Download JACOBE, PAMBUAN, SAGARAL, VENTURA PREJUDICE “A

JACOBE, PAMBUAN, SAGARAL, VENTURA
PREJUDICE
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“A vagrant opinion without visible means of support” - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary,
1911
Comes in many forms - For our own group and against other groups
o RELIGION
o OBESITY
o SEXUAL ORIENTATION
o AGE
o IMMIGRANTS
What is the Nature and Power of Prejudice?
Prejudice
o Preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members
o “an antipathy based upon a faulty inflexible generalization”
o An attitude
Affect + Behavior + Cognition
(feelings + inclination to act + beliefs)
disliking someone
behaving in a discriminatory manner
believing them ignorant and dangerous
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Stereotype
o Belief about the personal attributes of a group of people
o Positive or negative, accurate or inaccurate
o Problem with stereotypes: overgeneralization
Discrimination
o Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members
o Prejudice is attitude, discrimination is negative behavior
Racism
o An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given
race
o Institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given
race
Sexism
o An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given
sex
o Institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given
sex
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Prejudice: Subtle and Overt
o Dual attitude system:
 Explicit (conscious)
 Implicit (automatic)
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Racial Prejudice
o In the context of the world, every race is a minority
o Because of mobility and migration, races now intermingle
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Is Racial Prejudice Disappearing?
o Explicit prejudicial attitudes can change quickly
o 1942: Americans agreed “separate sections for Negroes on streetcars and busses” (Hyman
and Sheatsley, 1956)
o People of different races now share many of the same attitudes and aspirations
o US: whites tend to compare the present with the oppressive past and to perceive swift and
radical progress. Blacks tend to compare the present with their ideal world, which has not yet
been realized, and to perceive somewhat less progress (Eibach & Erhlinger, 2006)
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Subtle Forms Of Prejudice
o Prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behavior surface when they can hide behind the
screen of some other motive.
 Modern Racism / Cultural Racism
Automatic Prejudice
o If we implicitly associate a particular ethnic group with danger, then faces from that group
will tend to capture trigger and arousal
o Even when race does not bias perception, it may bias reaction
Gender Prejudice
o Gender Stereotypes
 People‘s beliefs about how women and men do behave
 Members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes
o Sexism: Benevolent and Hostile
 Attitudes toward women have changed as rapidly as racial attitudes
 Favorable stereotype:
o Women-are-Wonderful Effect
 Sexism: Benevolent and Hostile
o Benevolent Sexism
 Women: have a superior moral sensibility
 Men: powerful
o Hostile Sexism
 Women: once a man commits, she puts him on a tight leash
 Men: immoral
o Gender Discrimination
 Question: “Misogyny” is the hatred of women. What is the corresponding word for
the hatred of men?
Answer: in most dictionaries, no such word exists.
o Birth announcements:
 Baby boy = more pride (status)
 Baby girl = more happiness (relationships)
o Around the world, people tend to prefer having baby boys.
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UNEQUAL STATUS and PREJUDICE
- Unequal Status breeds prejudice.
- Once inequalities exist prejudice help justify the economic and social superiority
-Helen Meyer Hacker stereotypes of Blacks and women
-Theresa Vescio (2005)- powerful men stereotype their women subordinate
They always give them praise but give limited resources
-Peter Glick and Susan Fiske- we often classify people as competent (respectable) or likeable but not both
Social dominance orientation- a motivation to have one’s group dominate other groups
Socialization- the influence of family socialization appear in children’s prejudice
- Theodor Adorno- hostility towards Jews coexisted with hostility to other minorities
- Ethnocentric-believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group and disdain for all other
groups
- Authoritarian personality- personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of
out groups and those who are in lower status
-Altemeyer (2004) – Double Highs (social dominance orientation and authoritarian)
-Manipulative and ethnocentric
-Authoritarianism – more related to concern with security and control
-Social Dominance- more related with one’s group status
Religion and Prejudice- the relationship between religion and prejudice depends on the question
- If religiousness means the membership or willingness to agree with traditional beliefs then church
members express more prejudice than non members
- If religiousness means a deeper commitment then the more devout are less prejudiced
Conformity-people are more likely to demonstrate prejudice or discrimination after hearing someone do
so
-Thomas Pettigrew (1958)- Whites in South Africa and American South revealed that those who conform
most to social norms are also most prejudiced
-Conformity maintains gender prejudice
-if prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, prejudice can diminish.
