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Stereotyping, Prejudice, and
Discrimination
1
Definitions
Stereotypes - beliefs about attributes that are thought
to be characteristic of members of a particular group
which are over generalized, inaccurate and resistant
to change (Myers, 2003).
Prejudice – a negative prejudgment of an individual or
a group and its members.
Discrimination - unfair treatment of members of a
particular group based on their membership of that
group.
2
Forms of Prejudice &
Discrimination
 Racial ( Racisms)
 Sex (sexism)
 Religion
 Class
 Cultural
3
What is Prejudice?
 Consider a few actual occurrences:
 Prejudice against girls and women is sometimes
subtle, sometimes devastating. Nowhere in the
modern world are female infants left on a hillside
to die of exposure, as was the practice in ancient
Greece. Yet in some countries, female infants are
less valued than male infants.
What is Prejudice?
 When men seek roles traditionally associated with
women, discrimination can run in the other direction.
 Turner & Pratkanis (1994) sent identical job-inquiry
letters from a college student in an education program
to 56 child-care centers and preschools in seven cities.
What is Prejudice?
 When the letter was signed “Mary Johnson.” Nearly
half the centers returned a stamped postcard,
saying, “We would be interested in discussing a
position.”
 When the letter was signed “David Johnson” only 1
in 10 replied with similar encouragement.
What is Prejudice?
 A group of homosexual students at the University
of Illinois announced that the motto for one spring
day would be, “If you are gay, wear blue jeans
today.”
 When the day came, many students who usually
wore jeans woke up with an urge to dress up in a
skirt or slacks.
What is Prejudice?
 The gay group had made its point – that attitudes
toward homosexuals are such that many would rather
give up their usual clothes lest anyone suspect (Excerpt
from RCAgenda, 1979).
What is Prejudice?
 When seeking love and employment, over weight
people – especially overweight White women –
face slim prospects.
 In both correlational studies and in experiments
(in which people are made to appear overweight or
not), overweight people marry less often, gain
entry to less desirable jobs, make less money, and
are perceived as less attractive, intelligent, happy,
and successful (Hebl & Heatherton, 1998).
What is Prejudice?
 Weight discrimination is, in fact, notably greater than
race or gender discrimination and occurs at every
employment stage – hiring, placement, promotion,
compensation, discipline, and discharge (Roehling,
2000).
What is Prejudice?
 A negative prejudgment of a group and its individual
members.
 It is an intolerant, unfair or unfavorable attitude towards a
group, a person, or an object even a legislation (Myers,
2008)
 It is an attitude an individual maintains so sturmoily as to
be virtually immune to any information or experience
 In his classic, the Nature of Prejudice, Allport defined
prejudice as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and
inflexible generalization” (1954, p.9).
What is Prejudice?
 Prejudice biases us against a person based on the
person’s perceived group.
 Prejudice is an attitude, with a distinct
combination of feelings, inclinations to act, and
beliefs.
 This combination is the ABC of attitudes: affect
(feelings), behavior tendency (inclination to act),
and cognition (beliefs).
stereotypes
 To stereotype is to generalize.
 Such generalizations can be more or less true (and are
not always negative).
 For instance, to stereotype the British as more
concerned about punctuality than Africans is to
understand what to expect and how to act with
minimal friction in each culture(Myers, 2002).
 A problem with stereotypes arises when they are over
generalized or just plain wrong.
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
14
The 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
15
What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Racial Prejudice
 Is racial prejudice
disappearing?
Figure 9.1
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Subtle forms of prejudice
 In experiments by Greenwald & his colleagues (1998,
2000, nine in ten White people took longer to identify
pleasant words (such as peace and paradise) as “good”
when associated with Black rather than White faces.
What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
 Gender Prejudice
 Gender stereotypes


Strong gender stereotypes exist
Members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes
 Sexism


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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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
 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
19
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
 Church members express more racial prejudice than
nonmembers
 Those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian
beliefs express more prejudice than those professing more
progressive beliefs
20
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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Social Sources of Prejudice
 Institutional Supports
 Government
 Schools
 Magazines and newspapers
 Films and television
22
Motivational Sources of Prejudice?
 Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory
 Displaced aggression


Hate crimes
Xenophobic attacks
 Realistic group conflict theory


Prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce
resources (Esses et al, 1998)
Gause’s Law- maximum competition will exist among species
with identical needs
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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.
 In-group 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
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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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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice?
 Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
 Distinctive people


Feeds on self-consciousness
Stigma consciousness
 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
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Cognitive Sources of Prejudice
 Distinctive events


Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership
and individuals’ presumed characteristics
Attentiveness to unusual occurrences can create illusory
correlations
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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 Stereotypes
 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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Consequences of Prejudice
 Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes
 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
30
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
 Social beliefs can be self-confirming
 Prejudice affects its targets
31
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
Figure 9.10
32
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
 Do Stereotypes Bias Judgment of Individuals
 Stereotypes Bias Interpretations
 Affect how events are interpreted
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Reducing Prejudice
 Allport’s Contact Theory
 Under certain conditions, direct contact between
members of different groups will improve relations
 Contact must involve:






Mutual interdependence
A common goal
Equal status of groups
Informal, interpersonal contact
Multiple contacts
Social norms of equality