Prejudice

Course Instructor: Maha Mohsin

BS-2
Social Psychology
Resources

• Myers pages 307-351

• Baron
Definitions of Prejudice, Discrimination &
Stereotyping

• What do you understand by these terms?

• Do they overlap?
Make a news headline
for this boy

Which heading would

you place this under?

Prejudice? Discrimination?

Stereotype? Racism?
 Racism

An individual’s prejudicial
attitudes and discriminatory
behavior toward people of a
given race
 Stereotype

A belief about the personal attributes of

a group of people. Stereotypes are
sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate,
and resistant to new information (and
sometimes accurate). They may be
positive or negative
 Prejudice

A preconceived negative judgment of a

group and its individual members. An
irrational attitude based on group
membership. It is a pre judgment, and
not based on direct evidence.
 Discrimination

Unjustified negative behavior

toward a group or its members
What ideas do
workplaces carry
about obese
individuals?

Is it easy for
obese people to
find jobs?
Quick Q/A

1) Jones think that physically handicapped people are also

intellectually disabled
2) Jones meets a girl and thinks to himself ‘This girl has polio
and there are high chances she might also have mild
intellectual deficit’
3) Jones meet a mother and asks her ‘I notice she has polio,
does your daughter have mild intellectual deficit also?’
4) The girl is seated next to Jones, he starts to feel
uncomfortable and leaves his seat to sit elsewhere
Examples from book

• RELIGION
• Muslims not hired / paid well by managers (Park et al,
2009). What is this?
• Example of discrimination based on religion
• Muslims perceive Westerners as greedy and immoral
(Wike & Grim, 2007). What is this?
• Stereotype, generalizing Westerners as greedy.
OBESITY
• Overweight people marry less often, gain entry to less-
desirable jobs, and make less money (Swami & others,
2008).
• Weight discrimination, exceeds racial or gender
discrimination and occurs at every employment stage—
hiring, placement, promotion, compensation, discipline,
and discharge (Roehling, 2000).
• More often bullied as children, and as adults they are
more often depressed.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION
• The U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health revealed that gay and lesbian teens are much
more likely to be harshly punished by schools and courts
than are their straight peers, despite being less likely to
engage in serious wrongdoing (Himmelstein & Brückner,
2011)
• AGE
• People’s perceptions of the elderly—as generally kind but
frail, incompetent, unproductive—predispose patronizing
behavior, such as baby-talk speech that leads elderly
people to feel less competent and act less capably
(Bugental & Hehman, 2007).
• IMMIGRANTS
• Dislike of:
• Germans toward Turks,
• the French toward North Africans,
• the British toward West Indians and Pakistanis, and
• Americans toward Latin American immigrants (Pettigrew,
2006)
Important Additions

• Definition of prejudice:
• Some prejudice definitions include positive judgments,
but nearly all uses of “prejudice” refer to negative
ones—what Gordon Allport termed in his classic book,
The Nature of Prejudice, “an antipathy based upon a
faulty and inflexible generalization” [1954].
Definition of stereotype:
They are beliefs, not prejudice. Stereotypes may support
prejudice, yet one might believe, without prejudice that men
and women are different yet equal
• Certain examples given in the book include
• Professors are absent minded
• Ms. and married women with surnames –assertive and
ambitious
• Americans are outgoing
• Pakistanis are…?
• Definition of discrimination:
• Prejudice is a negative attitude; discrimination is
negative behavior. Discriminatory behavior often has
its source in prejudicial attitudes.
• E.g. Researchers analyzed the responses to 1,115
identically worded emails sent to Los Angeles area
landlords regarding vacant apartments. Encouraging
replies came back to 89 percent of notes signed “Patrick
McDougall,” to 66 percent from “Said Al-Rahman…”
• Benevolent Sexism—suggests that women are
superior to men in various ways (e.g., they have
better taste) and are necessary for men’s happiness
• Women are more likely than men are to agree with
these ideas.
• Indicates tendency for low status groups to engage in
social creativity responses in the attempt to link
positive qualities to their group
• May serve to keep women in low-status positions
• Hostile Sexism—suggests that women are a threat to
men’s position (e.g., they are trying to seize power from
men which they are perceived as not deserving)
• Men report higher levels than women do
• Predicts negative stereotyping of women
• Countries with greater gender inequality are likely to have
more of both forms of sexism
• Another result of stereotype use
• Out-group homogeneity—members of an out-group
appear to be “all alike” or more similar to each other
than are members of the in-group
• In-group differentiation—members of own group are more
heterogeneous
• May be due to greater experience within one’s in-group and less
experience with members of other groups
• Its converse is the in-group homogeneity effect, which tends to
occur most commonly among minority group members who are
uniting to respond to perceived inequalities.
• Origins of Prejudice
• Generally, perceptions of threat are involved.
• Threat to self-esteem or group interests
• Competition for scarce resources
• Self-categorization as a member of a group and others as
members of a different group
Prejudice and Discrimination

