Contemporary Forms of Prejudice

1. Contemporary Forms of Prejudice Miles Hewstone, University of Oxford Equality & Diversity Forum. EOC, London, November 28, 2005

2. Outline • Prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination • Forms of prejudice • Measurement of prejudice • Explicit vs implicit measures • Eradicating prejudice • Intergroup contact • Prejudice in the brain • The new social neuroscience • Conclusions

3. Prejudice, Stereotypes & Discrimination • Prejudice: • An unjustifiable negative attitude toward a group and its individual members • Stereotype: • A belief about the personal attitudes of a group of people. Stereotypes can be over generalized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information • Discrimination: • Unjustifiable negative behaviour towards a group or its members

4. Modern Conceptions of Prejudice • Prejudice as intergroup emotion(Smith, 1993) • Attempt to account for wide range of feelings about out-groups, and ways in which they are dehumanized, and discriminated against • Stereotype Content Model (Fiske et al., 2002) • Blatant and subtle prejudice (Pettigrew & Meertens, 1985) • Explicit and implicit biases (Hewstone et al., 2002) • Aversive racism (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000) • (Conceptions of prejudice reflected in how prejudice is measured)

5. Prejudice as Emotion • Focus: What are the emotional consequences of classifying others as ‘out-groups’? • 5 specific emotions most likely to be aroused in an intergroup context: • fear, disgust, contempt, anger, jealousy

6. Intergroup Emotions and Action Tendencies(Devos et al., 2002; Mackie & Smith, 2002; Mackie et al., 2000) • More differentiated view of out-group emotions: • Specific emotions==>perceptions of the out-group==>action tendencies • Fear and disgust imply avoidance • Contempt and anger imply movement against outgroup • Examples of intergroup emotion-action links: • An out-group that violates in-group norms may elicit disgust and avoidance • An out-group seen as benefiting unjustly (e.g., from government programs) may elicit resentment and actions aimed at reducing benefits • An out-group seen as threatening elicits fear and hostile actions

7. The Stereotype Content Model(Fiske et al., 2002) • Two fundamental dimensions: warmth & competence • Entirely positive stereotypes (high warmth/high competence) => in-groups • Entirely negative stereotypes (low warmth/low competence • welfare recipients, homeless people • Warmth and competence often negatively correlated, • => Stereotypes with a mixed content: • Paternalistic stereotypes (high warmth/low competence) • e.g., elderly, disabled people, some gender stereotypes • Envious stereotypes (low warmth/high competence) • Asians, Jews • The 4 different combinations of warmth and competence are associated with different intergroup emotions

8. Stereotype Content Model(Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 1999; 2002) • Low competence, Low warmth -> Contempt • (e.g., poor people, welfare recipients, gypsies) • Low competence, High warmth -> Pity • (e.g., older people, disabled people) • High competence, Low warmth -> Envy • (e.g., Jews, Asians, female professionals) • High competence, High warmth -> Pride • (e.g., ingroup, close allies, reference groups)

9. Blatant vs Subtle Prejudice(Pettigrew & Meertens, 1985) • Blatant Prejudice Items • ‘Would you personally mind or not mind if a suitably qualified Asian were appointed as your boss?’ • ‘Would you personally mind or not mind if one of your close relatives were to marry a person of a different religion?’ • Subtle Prejudice Items • ‘If Asians living in Britain would only try harder, they could be as well off as white people’ • ‘Asians living in Britain have values and behaviours different from those required to be good British citizens’

10. Prejudice: Out of Sight, still in Mind? • Explicit prejudice operates in a conscious mode and is typically assessed by traditional, self-report measures • Implicit prejudice can take the form of automatic activation of negative traits in memory • Functions in an unconscious fashion • Without the perceiver’s awareness or intention. • Whilst explicit displays of prejudice may be less prevalent implicit prejudice may still occur

11. Priming(Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986) • Lexical decision task: Can the following traits ‘ever be true’ or are they ‘always false’ with regard to preceding category? • Categories = black and white • Traits = positive and negative • White participants • Reaction times measured after prime (word ‘black’ vs ‘white’)

12. Adapted from Dovidio et al. (1986)

13. The Implicit Association Test (IAT)(Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998) • We make connections more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds • It should be more difficult, and thus take longer, to produce evaluatively incompatible responses than compatible responses • Ageism examples: • Incompatible = press same key for a stimulus that is either old/good or young/bad (slower responses) • Compatible = press same key for a stimulus that is either old/bad or young/good (faster responses) • Bias = stronger mental associations between, e.g., ‘old’ and ‘bad’, and ‘young’ and ‘good’

14. Young Old Stacey

15. Young Old X Stacey

16. Young Old Maevis

17. Young Old X Maevis

18. Good Bad X Ugly

19. Good Bad X Lucky

20. Young or Good Old or Bad X Stacey

21. Young or Good Old or Bad X Lucky

22. Young or Bad Old or Good X Stacey

23. Young or Bad Old or Good X Ugly

24. Young or Good Old or Bad X Stacey

25. Young or Bad Old or Good X Maevis

26. Results(Greenwald et al., 1998, Study 3) • Implicit attitudinal preference for White over Black • Stronger bias on IAT measure than explicit measure • Implicit measures only weakly correlated with explicit measures • But is it prejudice? • > 80% of IAT participants show pro-white associations • So do about 50% of 50,000 African Americans! • ‘Environmental association’

