C82SAD Prejudice and Discrimination

What is Prejudice?

• Prejudice: An unfavorable attitude towards a social group and its members

• Discrimination: Singling out members of a social group for prejudice based on attributes of their group membership

• Dehumanisation: Stripping people of their dignity and humanity

Prejudice and the Bystander Effect

0102030405060708090

100

White Black

Race of victim

No otherpotentialhelpersTwo otherpotentialhelpers

Per

cen

tag

e o

f p

arti

cip

ants

off

erin

g t

oai

d a

pp

aren

t vi

ctim

Source: Gaertner and Dovidio (1977)

Sex Stereotypes and Discrimination

• Sex stereotyping – social stereotypes of women as “nice and incompetent and men as competent but not so nice” prevail across cultures and in both genders! (Fiske, 1998)

• But research suggests that people do not actually describe themselves in terms of this sex stereotype (Martin, 1987) (e.g., women and sex-discrimination)

• People actually represent the sexes as ‘subtypes’: Housewife Businessman Sexy woman Macho man Career woman Feminist/athlete/lesbian

Men and women generally see women as more homogenous than men (Lorenzi-Cioldi et al., 1995)

Sex Stereotypes and Discrimination• Why are there these differential stereotypes

which prevail across genders?• Sex roles: Behaviour viewed as sex-

stereotypically appropriate• Socialisation into sex roles – so do sex

stereotypes reflect actual differences in psychological factors or role assignment?

• Very few differences on psychological dimensions, but large differences in terms of perceptions of sex roles

• Therefore certain roles are ‘sex typed’ (Eagly & Steffen, 1984)

• E.g. role assignment in jobs

Sex Stereotypes and Discrimination

Women Men

Restaurant servers Lawyers

Telephone operators Dentists

Secretaries Lorry drivers

Nurses Accountants

Babysitters Business executives

Dental hygienists Engineers

Librarian

Nursery school teachers

Sex Stereotypes and Discrimination

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

Female Male

Sex of Target

Homemaker

Employee

No information

Ra

tin

gs

of

Ta

rge

t

Morefeminine

Moremasculine

Source: Eagly and Steffen (1984)

Sex Stereotypes and Discrimination

• Glass-ceiling effect: Stereotypes prevent promotion due to competence perceptions e.g. female in upper management, males in flight attendants

• Maintaining sex stereotypes: Media largely responsible – unsubtle vs. subtle

• Face-ism: Media depiction gives greater prominence to the head and less prominence to the body for men, but vice-versa for women (Archer et al., 1983)

Sex Stereotypes and Attributions

Successful task performance By a

WOMAN attributed to luck or an easy task

By a MAN attributed to ability or high level of effort

Performance viewed as less deserving of reward or recognition

Performance viewed as more deserving of reward or recognition

6

7

8

9

10

Masculine Feminine

Task

Female actor

Male actor

Sex Stereotypes and AttributionR

ati

ng

s o

f T

arg

et

More toability

More toluck

Source: Deaux and Emswiller (1974)

Sex Stereotypes and Discrimination

• Illegality of sexism means sex stereotypes are more subtle (Glick & Fiske, 1996)

• Ambivalent sexism inventory. Sexists hold benevolent and hostile attitudes towards different ‘subtypes’

• Benevolent attitudes towards traditional women• Hostile attitudes towards non-traditional women

• Recent reviews suggest that there are no longer tendencies to devalue women’s work and a positive female stereotype is emerging (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994)

Racism

• Racism: Prejudice and discrimination against people based on ethnicity or race

• Much research focused on anti-black attitudes among whites in the United States

• Dramatic reduction in unfavorable attitudes since 1930’s

• Similar reduction toward ethnic minorities in Britain and Western Europe

Racism

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1933 1951 1967 1982 1993

Year

‘Superstitious’

‘Lazy’

‘Ignorant’

Perc

en

tag

e o

f w

hit

e r

esp

on

den

ts s

ele

ctin

g t

rait

Source: Dovidio et al. (1996)

‘New’ Racism• Racial stereotypes have not gone away but changed• Devine and Elliot (1995): 45% of white Americans

perceived African-Americans as lazy and 25% characterised the group as athletic, rhythmic, low intelligence, criminal, hostile, and loud

• Theories of new racism suggest that people experience conflict between prejudiced attitudes and modern egalitarian values