Institutional Support
- School is one of the institutions that is prone to prejudice
- Social Institutions like banks, government, schools and the media also show prejudice.
- Photos of men and women
- Cartoons and other shows depict prejudice and bias
Motivational Sources
Frustration and Aggression: the Scapegoat theory
-Displaced Aggression
-Redirecting hostility to others if the cause of frustration is unknown or intimidating
-Passion provoke prejudice
-The 9/11 attack caused more hatred than fear
Realistic Group Conflict theory- the theory that prejudice arises from competition between two groups
for scarce resources
-Gause’s Law- maximum competition will exist between species with identical needs
Social Identity Theory
-Self concept- composed not only of personal identity but also a social identity (Chen and others,
2006)
-Categorize
-Identify
-Compare
In-group bias
-the tendency to favor one’s own group
-Being into a group promotes in-group bias
-Supports a positive self concept
-Feeds favoritism
-Infrahumanization-denying human attributed to outgroups
Need for status, self-regard and belonging
-Prejudice can bring psychological benefit
-Terror management- people’s self protective emotional and cognitive responses when confronted
with reminders of their mortality
Motivation to avoid prejudice
-Prejudice can subside when the motivation to avoid prejudice is internal
-It can also be reduced by monitoring our behavior and correcting it
Cognitive Sources of Prejudice
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How we think about the world, influence our stereotypes, affect out judgments
Studies of stereotyping fuelled applications in social thinking
“The basic point is this: Stereotyped beliefs and prejudiced attitudes exist not only because of
social conditioning and because they enable people to displace hostilities, but also as by-products of
normal thinking processes.”
 Stereotypes are by-products of how we simplify our worlds.
Categorization: Classifying people into groups
Spontaneous Categorization
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We find it especially easy and efficient to rely on stereotypes when we are:
• pressed for time
• preoccupied
• tired
• emotionally aroused
• too young to appreciate diversity
Spontaneous categorization of people by race – by color.
Such categorization is not prejudice
but it does provide a foundation for prejudice.
Social identity theory implies that those who feel their social identity keenly will concern
themselves with correctly categorizing people as us or them.
Perceived Similarities and Differences
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Division into groups can create:
Outgroup homogeneity effect- a sense that they are “all alike” and different from “us” and “our”
group (Thus “they are alike; we are diverse.”)
As we generally like people we perceive as similar to us and dislike those we perceive as
different, the result is a tendency toward ingroup bias.
When the group is our own, we are more likely to see diversity.
In general, the greater our familiarity with a social group, the more we see its diversity.
The less our familiarity, the more we stereotype. Also, the smaller and less powerful the group,
the less we attend to them and the more we stereotype.
own-race bias - more accurately recognize faces of their own race. (Also called the cross-race
effect or other-race effect. )
“own-age bias” - people more accurately recognize people similar to their own age
When viewing someone of our own group, we are less attentive to the race category and more
attentive to individual details.
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
Distinctive People
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Traits and behaviors
Distinctiveness Feeds Self-consciousness
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Stigma Consciousness - A person’s expectation of being victimized by prejudice or
discrimination
Vivid Cases
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Our minds use distinctive cases as a shortcut to judging groups.
Vivid cases seldom represent the larger group
-tending to overestimate
Distinctive Events
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Correlation between group membership and individual’s presumed characteristics
Attribution: Is It Just a World?
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We attribute others’ behavior so much to their inner dispositions that we discount important
situational forces. The error occurs partly because our attention focuses on the person, not on the
situation
Group-serving bias- Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also attributing
negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one’s own group).
Positive behavior by outgroup members is more often dismissed and positive behaviors by
another ingroup member are often described as general dispositions.
Blaming occurs as people attribute an outgroup’s failures to its members’ flawed dispositions
The Just-world phenomenon
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The tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they
deserve and deserve what they get.