27. Aversive Racism 1(Dovidio & Gaertner, 1998) • Existence and operation of dual attitudes • Explicit and implicit • Traditional form of racial prejudice is direct and negative • Contemporary racial attitudes of Whites are more complex • Reflecting both negative and positive reactions. • Many people consciously, explicitly, and sincerely support egalitarian principles • Believe themselves to be non-prejudiced • But also develop unconscious negative feelings and beliefs about Blacks and other groups • Aversive racists • Consciously egalitarian but unconsciously negative

28. Aversive Racism 2(Dovidio & Gaertner, 1998) • Bias is expressed in indirect ways that do not threaten the aversive racist's non-prejudiced self-image • When inappropriate behaviour is not obvious • When a negative response can be justified on the basis of some factor other than race. • E.g., by-stander intervention, Wh vs Bl. Victim (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977) • Whites may simultaneously hold egalitarian attitudes about Blacks while also having negative racial feelings • Dual attitudes • One explicit and egalitarian; the other implicit and negative. • Explicit, non-prejudiced attitudes may govern overt and deliberative forms of interracial behavior • Implicit negative attitudes are related to indirect, subtle, and less obvious racial biases.

29. Combating Prejudice:‘The Contact Hypothesis’(Allport, 1954) Positive contact with a member of a negatively stereotyped group might improve negative attitudes: -- not only towards the specific member, --but also towards the group as a whole (generalization)

30. Key Dimensions of Contact(Allport, 1954; Amir, 1969; Cook, 1982) • Equal status • Stereotypes are disconfirmed • Cooperation • Situation allows participants to get to know each other properly • Norms support equality • Cross-group friendships • Extended/indirect contact Should be seen as facilitating rather than essential conditions (Pettigrew, 1998)

31. Impact and Application of the Contact Hypothesis(Pettigrew & Tropp, in press) • Positive effects of contact demonstrated in many domains including attitudes towards: • The elderly (Caspi, 1984) • Gays (Herek & Capitanio, 1996) • Children with disability (Maras & Brown, 1996) • Racial and ethnic groups • (gender?) • Meta-analysis of > 500 studies shows reliable effects

32. How Does Contact Work?(Brown& Hewstone, 2005) • Generating affective ties • Reducing (intergroup) anxiety • Encouraging empathy + perspective taking • Promoting reciprocal self-disclosure • Cf. emotion-based views of prejudice

33. Contact is not the only ‘Cure’ • Increased empathy (e.g., Batson et al., 1997; Finlay & Stephan,2000) • Cooperative learning paradigms (e.g., Aronson & Patnoe, 1997) • Multi-cultural education programs (e.g., Banks, 1997) • Superordinate categorization (e.g., Crisp & Hewstone, in press; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000) • But these all involve, to a greater or lesser extent, intergroup contact

34. Prejudice in the Brain:Social Neuroscience (Eberhardt, 2005) • Social neuroscience = study of the neural correlates of social-psychological phenomena, including racial perception and bias • Research tends to use fMRI, ERPs • Uncontrollable responses

35. Effects of Race on the AmygdalaPhelps et al. (2000) • White Ps: fMRI to Bl. and Wh. unfamiliar faces + explicit measure + implicit measure (IAT) • No overall difference in amygdala activation as a function of stimulus race • Differences in amygdala activation to Bl faces were sig. correl. with IAT (not explicit measure) • Wh. Ps with most negative implicit attitudes toward Bls. showed greatest amygdala activation responses to Bl. Faces vs Wh. Faces • Media furore!

36. Effects of Race on the Amygdala • Phelps et al. (2000, Study 2) • White Ps: fMRI to faces of famous, well-liked Bls. • No sig. correl. between IAT responses and amygdala activation • Role of social experience in alteration of neural responses in the amygdala • Racial categorization processes are quite flexible

37. But is it Bias? • Social knowledge/experience, not bias, may explain these findings (parallel debate re IAT) • Knowledge of the cultural association of Blacks and negative affect could elevate both amygdala activation and IAT • Should these measures be used for selection (e.g., police recruits)? • No! But for training/awareness

38. Fusiform Face Area Race and Face Processing • What neural circuitry is involved in initial racial categorization? • Attention to race occurs within first 120ms of onset of face stimulus(Ito & Urland, 2003) • Black and White Ps viewed unfamiliar Bl. and Wh. faces during fMRI(Golby et al., 2001) • Face recognition test • Usual ORB in racial face recognition (sig. only for Whs.) • Same-race faces receive greater activation in fusiform face area (FFA) than other-race faces

39. What does it all mean? (Eberhardt, 2005; Phelps, 2005) • Involvement of biological processes does not imply something fundamental, determinative, and unchangeable • Social neuroscience approach emphasizes that social variables can influence biological processes • To the extent that Blacks and Whites have different social experiences they are bound to show differences in neural functioning • Showing a behaviour to be “in the brain” does not indicate that it is innate, “hard-wired”, or unchangeable

40. Conclusions • Modern prejudices are more complex than traditional ones • May include negative and positive associations • Involve cognitive and affective components • Involve dual attitudes: explicit and implicit • Which one is more important? • It depends what behaviour you are trying to predict • Can be changed by experience (contact) • Do involve the social brain • But that does not mean they are unchangeable

41. “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love . . .” Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom