Prejudice and Discrimination

What is Prejudice? Discrimination? Dehumanization? Prejudice: An unfavorable attitude towards a social group and its members Discrimination: Singling out members of a social group for prejudice based on attributes of their group membership Dehumanization: Stripping people of their dignity and humanity

Forms of Discrimination Reluctance to help: passively or actively declining to help other groups improve their position in society (e.g., Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977’s Bystander effect) Tokenism: Practice of publicly making small concessions to a minority group to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination Reverse discrimination: Practice of publicly being prejudiced in favour of a minority in order to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination

How Does Racism Compare? Racism: Prejudice and discrimination against people based on ethnicity or race –Much research focused on anti-black attitudes among whites in the United States –Dramatic reduction in unfavorable attitudes since 1930’s –Similar reduction toward ethnic minorities in Britain and Western Europe

Social dominance theory: Pratto (1999) An ‘individual differences’ explanations – people tend to desire their own group to be dominant and therefore have a high ‘social dominance orientation’ This legitimizes prejudice towards out-groups as the in-group is perceived as dominant A Theory of Prejudice and Discrimination