I. CONSEQUENCES OF PREJUDICE
A. Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes
■ The existence of stereotypes itself can prevent their change and even create their own
reality
■ Even if initially untrue, a stereotype can eventually be seen as true merely by its existence
1. Prejudgments guide attention and memories
 “...once we judge an item as belonging to a category such as a particular race or sex,
our memory for it later shifts toward the features we associate with that category.”
2. Prejudgments are self-perpetuating
 Stereotypes influence how we interpret a certain behavior
 Misinterpretations result from failed expectations resulting to a new/distorted reality,
and even influence how people are perceived to be
B. Impact of Discrimination: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
■ Discrimination affects its victims (both positively and negatively)
■ Gordon Allport says “One's reputation cannot be hammered, hammered, hammered into
one's head without doing something to one's character.”
■ Even when discrimination ends, its effects still remain
■ e.g. Discrimination towards African Americans
 In The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon Allport categorizes 15 possible effects of
victimization under two types:
1. Blaming Oneself (withdrawal, self-hate, aggression against own group)
2. Blaming External Causes (fighting back, suspiciousness, increased group pride)
 The character of the Black culture is not just a response to victimization as it is also a
product of proud heritage
 Nevertheless, social beliefs can be self-confirming (as shown in the 1974 experiment
of Word, Zanna, and Cooper on interviews)
■ Reputation/Judgment gradually becomes embedded in one's self-concept
C. Stereotype Threat
■ Stereotype Threat – the disruptive, self-confirming apprehension of being
evaluated/judged based on a negative stereotype; effect is immediate
■ Being a typical object of prejudice (e.g. a numerical minority) is enough reason to be
self-conscious
“Placed in a situation where others expect you to perform poorly, your anxiety may also
cause you to confirm the belief.”
 e.g. Math test given to males and females (when told about gender differences,
women immediately confirmed the stereotype, eventually undermining their
performance)
■ Media can provoke stereotype threat
■ Racial stereotypes are self fulfilling
 “When people are reminded of a negative stereotype about themselves – 'White men
can't jump' or 'Black men can't think' – it can adversely affect performance.” (Stone,
2000)
 “...students who are led to think they have benefited from gender- or race-based
preferences in gaining admission to a college or an academic group tend to
underperform those who are led to feel competent.” (Brown & others, 2000)
 Stereotypes should therefore be set aside and individuals must be challenged to
believe in their potentials, instead.
■ How does stereotype undermine performance?
1. Stress. fMRI brain scans suggest that stereotype stress impairs brain activity in
mathematical processing while emotion processing, on the other hand, is increased
2. Self-monitoring. Worrying about committing mistakes disrupts focus
3. Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions. Effort required for thinking regulation
takes energy and disrupts working memory
■ If stereotype threats can disrupt performance, could positive stereotypes enhance it?
 Yes, positive stereotypes facilitate performance
 The experiment on Asian-American Females (compared to a control group)
 When asked about biographical questions that reminded them of their gender
identity, their performance plunged
 When asked about their heritage and Asian identity, their performance rose
D. Stereotypes↔Biased Individual Judgements
■ Stereotypes do bias judgments
■ However, individuals are evaluated more positively than the groups they belong in
■ “People often believe some stereotypes, yet ignore them when given personalized,
anecdotal information.”
■ Strong stereotypes have little effect when evaluating individuals
1. Strong Stereotypes Matter
 Even if strong stereotypes have little effect, they still color our judgments of
individuals
 Strong stereotypes do hold an “irresistable force”
2. Stereotypes Bias Interpretations
 Stereotypes do not only color judgments but interpretations of events as well
 “Sometimes, we make judgments, or begin interacting with someone, with little to go
on but our stereotype.”
 With this, stereotypes strongly bias our interpretations and memories of people.
 We also evaluate people more extremely when their behavior violates our stereotypes
II. CAN WE REDUCE PREJUDICE?
 “Social psychologists have been more successful explaining prejudice than alleviating it.”
 There is no simple remedy to prejudice since it is a fruit of a lot of different and interrelated
factors
 Techniques to alleviate prejudice, however, can be anticipated
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