Chapter 2

Prejudice: Causes & Cures

Chapter Outline
I. Prejudice: A Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon

Prejudice: A Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon

Prejudice is ubiquitous, affecting all of usmajority group members as well as minorities. Nationality, gender, sexual preference, religion, age, and even profession or hobbies can leave us vulnerable to prejudice.

Chapter Outline
II. Prejudice, Stereotyping, & Discrimination Defined

Prejudice, Stereotyping & Discrimination Defined

Prejudice is an attitude, made up of three components:
An affective or emotional component, representing the type of emotion linked with the attitude (e.g. anger, warmth). A cognitive component, involving the beliefs or thoughts that make up the attitude. A behavioural component, relating to ones action.

Prejudice, Stereotyping & Discrimination Defined

Prejudice: The Affective Component

Prejudice :
Refers to a general attitude structure and its affective (emotional) component.

Can involve either positive or negative affect.

Usually is a hostile or negative attitude: toward a distinguishable group of people,

based solely on their membership in that group.

Prejudice, Stereotyping & Discrimination Defined

Stereotypes: The Cognitive Component

A stereotype is a generalization: about a group of people,

in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group,
regardless of actual variation among the members.

Prejudice, Stereotyping & Discrimination Defined

Discrimination is:

Discrimination: The Behavioural Component

The behavioural component of prejudice.

An unjustified, negative, or harmful action:

towards a member of a group, simply because of the persons membership in the group.

Chapter Outline
III. What Causes Prejudice?

 According to social identity theory, other people are seen as belonging: either to our group (known as in-group) or to a different group (known as the outgroup). In-group bias is the tendency in humans to evaluate in-group members more positively than out-group members.

The Way We Think: Social Cognition

What Causes Prejudice?

The Way We Think: Social Cognition

Out-group homogeneity is the perception that those in the out-group are more similar (homogeneous) to each other than: they really are.

What Causes Prejudice?

the members of the in-group.

What Causes Prejudice?

In order to explain how stereotypical beliefs affect cognitive processing, a two-step model (Divine, 2003) suggests that: first, the automatic process happens, in which the stereotypes are automatically triggered, and then, the controlled process happens, in which the person decides whether or not to accept the stereotype.

What We Believe: Stereotypes

What Causes Prejudice?

What We Believe: Stereotypes

The level of prejudice: does not solely depend on stereotypes about a group, but also depends on metastereotypes, a persons beliefs regarding the stereotypes that outgroup members hold about their own group.

The Way We Feel: Affect & Mood

Research suggests that mood affects prejudice:

What Causes Prejudice?

People in a good mood feel more favourably toward other racial or ethnic groups than do people in a bad mood.

The Way We Assign Meaning: Attributional Biases

The ultimate attribution error refers to our tendency to make :

What Causes Prejudice?

Internal, dispositional attributions for the negative behaviours of out-group members.

External, situational attributions for their positive behaviours.

The Way We Allocate Resources: Realistic Conflict Theory

Realistic conflict theory suggests that limited resources lead to:

What Causes Prejudice?

Conflict between groups.

Increased prejudice and discrimination.

The Way We Allocate Resources: Realistic Conflict Theory

Mutual interdependence is a situation in which: Two or more groups need each other, and must depend on each other, in order to accomplish a goal that is important to each group.

What Causes Prejudice?

The Way We Conform: Normative Rules

By far the greatest determinant of prejudice is conformity to social norms.

What Causes Prejudice?

Many people hold prejudiced attitudes and engage in discriminatory behaviour in order to conform to, or fit in with, the prevailing majority view of their culture (Pettigrew, 1991).

The Way We Conform: Normative Rules

As the norm swings more toward tolerance for certain out-groups, many people become more careful, outwardly acting unprejudiced but inwardly maintaining their prejudiced views. This phenomenon is called modern prejudice.

What Causes Prejudice?

Chapter Outline
IV. Individual Differences in Prejudice

Individual Differences in Prejudice

Several individual difference variables are associated with prejudice. Being prejudiced against out-groups is positively correlated with scores on these traits: Subscribing to the belief in a just world. Right-wing authoritarianism.

Religious fundamentalism
Social dominance.

Chapter Outline
V. Effects of Stereotyping, Prejudice, & Discrimination

Effects of Stereotyping, Prejudice & Discrimination

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
When a member of a disadvantaged group is mistreated by a member of a majority group,
the disadvantaged person is unlikely to perform well, thereby confirming the majority group members negative stereotype and perpetuating the discrimination.

Effects of Stereotyping, Prejudice & Discrimination

Stereotype Threat
Stereotype threat is the apprehension experienced by members of a minority group that they might behave in a manner that confirms an existing cultural stereotype about their own group.

Effects of Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Self-Blaming Attributions for Discrimination

Victims of discrimination may blame themselves for their poor performance.

This may help the victims to preserve:

a sense of social acceptance. the perception of control.

Chapter Outline
VI. How Can Prejudice & Discrimination Be Reduced?

How Can Prejudice & Discrimination Be Reduced?

Learning Not to Hate

Prejudice can be reduced by having: People experience what it is like to be the victim of discrimination. Children teach each other not to be prejudiced.

How Can Prejudice & Discrimination Be Reduced?

The Contact Hypothesis

An effective way of reducing prejudice is through contactbringing in-group and out-group members together. This is known as the contact hypothesis.

How Can Prejudice & Discrimination Be Reduced?

The Contact Hypothesis

According to the contact hypothesis, contact situations must include: Mutual interdependence. A common goal. Equal status of group members. Informal, interpersonal contact. Multiple contacts. Social norms of equality.

Cooperation & Interdependence: The Jigsaw Classroom

The jigsaw classroom is a classroom setting designed to reduce prejudice and to raise the self-esteem of children by: Placing them in small desegregated groups.

How Can Prejudice & Discrimination Be Reduced?

Making each child dependent on the other children in the group to:
learn the course material, and do well in the class.

BIASIS
Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of (possibly equally valid) alternatives

Types of biases
How biases affect belief formation, business decisions, and scientific research : a) Anchoring the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

 Bandwagon effect the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Bias blind spot the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people Confirmation bias the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions

 Framing effect drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented. Selective perception the tendency for expectations to affect perception. Wishful thinking the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality

Biases in probability and belief

Ambiguity effect the tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown Forward Bias - the tendency to create models based on past data which are validated only against that past data.

 Gambler's fallacy the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the Law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads." The Gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy (because its most famous example happened in a Monte Carlo casino in 1913) or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process then these deviations are likely to be evened out by opposite deviations in the future. For example, if a fair coin is tossed repeatedly and tails comes up a larger number of times than is expected, a gambler may incorrectly believe that this means that heads is more likely in future tosses

 Hindsight bias sometimes called the "Iknew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable Stereotyping expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Social biases
Egocentric bias occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would. Halo effect the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others' perceptions of them Herd instinct common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.

Social biases
Trait ascription bias the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.

Memory errors biases

Consistency bias incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behavior as resembling present attitudes and behavior. Egocentric bias recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g. remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as being bigger than it was. False memory confusion of imagination with memory, or the confusion of true memories with false memories. Hindsight bias filtering memory of past events through present knowledge, so that those events look more predictable than they actually were; also known as the "Iknew-it-all-along effect."

Rosy retrospection the tendency to rate past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.

Self-serving bias perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones.
Suggestibility a form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.

Telescoping effect the effect that recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
Von Restorff effect the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.