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Chapter 13
Prejudice:
Causes and Cures
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Montana State University
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Chapter Outline
I. Prejudice: The Ubiquitous
Social Phenomenon
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Prejudice
Prejudice is ubiquitous; it affects all
of us -- majority group members as
well as minority group members.
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Prejudice
Prejudice is dangerous, fostering
negative consequences from lowered
self-esteem to genocide.
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Prejudice
Over the past 30 years, blatant
discrimination has been reduced;
however, prejudice still exists in
subtle -- and sometimes blatant -forms.
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Prejudice
• Prejudice and Self-Esteem
Being a member of an oppressed group
can lower a person’s self-esteem.
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Prejudice
• A Progress Report
Real progress has been made for women
and minorities in the last few decades.
However, it would be a mistake to think
that prejudice is no longer a serious
problem in the United States.
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Chapter Outline
II. Prejudice, Stereotyping, and
Discrimination
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Prejudice, Stereotyping and
Discrimination
• Prejudice: The Affective Component
Prejudice is a hostile or negative attitude
toward a distinguishable group of people,
based solely on their membership in that
group.
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Prejudice, Stereotyping and
Discrimination
• Prejudice: The Affective Component
Prejudiced people direct their prejudice
towards members of the group as a whole,
ignoring distinguishing characteristics.
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Prejudice, Stereotyping and
Discrimination
• Stereotypes: The Cognitive
Component
A stereotype is a generalization about a
group of people in which identical
characteristics are assigned to virtually all
members of the group, regardless of actual
variation among the members.
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Prejudice, Stereotyping and
Discrimination
• Stereotypes: The Cognitive
Component
Stereotypes are not necessarily
emotionally laden and do not necessarily
lead to discrimination. However, the
potential abuse due to stereotyping can be
blatant.
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Prejudice, Stereotyping and
Discrimination
• Discrimination: The Behavioral
Component
Discrimination is an unjustified negative or
harmful action towards a member of a
group, simply because of his or her
membership in that group.
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Chapter Outline
III. What Causes Prejudice?
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What Causes Prejudice?
Whether or not there is a biological
root to prejudice, as evolutionary
psychologists would expect, is
unknown; it is clear that prejudice
occurs between biologically similar
people who hold different beliefs.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
One explanation for prejudice is that it is the
inevitable byproduct of information
processing. Examples of mental processes
include categorization, the use of schemas
and heuristics, and faulty memory
processes.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
The first step in prejudice is the creation of
groups. Once we have mental categories,
we group stimuli into them by similarities,
downplaying differences between
members of a group and exaggerating
differences between members of different
groups.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
In-group bias is the especially positive
feelings and special treatment we reserve
for people we have defined as part of our
in-group.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Tajfel (1982) postulates that the underlying
motive behind in-group bias is self-esteem
maintenance and enhancement.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Another consequence of social
categorization is out-group homogeneity,
the perception that those in the out-group
are more similar to each other than they
really are, as well as more similar than the
members of the in-group are.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
There are two reasons why it is almost
impossible to get a person holding a deepseated prejudice to change his or her
mind.
First, it is primarily the emotional aspect of
attitudes that makes a prejudiced person
hard to argue with.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Second, people with strong prejudices
have a firmly established schema for the
target group(s). Thus, the use of logic
fails to reduce prejudice.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Studies have shown that over 30 years,
stereotypes regarding established groups
have remained fairly stable, becoming
somewhat less negative over time.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Devine (1989) developed a theory about
how stereotypical and prejudiced beliefs
affect information processing.
Her theory is based on the distinction
between automatic and controlled
information processing.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
According to her theory, when we process
information about another, first the
stereotypes that we know about are
automatically triggered, then in the
controlled process we decide whether or
not to accept the stereotype.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
According to Fazio and colleagues (1995),
much variability exists in people’s
automatic processing of negative
stereotypes.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
They suggest that there are three kinds of
people: (1) those who do not have an
automatic negative reaction to members
of a given group, (2) those who do have
an automatic negative reaction but have
no problems expressing their prejudice,
and (3) those who have an automatic
negative reaction but want to suppress it.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Bargh et al. (1995) have shown that
automatic prejudice can be triggered
when certain ideas about the target group
come to mind.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Think: Social Cognition
An illusory correlation is the tendency to
see relationships, or correlations, between
events that are actually unrelated.
Illusory correlations are most likely to
occur when the events or people are
distinctive or conspicuous; minority group
members are so by definition.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
People’s tendencies to engage in
attributional biases, like the fundamental
attribution error, increase the pervasiveness
and persistence of stereotypes. When
dispositional attributions about an entire
group of people are made, it is called the
ultimate attribution error.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
The Bell Curve ignited the latest chapter in
an old debate on whether or not there are
racial differences in intelligence.
The question to consider is whether the
reason for differences is dispositional or
situational.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
Steele and Aronson have shown that at least
one major contributing factor is situational.
They define stereotype threat as the
apprehension experienced by members of a
minority group that their behavior might
confirm a cultural stereotype.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
When an out-group member behaves in a
way that disconfirms our stereotypes, we
are likely to make a situational attribution
for his or her performance, leaving the
stereotype intact.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
Blaming the victim is the tendency to
blame individuals for their victimization;
ironically, it is motivated by a desire to see
the world as a fair and just place where
people get what they deserve.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
The self-fulfilling prophecy is the case
whereby people (a) have an expectation
about what another person is like, which (b)
influences how they act toward that person,
which (c) causes that person to behave in a
way consistent with people’s original
expectations. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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What Causes Prejudice?
• How We Assign Meaning:
Attributional Biases
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What Causes Prejudice?
