Transcript The nature and effects of Prejudice

The nature and effects
of Prejudice
PSY203S
Contact details
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Dave Nunez
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Email: [email protected]
Phone: 650-2670
Web: http://www.cs.uct.ac.za/~dnunez
Space: Room 300, Computer Science Bldg.
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Extra readings (SLC)
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Required:
Allport, G. (1982/1954). Traits due to victimization. In
G. Allport, The nature of prejudice (pp. 142-162).
Reading, Ma: Addison-Wesley
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Strongly Recommended:
Allport, G. (1982/1954). What is the problem? In G.
Allport, The nature of prejudice (pp. 3-16). Reading,
Ma: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Is there really a problem?
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1965 British Gov. findings (mock job
application):
Interviewer’s
Response
White
English
Hungarian
Offer of jobs or
encouragement
to apply
38%
25%
3%
“No vacancy now"
but details taken or
asked to return
38%
18%
5%
25%
58%
93%
“No vacancy”
Black
West Indian
Is there really a problem?
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Turner, 1991: White applicants in Washington and
Chicago received three times as many job offers as
black or hispanic applicants (hispanics got slightly
more than blacks)
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Third wave foundation (www.thirdwavefoundation.org)
 How many women's professional sporting events
are broadcast by the major networks?
 How many average-size or heavy women appear
on your favorite sit-coms? Are they ever the
central characters?
 How many women artists are covered in your art
history classes?
Is there really a problem?
Protest outside
Halliburton
Inc’s AGM
(May 19, 2004)
Is there really a problem?
Defining prejudice
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Allport (1954): Ethnic
prejudice is an antipathy
based upon a faulty and
and inflexible
generalization. It may be felt
or expressed. It may be
directed towards a group as
a whole or towards an
individual because he is a
member of that group.
Gordon Allport
More definitions
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Worchel et al. (1988): an unjustified negative
attitude toward an individual based solely on
that individual's membership in a group.
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Brown (1995): the holding of derogatory
social attitudes or cognitive beliefs, the
expression of negative affect, or the display
of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards
members of a group on account of their
membership of that group.
Prejudice is difficult to define
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Good idea of what it is, but hard to define
operationally
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Difficult partly because it changes over time
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Common elements of definitions
1.
2.
3.
4.
It is an intergroup phenomenon
It is a negative orientation
It is a bad thing
It is an attitude
Elements of prejudice
Prejudice as an intergroup phenomenon
1.
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Always involves comparison/judgement based
on group membership (he is a martian; martians
are evil; thus he is evil)
Often involves comparisons between groups
(martians enslaved us 5000 years ago; therefore
we hate martians)
Rarely involve personal characteristics (mostly
based on stereotyping and other processes
which consider people as exemplars of groups
rather than unique entities)
Elements of prejudice
Prejudice as negative
orientation
2.
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Prejudice considered as being
against or opposed to something
Can't I be prejudiced in favour of a
group?
Social Problems school: social
psychology should be about solving
problems, so we deal with negative
aspects (but can’t we learn
something from positive
prejudices?)
Which would you
rather have as
a lecturer? Why?
Elements of prejudice
Prejudice as a bad thing
3.
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Social problems school: prejudice is bad because it
violates norms of thinking (it is rigid, overgeneralizes, etc.)
Del Boca’s (1981) argument against psychologists
calling prejudice ‘bad’:
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It is not scientifically parsimonious (gets you nowhere)
The processes that lead to prejudice are natural and
normal
There is no evidence to show that prejudice is more rigid
or pathological that other attitudes like liberalism
Elements of prejudice
Prejudice as an attitude
4.
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An attitude is an enduring structure which
includes emotional, cognitive and behavioral
aspects, and changes with experience
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Need to consider all three parts when discussing
prejudice
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Emotional – anger, fear, anxiety, etc
Cognitive – knowledge about the group, inferences
Behavioral – speech, avoidance and other external
behavior
Why worry about definitions?
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Defining prejudice seems to be a lot harder
than we thought!
Why so many definitions?
