Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice is an attitude (usually negative) toward the members of some group, based solely on their membership in that group. A person who is prejudiced toward some social group tends to evaluate its members in a specific manner (usually negatively) merely because they belong to a positive group.
Discrimination refers to negative actions toward the groups that are the targets of prejudice.
When prejudice is defined as a special type of attitude to important implications follow. First attitudes often function as schema s-cognitive frameworks for organizing interpreting and recalling information. Thus individuals who are prejudiced toward particular groups tend to process information about these groups differently from the way they process information about other groups e.g. information relating to the prejudiced group is often given more attention and processed more carefully than information not relating to it. As a result of such effects, prejudice becomes a kind of closed cognitive loop that tends to increase in strength over time. Second as an attitude, prejudice also involves negative feelings or emotions on the part of prejudiced people when they are in the presence of or merely thinks about members of the group they dislike Bodenhausen Kramer and Susser 1994.
Prejudice: Why it persists
Research findings point to conclusions as to why people form and hold prejudiced news.
- Individuals hold prejudiced news because doing so allows them to bolster their own self-image Steele, Spencer and Lynch (1993). When prejudiced individuals put down a group toward whom they hold negative views this allows them to affirm their own self worth to feel superior in various ways. For some people prejudice may play an important role in protecting or enhancing their self-concept. Higgins (1996)
A second reason for holding prejudiced news is that doing so can save us considerable cognitive effort. Stereotypes in particular seem to serve this function. Once stereotypes are formed we don’t have to bother engaging in careful systematic processing so our strong tendency to save mental effort seem to be another reason why prejudices are formed and persist.
Discrimination: Prejudice in Action
Discrimination: negative behaviours directed toward members of social groups who are the object of prejudice. Swim et al 1995 suggest that blatant forms of discrimination have decreased in recent years in many countries. Extreme expressions of prejudice such as hate crimes – crimes based on racial, ethnic and other types of prejudice – continue to occur disturbing frequency. A recent e.g. is the tragic attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center & Pentagon on Sep 11 in 2001 in USA. These events are still relatively rare, & in general prejudice finds expressing in much more subtle & disguised forms of discrimination.
- Modern Racism
More subtle forms which social psychologists call modern racism have replaced the old fashioned blatant racism. It involves concealing prejudice from others in public settings, but expressing bigoted attitudes when it is safe to do so e.g. in the company of close friends and family members known to share these views. It also involves attributing various bigoted views to sources other than prejudice, even though they actually do stem from this source.
Read on: Measuring implicit racial attitudes: From the ‘Bogus Pipeline’ to the ‘Bona fide pipeline’.
2. Tokenism.
Tokenism involves performing trivial positive actions for the targets of prejudice & then using these actions as an excuse or justification for later forms of discrimination. Whenever it has occurred it has shown to have at least two negative effects,
i)It lets prejudiced people off the hook; they can point to tokenistic actions as public proof that they aren’t really bigoted.
ii)It can be damaging to the self-esteem and confidence of the targets of prejudice.
The Origins of Prejudice
The realistic conflict theory by Bobo (1983) states that prejudice stems from competition among social groups over valued commodities or opportunities. In short prejudice develops out of the struggle over jobs, adequate housing, good schools, and other desirable outcomes. The theory further suggest that as such competition continues, the members of the groups involved come to view each other in increasingly negative terms White (1977). They label each other as ‘enemies’ view their own group as morally superior, & draw the boundaries between themselves & their opponents more and more firmly. Even worse such competition often leads to direct and sometimes violent conflict.
Early Experience: The Role of Social Learning
This explanation suggests that prejudice is learned & that it develops in much the same manner as other attitudes. According to this social learning view, children acquire negative attitudes towards various social groups because they hear such views expressed by parents, friends, teachers & others and because they are directly rewarded for adopting these views.
Social norms – rules within a given group suggesting what actions or attitudes are appropriate – are also important (Pettigrew 1969)
Mass media also play a role in the development of prejudice. Until recently members of various racial and ethnic minorities were shown infrequently in movies or on T.V. & when they appear, they were often cast in low status or comic roles. But this has changed greatly in recent years.
Social Categorization: The Us-Versus-Them- Effect & the ‘Ultimate’ Attribution Error
Social categorization is the tendency to divide the world into 2 separate categories our in-group (us) & various out groups (them). Such distinctions are based on many dimensions including race, religion, sex, age, ethnic background, occupation and income.
Sharply contrasting feelings and beliefs are usually attached to members of one’s in-group & members of various out-groups. People in the us category are viewed in favorable terms, while those in the them category are perceived more negatively. Out-group members are assumed to possess more undesirable traits, are perceived as being more alike than members of the in-group and are often disliked. Judd, Ryan & Parke 1991, Lambert 1995. The in-group /out-group distinction also affects attribution- the ultimate attribution error is the tendency to make more favourable and flattering attributes about members of one’s own group than about members of other groups.
How does Social Categorization Lead To Prejudice?
The answer lies in the social identity theory, which suggest that individuals seek to enhance their self-esteem by identifying with specific social groups. This tactic succeeds however only to the extent that the persons involved perceive these groups as somehow superior to other competing groups. Each group seeks to view itself as different from and also better than its rivals & prejudice arises out of this clash of social perceptions.