• Prejudice and Economic Competition:
Realistic Conflict Theory
Realistic Conflict Theory is the theory that
limited resources lead to conflict between
groups and result in increased prejudice
and discrimination.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• Prejudice and Economic Competition:
Realistic Conflict Theory
Several historical studies document that
prejudice, discrimination, and violence
against out-group members is positively
correlated with the scarcity of jobs or
other resources. Correlational and
experimental data exist that support group
conflict theory. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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What Causes Prejudice?
• Prejudice and Economic Competition:
Realistic Conflict Theory
Scapegoating is the tendency for
individuals, when frustrated or unhappy, to
displace aggression onto groups that are
disliked, visible, and relatively powerless.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Conform: Normative
Rules
Through both explicit and implicit
socialization, we are trained in the norms
of our culture.
Stereotypes and prejudiced attitudes are
part of this normative package.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Conform: Normative
Rules
Institutionalized racism refers to the racist
attitudes that are held by the vast majority
of people because we live in a society
where stereotypes and discrimination are
the norm.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Conform: Normative
Rules
Institutionalized sexism refers to the
sexist attitudes that are held by the vast
majority of us for the same reason.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Conform: Normative
Rules
In societies in which racism and sexism
are institutionalized, normative conformity
leads to the tendency to go along with the
group in order to fulfill their expectations
and gain acceptance.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• The Way We Conform: Normative
Rules
Modern racism is prejudice revealed in subtle,
indirect ways because people have learned to
hide their prejudiced attitudes in order to
avoid being labeled as racist. This type of
racism is shown when people outwardly act
unprejudiced while inwardly maintain
prejudiced attitudes.
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What Causes Prejudice?
• Subtle Sexism
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Chapter Outline
IV. How Can Prejudice Be
Reduced?
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• The Contact Hypothesis
The contact hypothesis is the idea that
merely bringing members of different
groups into contact with each other will
erode prejudice.
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• When Contact Reduces Prejudice:
Six Conditions
Allport (1954) suggested that six
conditions are necessary for intergroup
contact to reduce prejudice.
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• When Contact Reduces Prejudice:
Six Conditions
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• When Contact Reduces Prejudice:
Six Conditions
1. Mutual interdependence
2. A common goal
3. Equal status of group members
4. Having informal interpersonal contact
5. Having multiple contacts with several members of
the outgroup
6. When social norms are in place that promote
equality
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• When Contact Reduces Prejudice:
Six Conditions
A situation where two or more groups need
each other and must depend on each other
to accomplish a goal that is important to
them defines mutual interdependence.
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• Why Early Desegregation Failed
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• Why Does Jigsaw Work?
A jigsaw classroom is a classroom setting
designed to reduce prejudice and raise the
self-esteem of children by placing them in
small desegregated groups and making
each child dependent on the other children
in the group to learn the course material
and do well in the class.
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• Why Does Jigsaw Work?
One reason for the effectiveness of the
jigsaw classroom is that it succeeds in
breaking down in-group versus out-group
perceptions. This learning environment also
places people in a “favor-doing” situation
and leads them to like the people they help.
In addition, the jigsaw classroom works
because it fosters empathy.
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How Can Prejudice Be Reduced?
• Why Does Jigsaw Work?
The cooperative learning movement has
become a major force in the field of public
education, and provides a powerful tool in
the battle against prejudice. Unfortunately,
the spread of cooperative learning is
gradual.
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Study Questions
What are the consequences of
prejudice?
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Study Questions
How is prejudice different from
discrimination? What are the
three components of a
prejudiced attitude?
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Study Questions
How do gender stereotypes affect
achievement attributions of men’s
and women’s successes and
failures? What type of attributions
are made by individuals and society
for the successes of men compared
to those of women?
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Study Questions
What is an example of
discrimination?
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Study Questions
What role does human thinking
have in the causes of prejudice?
How does social categorization
increase prejudice? What are
motives behind the in-group
bias?
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Study Questions
What is the out-group
homogeneity effect and how
does it contribute to prejudice?
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Study Questions
Focusing on the affective and
cognitive components of
prejudice, why is it difficult to
change prejudice?
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Study Questions
What does Devine’s (1989) twostep model of cognitive
processing explain about
prejudice? What has research
by Fazio and Bargh and their
respective colleagues
discovered about the variability
in people’s automatic prejudice?
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Study Questions
What is an illusory correlation?
What factors lead to the
formation of this type of
correlation and how does this
process promote prejudice?
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Study Questions
What is the ultimate attribution
error? What are the
consequences of committing
this error?
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Study Questions
What is stereotype threat and what
does it help to explain?
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Study Questions
What is the relationship between
the belief in a just world and
blaming the victim?
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Study Questions
How does the self-fulfilling
prophecy perpetuate prejudice
and discrimination?
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Study Questions
According to the realistic conflict
theory, what are the causes of
prejudice and discrimination?
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Study Questions
What is the scapegoat theory and
why do people need
scapegoats?
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Study Questions
According to social learning
theory, what maintains and
perpetuates prejudice and
discrimination at the societal
level? What forms does societal
prejudice and discrimination
take?
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Study Questions
How is the expression of racism in
today’s society different from its
expression fifty years ago?
What are findings that support
modern racism? How have
research techniques adapted to
study this “new” racism?
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Study Questions
What are effective strategies to
reduce prejudice? What
characteristics of intergroup
contact are necessary for the
contact hypothesis to reduce
prejudice and discrimination?
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Study Questions
What are the characteristics of the
jigsaw classroom? What are the
benefits of the jigsaw
classroom?
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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Study Questions
Why is the jigsaw classroom
effective? What does this
learning environment
encourage?
Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e
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