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‘All things to all people’
Perhaps too complex for a simple definition
Definitions are objects of research themselves
Depends on what you want to do with your
definition
Definitions are not incorrect, only incomplete –
each covers a particular aspect
The victims of prejudice
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Who are the victims of prejudice?
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Anything which identifies you as a member of
a group can make you a victim
Prejudice for nothing
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Very little is required to trigger
prejudice:
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Elliot (1968) – Prejudice in
groups of children created on
the basis on eye color
Tajfel (1971) – Prejudice in
groups of boys created by
whether they preferred Klee or
Kandinsky paintings
Billig & Tajfel (1973) – Prejudice
in groups formed by a coin toss
(minimalist group paradigm)
Are you a Klee guy
or a Kandinsky guy?
What do prejudiced people do?
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Allport's (1954) hierarchy of prejudiced
actions
Most prejudiced
Least prejudiced
Antilocution
Extermination
Avoidance
These actions only affect
the prejudiced person
Discrimination
Physical
Attack
These actions affect
the targeted person
Notes on Allport’s hierarchy
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Only a rough guide
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Does not give enough importance to considerations
of group action
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Actually many more types of actions
Useful idea (intensity of prejudice related to violence of
action)
Especially for slight actions
All actions seem to be done by individuals!
Prejudiced action is complex – personal prejudice
seems only to a minor determinant
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Group processes seem to bring about both prejudice and
action
The effects of prejudice
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What effects does prejudice have?
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On its victims
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Short term vs. long term effects
Does the personality of the victim determine the effects of
prejudice?
On the perpetrator
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Positive effects (rewards / psychological benefits)
Are there negative effects? (Is being prejudiced bad for
you?)
Allport’s 1954 model of
compensatory behaviour
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A model for predicting effects on victims of prejudice
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Short term effect of prejudice is always frustration
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Strongly individual based
Arises from helplessness in a particular situation
If maintained, will lead to sensitization and concern
Long term effects determined by personality
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Intropunitive [tends to blame self / internal locus of control]
Extropunitive [tends to blame outside / external locus of
control]
Allport’s 1954 effects model
Suffering from frustration induced by discrimination
Sensitization and concern
-Obsessive concern / Suspicion
-Slyness / Cunning
-Strengthening in-group ties
-Prejudice against other groups
-Aggression and revolt
-Enhanced striving
Extropunitive individuals
-Denial of group membership
-Withdrawal and passivity
-Clowning
-Self-hate
-In-group aggression
-Sympathy with all victims
-Symbolic status striving
-Neuroticism
Intropunitive individuals
Effects on the prejudiced person:
Positive effects
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Intra-personal effects (personal effects)
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Increase in status in own group
 provided prejudiced behaviour is a group norm
Create a sense of belonging
 emphasizes us/them distinction
Avoid a sense of inferiority “At least I’m not a…”
 Works because inferiority is a commonly perceived trait of
target groups
Material group gains
 Specifically for majority groups
 Spoils of discriminatory economic practices
Effects on the prejudiced person:
Negative effects
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Curtailment of individual personality
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Conflict with value systems
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Won't adopt tendencies/attitudes perceived as
opposed to the group
Fear of ostracism by group
Dilemmas set up by own values / group values
Especially true for religious beliefs
Restriction of talent or social advances
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Disallowing oneself privileges by own actions
Loss of freedom to pursue particular activities or hold
particular attitudes
Research on perpetrators:
Explanation or excuse?
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Lack of research on topics which
emphasize humanity of the
perpetrator
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Causes seen as excuses
Often works to demonize subjects
Research on prejudice itself brings
about victim/perpetrator group
evaluations and prejudice
What is the goal of research?
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To create a description of a
phenomenon
To add weight to a particular social
position
Does finding reasons for
prejudiced actions explain
or excuse them?
Measuring prejudice: Scales
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Many scales, eg
Duckitt's Subtle
Racism Scale;
Landis' Social
Climate Survey
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Likert type
statement
agreement scales
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27. Instructors predominantly used
male pronouns in class
44. Racial/ethinc jokes were
frequently heard at meetings of
campus social organizations.
69. A white student said to a friend,
"this would be a good school if we
didn't have all those foreign
students around.“
100. I dislike having an instructor
of a race other than mine.