Cognitive Sources of Prejudice.
Stereotypes Explicit & Implicit
Stereotypes are cognitive frameworks consisting of knowledge & beliefs about specific social groups & the typical ‘modal’ trait supposedly possessed by persons belonging to these groups. Stereotypes exert strong effects on how we process social information. Information relevant to an activated stereotype is often processed more quickly & remembered better than information unrelated to it. Dovidio et al (1986). Similarly stereotypes lead people holding them to pay more attention to specific types of information – usually information consistent with the stereotypes. And when information inconsistent with the stereotype does manage to enter consciousness it may be actively refuted or changed in subtle ways that make it seem consistent with stereotype Kunda & Oleson (1995)
Implicit Stereotypes: When Beliefs we don’t recognize influence our behaviour our behaviour.
Racial attitudes are often implicit: they exist & can influence many forms of behaviour, even when the people holding them are unaware of their existence or their impact on behaviour. The same seems to be true for stereotypes. Greenwald & Benaji (1995) noted that we often hold implicit stereotypes that we can’t identify easily through introspection, but that still influence our belief about the characteristics possessed by members of a particular social group racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes of which we are largely unaware can be activated by various stimuli (e.g. members of the groups to which these stereotypes apply) and once they are activated these are activated these stereotype influence our thinking, decisions & even overt behaviour concerning people to whom these stereotypes apply. Implicit stereotypes are something we should definitely not overlook in our efforts to understand the basic mature of prejudice and discrimination.
Other Cognitive Mechanism in Prejudice: illusory Correlations & out-group Homogeneity.
Illusory correlations – the tendency to overestimate the rate of negative behaviours in relatively small groups. The term makes a great deal of sense because such effects involve perceiving links between variables that aren’t really there-
Illusory correlations have important implications for prejudice. They help explain why negative behaviours and tendencies are often attributed by majority group members to the members of various minority groups For example social psychologists have suggested that illusory correlation effects help explain why many white persons in the US overestimate crime rates among African American males (Hamilton & Sherman 1989).
Why do such effects occur? One explanation is based on the distinctiveness of infrequent event or stimuli. According to this view infrequent events are distinctive readily noticed. As such they are encoded more extensively in memory. When judgments about the groups involved are made at later times the distinctive events come readily to mind & this leads to over-interpretation of their importance.
In-group Differentiation Out-group Homogeneity
Illusion of out-group homogeneity- the tendency to perceive members of out-groups as were similar to one another than the members of one’s own in-group shown by remarks such as “you know what they’re like they are all the same.”
In-group differentiation: the tendency to perceive members of our own group as showing much larger differences from one another than do those of other groups.
What accounts for the tendency to perceive members of other groups as more homogeneous than members of our own group?
- One explanation is that we have great deal of experience with members of our own group and so are exposed to a wider range of individual variation within that group
- In contrast we have less experience with members of other groups and hence less exposure to their individual variations Linville et al (1989).
- The tendency to perceive other groups as more homogenous than our own can play an important role in prejudice and in the persistence of negative stereotypes.
Techniques for countering effects of prejudice
1. Breaking the cycle of prejudice: On Learning Not to Hate
We must discourage parents and other adults from training children in bigotry. How can we induce parents who are themselves highly prejudiced to encourage unbiased views among their children?
A key initial step therefore is somehow convincing parents that the problem exists. Once they come face to face with their own prejudices, many do seem willing to modify their words & behaviour so as to encourage lower levels of prejudice among their children.
Another argument used to shift parents in the direction of teaching their children tolerance rather than prejudice lies in the fact that prejudice harms those who hold such views Davidio & Gaertner (9193). People who are prejudiced live in a world filled with needless fear, anxieties, & anger. They fear attack from presumably dangerous social groups, they worry about the health risks stemming from contact with such groups and they experience anger and emotional turmoil over what they view as unjustified incursions (sudden attach on a place by foreign armies) by these groups into their neighborhood, schools or offices. Their enjoyment of everyday life activities itself is reduced by their prejudice Harris et al (1992)
Because parents want to do everything they can to further their children’s well-being, calling these costs to their attention may be effective in discouraging them from transmitting prejudice views to their offspring.
Direct inter-group contact
Contact hypothesis: the view that increased contact between members of various social groups can be effective in reducing prejudice between them. Such efforts seem to succeed only when contact takes place under specific favourable conditions.
Extended-contact hypothesis: a view suggesting that simply knowing that members of one’s own group have formed close friendships with members of an out-group can reduce prejudice against that group.
Recategorization: Redrawing the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’
Recategorization: shifts in the boundary between an individual’s in-group ‘us’ and some out-group ‘them’. As a result of such recategorization, persons formerly viewed as out-group members may now be viewed as belonging to the in-group.
A theory proposed by Gaetner & colleagues 1989 1993a suggest that recategorization can be used to reduce prejudice. This theory is known as the common in-group identity model suggest that to the extent that individuals in different groups view themselves as members of a single social entity, positive contacts between them will increase and their inter-group bias will be reduced.