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- Stereotypes are generalizations about groups that are
often applied to individual group members. Prejudice
involves a negative attitude and emotional
response to members of a group. Discrimination
involves negative behavior toward an individual
because of the person's membership in a group.
- Blatant, explicit racism in much of the world is now
relatively rare. But more subtle modern racism does
exist, whereby people may hold overtly egalitarian
attitudes and values while at the same time unconsciously
having negative attitudes and exhibiting
more subtle forms of prejudice toward members of
certain groups. Benevolent racism and sexism consist
of attitudes the individual thinks of as favorable
toward a group but that have the effect of supporting
traditional, subservient roles for members of
oppressed groups.
- In recent years, there have been successful efforts to
measure people's true attitudes with measures that
are not easy to fake. One of these is the implicit association
test, which compares reaction times when
grouping outgroup pictures (or words) and positive
items together, with reaction times when grouping
outgroup pictures (or words) and negative items
together. Another implicit measure involves priming
with a picture of a member of some group. If the
prime increases the time it takes to recognize subsequently
presented positive words, and decreases the
time it takes to recognize subsequently presented
negative words, this is an indication of prejudice
toward the group.
- We discussed three different approaches to prejudice
and discrimination: the economic perspective, the
motivational perspective, and the cognitive
perspective.
- One version of the economic perspective on prejudice
and discrimination is realistic group conflict theory,
which reflects the fact that groups are sometimes in
competition for scarce resources and that this can
lead to prejudice and discrimination. The classic
Robbers Cave experiment put two groups of boys in
competition at a camp. Soon the boys were expressing
open hostility toward one another. When the
boys were brought together in noncompetitive situations
where they had to cooperate to achieve super-ordinate
goals—that is, goals that could only be
achieved when the two groups worked together—
the hostility dissipated.
- The motivational perspective on prejudice and discrimination
reflects the sad fact that sometimes
poor relations between groups occur simply because
there are two groups and a we/they opposition
results. This occurs even in the minimal group paradigm,
wherein people find out they are members of
one of two groups that have been defined in a trivial
and arbitrary way. They will favor members of
their own group over members of the other group,
even when it actually costs their group something to
"beat" the opposition.
- Social identity theory attempts to explain ingroup
favoritism, maintaining that self-esteem is derived
from group membership and group success.
- Frustration-aggression theory accounts for some of the
most dangerous behavior toward outgroups. When
people are frustrated in their attempt to reach some
goal—for example, the goal of economic prosperity—
they often lash out at less powerful individuals
or groups. Challenges to a person's self-esteem can
have similar effects, and experiments have shown
that people express more antagonism toward outgroup
members when they have suffered a blow to
their self-esteem.
- The cognitive perspective on prejudice and discrimination
focuses on stereotypes, which are a form of
categorization. People rely on them all the time, but
especially when they are tired or overloaded.
- Several construal processes lead to the construction
of inaccurate stereotypes. Because we know our own
groups best, we tend to assume that outgroups are
more homogeneous than ours are. We also often
engage in biased information processing, seeing those
aspects of other groups that confirm our stereotypes
and failing to see facts that are inconsistent with
them. Moreover, we often unknowingly create self-fulfilling
prophecies—applying stereotypes to members
of outgroups and then behaving toward them
in such a way as to bring out the very behaviors that
fit our stereotypes.
- Distinctive groups (because they are in the minority)
tend to be associated with distinctive (because they
are rare) behaviors. This sort of paired distinctiveness
results in our attributing properties to groups that
are illusory.
- Encountering contradictory evidence about groups
may not change our ideas about them because we
treat the evidence as if it were merely an exception
that proves the rule. We tend to code favorable evidence
about ingroup members at high levels of generality
and the same sort of evidence about outgroup
members at low levels of generality. The converse is
true for unfavorable evidence. Moreover, behavior
consistent with a stereotype is often attributed to
the dispositions of the group members, whereas
behavior that is inconsistent with a stereotype is
often attributed to the situation.
- We sometimes respond to outgroup members reflexively,
relying on automatic processes wherein prejudice
is unleashed outside of our awareness.
Sometimes these automatic negative reactions can
be corrected by conscious, controlled processes.
- Members of stigmatized groups suffer not just from
prejudice and discrimination but also from attributional
ambiguity. They have to ask whether others'
negative or positive behavior toward them is due to
prejudice or to some factor having nothing to do
with their group membership.
- The performance of members of stigmatized groups
can also be impaired by stereotype threat—that is, the
fear that one will confirm the stereotypes that others
have regarding some salient group of which one is a
member.
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