• E.g. Gaertner and Dovidio’s (1986) notion of aversive racism suggests that racist attitudes are expressed when egalitarian values are weak and people are in homogenous groups where prejudiced values are accepted

‘New’ Racism

500

550

600650

700

750

800

850

900950

1000

Negative Positive

Words

Black targetWhite target

Reacti

on

tim

e (

mil

lise

con

ds)

Source: Gaertner and McLaughlin (1983)

Forms of Discrimination

• Reluctance to help: passively or actively declining to help other groups improve their position in society (e.g., Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977)

• Tokenism: Practice of publicly making small concessions to a minority group to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination

• Reverse discrimination: Practice of publicly being prejudiced in favour of a minority in order to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination

Tokenism

70

75

80

85

90

95

Organisationalcommitment

Jobsatisfaction

Dependent measure

Hired as tokenwomanHired on ability

Rep

ort

ed

com

mit

men

t/sa

tisf

acti

on

Source: Gaertner and McLaughlin (1983)

Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination

• Mere exposure effect: Zajonc (1968)• People’s attitudes towards other improve with

direct contact and familiarity (Perlman & Oskamp, 1971)

• Tajfel (1981) believes this is not the case and that prejudices are learned early in life before exposure

• Barrett and Short (1992) found that children had clear preferences for European nations despite not having contact with anyone from those cultures

• Parental modeling, instrumental/operant conditioning and classical conditioning may be responsible for these learned predjudices

Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination

• Frustration aggression hypothesis: Dollard et al. (1939)

• All frustration leads to aggression and all aggression arises from frustration

• Catharsis was the reason why people performed psychological activities and if frustrated these had to be vented elsewhere e.g. frustrationaggression

• Target of aggression usually source of frustration but if unavailable a specific ‘scapegoat’ is targeted – process known as displacement

• Research is inconclusive as to whether displacement always occurs, as some research has shown a generalisation response – direction of anger towards irrelevant other stimuli (Horowitz, 1973)

• Critics of frustration-aggression hypothesis suggest that it does not take into account interpersonal communication – people are passive victims of individual frustration and anger

Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination

• The authoritarian personality: Adorno et al. (1950)• Some people had ‘prejudiced’ or authoritarian personalities that

caused discrimination• Characteristics:

– Respect for authority– Obsession with rank and status– Tendency to displace anger and resentment onto weaker

groups– Intolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity– Need for a rigidly defined world– Problems achieving intimacy

• Developed through excessively harsh and disciplinarian practices to secure emotional dependence

• While it has attracted a lot of research, research has shown few differences between prejudiced and non-prejudiced people on authoritarian personality traits (Pettigrew, 1958; Minard, 1952)

• Fails to account for situational factors – cultures of prejudice, relative deprivation

Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination

• Dogmatism and closed-mindedness: Rokeach (1948, 1960)

• A more generalised ‘syndrome of intolerance’ – cognitive style rather than traits per se called dogmatism or closed-mindedness

• Characterised by being rigid and intolerant and predisposes people to be prejudiced

• Correlates well with authoritarianism and therefore suffers from same limitations – ignores situational and contextual factors (Billig, 1976)

Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination

• Belief congruence theory: Rokeach (1960)• Similar beliefs promote liking and social harmony among

people while dissimilar beliefs promote dislike and prejudice• “Belief is more important than ethnic or racial membership

as a determinant of social discrimination” (Rokeach, 1960, p. 135)

• Research requiring people to report attitudes toward people of different race and similar or dissimilar beliefs support this hypothesis (e.g., Rokeach & Mezei, 1966)

• But states that in situations of ‘institutionalised’ prejudice belief congruence plays no part

• Rokeach’s (1960) research designs might blur the boundaries between beliefs and race – no clear consistency

Belief Congruence Theory

Institutionalised or socially sanctioned prejudice?

Interpersonal assessment of belief dominance

Negative attitude, dislike

Positive attitude, attraction

Friendly relations

Yes

No

Prejudice

Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination

• Social dominance theory: Pratto (1999)• Prejudice is attributed to an individual’s

acceptance of a ideology that legitimises ingroup-serving hierarchy and domination, and rejects egalitarian ideologies

• An ‘individual differences’ explanations – people tend to desire their own group to be dominant and therefore have a high ‘social dominance orientation’

• This legitimises prejudice towards outgroups as the ingroup is perceived as dominant