UGRC 130: HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

1. UGRC 130: HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

2. Definitions Stereotypes - beliefs about attributes that are thought to be characteristic of members of a particular group which are over generalized, inaccurate and resistant to change (Myers, 2003). Prejudice – a negative prejudgment of an individual or a group and its members. Discrimination - unfair treatment of members of a particular group based on their membership of that group.

3. Forms of Prejudice & Discrimination • Racial ( Racisms) • Sex (sexism) • Religion • Class • Cultural

4. What is Prejudice? • Consider a few actual occurrences: • Prejudice against girls and women is sometimes subtle, sometimes devastating. Nowhere in the modern world are female infants left on a hillside to die of exposure, as was the practice in ancient Greece. Yet in some countries, female infants are less valued than male infants.

5. What is Prejudice? • When men seek roles traditionally associated with women, discrimination can run in the other direction. • Turner & Pratkanis (1994) sent identical job-inquiry letters from a college student in an education program to 56 child-care centers and preschools in seven cities.

6. What is Prejudice? • When the letter was signed “Mary Johnson.” Nearly half the centers returned a stamped postcard, saying, “We would be interested in discussing a position.” • When the letter was signed “David Johnson” only 1 in 10 replied with similar encouragement.

7. What is Prejudice? • A group of homosexual students at the University of Illinois announced that the motto for one spring day would be, “If you are gay, wear blue jeans today.” • When the day came, many students who usually wore jeans woke up with an urge to dress up in a skirt or slacks.

8. What is Prejudice? • The gay group had made its point – that attitudes toward homosexuals are such that many would rather give up their usual clothes lest anyone suspect (Excerpt from RCAgenda, 1979).

9. What is Prejudice? • When seeking love and employment, over weight people – especially overweight White women – face slim prospects. • In both correlational studies and in experiments (in which people are made to appear overweight or not), overweight people marry less often, gain entry to less desirable jobs, make less money, and are perceived as less attractive, intelligent, happy, and successful (Hebl & Heatherton, 1998).

10. What is Prejudice? • Weight discrimination is, in fact, notably greater than race or gender discrimination and occurs at every employment stage – hiring, placement, promotion, compensation, discipline, and discharge (Roehling, 2000).

11. What is Prejudice? • A negative prejudgment of a group and its individual members. • It is an intolerant, unfair or unfavorable attitude towards a group, a person, or an object even a legislation (Myers, 2008) • It is an attitude an individual maintains so sturmoily as to be virtually immune to any information or experience • In his classic, the Nature ofPrejudice, Allport defined prejudice as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” (1954, p.9).

12. What is Prejudice? • Prejudice biases us against a person based on the person’s perceived group. • Prejudice is an attitude, with a distinct combination of feelings, inclinations to act, and beliefs. • This combination is the ABC of attitudes: affect (feelings), behavior tendency (inclination to act), and cognition (beliefs).

13. stereotypes • To stereotype is to generalize. • Such generalizations can be more or less true (and are not always negative). • For instance, to stereotype the British as more concerned about punctuality than Africans is to understand what to expect and how to act with minimal friction in each culture(Myers, 2002). • A problem with stereotypes arises when they are over generalized or just plain wrong.

14. What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? • Defining Prejudice • Preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members • Supported by stereotypes • Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people

15. The Power of Prejudice? • Defining Prejudice • Discrimination • Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members • Racism • Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given race • Sexism • Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given sex

16. What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? • Racial Prejudice • Is racial prejudice disappearing? Figure 9.1

17. Subtle forms of prejudice • In experiments by Greenwald & his colleagues (1998, 2000, nine in ten White people took longer to identify pleasant words (such as peace and paradise) as “good” when associated with Black rather than White faces.

18. What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? • Gender Prejudice • Gender stereotypes • Strong gender stereotypes exist • Members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes • Sexism • Attitudes toward women have changed rapidly • Most see women as understanding, kind, and helpful • Gender Discrimination • Disappearing in democratic Western countries • Non-Western countries gender bias is still strong

19. Social Sources of Prejudice • Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice • Social dominance orientation • Motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups • Being in a dominant high-status position tends to promote this orientation and justification • Socialization • Authoritarian personality • Personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status • Ethnocentricity • Believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group, and having a corresponding disdain for all other groups

20. Social Sources of Prejudice • Socialization • Religion and Prejudice • In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to sanctify the present order • Use of religion to support injustice helps explain a pair of findings concerning North American Christianity • Church members express more racial prejudice than nonmembers • Those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian beliefs express more prejudice than those professing more progressive beliefs

21. Social Sources of Prejudice • Socialization • Conformity • If prejudice is socially accepted, many people will follow the path of least resistance and conform to the fashion • If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can diminish

22. Social Sources of Prejudice • Institutional Supports • Government • Schools • Magazines and newspapers • Films and television

23. Motivational Sources of Prejudice? • Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory • Displaced aggression • Hate crimes • Xenophobic attacks • Realistic group conflict theory • Prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources (Esses et al, 1998) • Gause’s Law- maximum competition will exist among species with identical needs

24. What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? • Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others • The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships. • In-group bias • Tendency to favor one’s own group • Because of our social identifications, we conform to our group norms • When our group succeeds, we feel better by identifying strongly with it

25. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice • Categorization: Classifying People into Groups • Perceived Similarities and Differences • Outgroup homogeneity effect • Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another than are ingroup members • Own-race bias • Tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race

26. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? • Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out • Distinctive people • Feeds on self-consciousness • Stigma consciousness • Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out • Vivid cases • Given limited experience with a particular social group, we recall examples of it and generalize. • Can prime the stereotype

27. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice • Distinctive events • Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership and individuals’ presumed characteristics • Attentiveness to unusual occurrences can create illusory correlations

28. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice • Attribution: Is It a Just World? • Group-serving bias • Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions • Just-world phenomenon • Tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get

29. What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? • Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes • Whenever a member of a group behaves as expected, we duly note the fact; our prior belief is confirmed • When a member of a group behaves inconsistently with our expectation, we may interpret or explain away the behavior as due to special circumstances

30. Consequences of Prejudice • Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes • Subtyping • Accommodating individuals who deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as “exceptions to the rule” • Subgrouping • Accommodating individuals who deviate from one's stereotype by forming a new stereotype about this subset of the group

31. What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? • Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy • Social beliefs can be self-confirming • Prejudice affects its targets

32. What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? • Stereotype Threat • Disruptive concern, when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype Figure 9.10

33. What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? • Do Stereotypes Bias Judgment of Individuals • Stereotypes Bias Interpretations • Affect how events are interpreted

34. Reducing Prejudice • Allport’s Contact Theory • Under certain conditions, direct contact between members of different groups will improve relations • Contact must involve: • Mutual interdependence • A common goal • Equal status of groups • Informal, interpersonal contact • Multiple contacts • Social norms of equality