David Myers 11e ©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies

Chapter Nine Prejudice: Disliking Others

What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? 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

What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Defining Prejudice Discrimination Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members Racism Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given race Sexism Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given sex

What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit Dual attitude system Explicit Conscious Implicit Automatic

What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? Racial Prejudice Is racial prejudice disappearing? Changing Racial Attitudes of White Americans from 1958 to 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Social Identity Theory: 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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out Distinctive people Feeds on self-consciousness Stigma consciousness Person’s expectation of being victimized by prejudice or discrimination

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 Can prime the stereotype

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

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

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

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

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

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 Stereotype Vulnerability and Women’s Math Performance

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