that
people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they
get

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments
 Whenever a member of a group behaves as expected, we
duly note the fact; our prior belief is confirmed
 When a member of a group behaves inconsistently with
our expectation, we may interpret or explain away the
behavior as due to special circumstances

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments
 Subtyping
 Accommodating individuals who deviate from one’s
stereotype by thinking of them as “exceptions to the rule”
 Subgrouping
 Accommodating individuals who deviate from one's
stereotype by forming a new stereotype about this subset of
the group

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
 Social beliefs can be self-confirming
 Prejudice affects its targets

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Stereotype Threat
 Disruptive concern,
when facing a negative
stereotype, that one will
be evaluated based on a
negative stereotype

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Do Stereotypes Bias Judgments of Individuals?
 Yes, but people often evaluate individuals more
positively than the groups they compose
 Strong Stereotypes Matter
 Stereotypes Bias Interpretations
 Affect how events are interpreted
 We evaluate people more extremely when their behavior
violates our stereotypes

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