116. Minorities shouldn't feel
offended by the symbols (eg. flags
or songs) of school spirit even if
those symbols have been
associated in the past with racial
segregation.
Examples from Duckitt’s scale
Is prejudice on the decline?
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Percentage of subjects selecting negative
traits to describe black Americans (student
sample) (Davidio & Fazio 1992)
Trait
1933
1967
1990
Superstitious
84
13
3
Lazy
75
26
4
Ignorant
38
11
5
Physically dirty
17
3
0
Unreliable
12
3
4
Is prejudice on the decline?
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Percentage endorsing prejudiced attitude
statements (US surveys) (Davidio & Fazio 1992)
Statement
Object to family member bringing
home black friend for dinner
Agree that there should be laws
against mixed marriages between
blacks and whites
Think that blacks and whites
should go to separate schools
1963
1976
1985
52
26
20
69
35
28
38
20
7
Hang on just a cotton-pickin’…
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Is there an associated increase in tolerance?
Would you object to this person moving in as you
neighbour? (1992) [percentage saying yes]
Minorities
(black, hispanic, asian, etc)
10%
AIDS sufferers
26%
Homosexuals
28%
“Emotionally unstable”
25%
What is going on?
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Changes in societal norms have led to
prejudice not being expressed; buf beliefs still
exist
Naturalistic studies have shown
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Helping behaviours are still mostly aimed at own
ethnic group.
In situations where contact was necessary
between donor and recipient (and refusal would
have been more visible), only 30% had owngroup bias.
Prejudice hunting in the world
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Questionnaires don’t work anymore!
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Time to get sneaky
The ‘bogus pipeline’ study (Sigall & Page, 1971)
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Connect subjects to a machine which “can tell
measure their true feelings”
Tell them the study is about something else
Tell subjects you need to “calibrate the machine”, and
that when you ask them a question, the subject must
predict what the machine will say.
In the “calibration stage” ask them about their
prejudiced beliefs
Notes on the Bogus Pipeline
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No shame in admitting true
feelings (“the machine can
tell anyway”)
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Reduces social responsibility,
so prejudice becomes OK
Results from the pipeline:
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Not connected to machine:
Respond with positive
statements to blacks and
whites
Connected to the machine:
Tended to respond about
blacks in more negative terms
Am impressively
useless machine like a
polygraph works well
for bogus pipeline
studies
Another sneaky idea:
Interethnic proximity
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lnterethnic proximity (Hendricks & Bootzin, 1976)
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Where will people sit in relation to members of
other groups?
Subjects (white) taken to a waiting room. All
the chairs were empty except for one other
“subject” [confederate] - either a black person
or a white person
Notes on Hendricks & Bootzin
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Results: When directly
asked, ethnicity had
no effect (social
desirability was
active).
But — subjects sat, on
average, one seat
further from black
confederate than from
the white (They didn't
realize they were
being watched).
Hendricks & Bootzin’s study tried
to recreate a natural setting in which
to observe, to reduce the effect of the
social desirability effect.
How do we explain these
results?
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Kelman (1961): We weigh the cost:benefit
ratio of acting on internalized prejudice rather
than in an externally desirable way.
This is why prejudice is not expressed in
public - we gain a bigger reward by acting not
prejudiced.
But, make it rewarding to act in a prejudiced
way - and prejudice can be expressed in
public more than in private.
Prejudice has a new face
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"red-neck prejudice" is dying out - but it is being
replaced. By symbolic or indirect expressions
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“expression in terms of abstract ideological symbols
and symbolic behaviour that [American] blacks are
violating cherished values and making illegitimate
demands for changes in the racial status quo”
(McConahay & Hough, 1976)
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The amazing “National Security” argument (racial
profiling, Guantanamo Bay detentions, etc)
Why the change?
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Changing societal norms
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Feel we should not violate abstract meritocratic values.
Increasing rewards for not expressing prejudice
Is it symbolic racism to oppose a policy which
specifically gives benefits only to one race?
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The impossible question
Think about how you would feel depending on which race
gets the benefits
How does history, morality, social values fit into this?