• Role of social categorization: The us-versus-them

effect
• People easily divide the social world into us (the in-
group) versus them (the out-group).
• People considered part of the ‘us’ category are thought of
more favorably than those in the ‘them’ category.
• This process affects the attributions people make.
• Ultimate Attribution Error—tendency to make more
favorable and flattering attributions about members
of one’s own group than about members of other
groups, which is the self-serving attribution bias at
the group level
• How does social categorization result in prejudice?
• Social Identity Theory—concerned with the consequences of
perceiving the self as a member of a social group and identifying
with it
• One consequence is that self-esteem is involved with this
identification.
• A need to increase self-esteem can result in seeing other groups as
inferior to one’s own.
• When group members feel that their identity is being threatened
(perhaps because their identity is being combined with another
group’s), they tend to exhibit increased levels of prejudice toward the
other group.
Why Prejudice Is Not Inevitable

• On Learning Not To Hate

• Social Learning View—prejudice is acquired through
direct and vicarious experiences in much the same
manner as other attitudes
• Children learn negative attitudes by hearing parents and
other significant others express them and then being
rewarded for adopting them.
• To combat, call parents’ attention to the illegitimacy of their
prejudiced views
• Remind parents of the high costs of holding prejudiced attitudes
• People high in prejudice enjoy everyday life less than others do.
• Direct experience with people of other groups also influences
attitudes.
• The Potential Benefits of Contact
• Contact Hypothesis—view that increased contact
between members of various social groups can be
effective in reducing prejudice between them
• Increased contact can decrease prejudice by increasing
familiarity and reducing anxiety.
• Positive contact that involves cooperation and
interdependence between groups can result in the adoption
of egalitarian social norms and the reduction of prejudice.
• In fact, simply learning that members of one’s in-group have formed
friendships with out-group members can decrease prejudice.
Recap

• Example-Toronto —Sheena Blake can still remember the feeling

in the pit of her stomach when she was offered a job. At first she
thought she had beaten out the other candidates, but she soon
learned that she was on top of the list for a different, much
more insidious reason. “Someone asked me to work for them so
they could meet their quota of having a multicultural space”,
Blake told visual media. That was years ago. But it’s just one
example of the countless quiet, hidden abuses that she says
happen daily to black women, especially when it comes to the
workplace.
Origins of Prejudice

• Social inequalities
• The authoritarian personality
• Institutional supports and biases
• The scapegoat theory
• Social identity theory
• Categorization
• Group-serving bias
• The Just-World phenomenon
• Conformity
 Social Inequalities

• Unequal status breeds prejudice

• Whether this is in terms of wealth, race,
gender or the like
• Prejudice helps justify the economic and
social superiority of those who have
wealth and power
• Stereotypes help rationalize the inferior
status of a group
• Many people thought blacks and women were mentally slow,
emotional and primitive and contended with their
subordinate role. Blacks were inferior, women were weak.
• Vescio and colleagues (2005) found that powerful men who
stereotype their female subordinates give them plenty of
praise but fewer resources, thus undermining their
performance. This sort of patronizing allows men to maintain
their positions of power.
 The Authoritarian Personality

• What is this child learning?

• Do you think he takes out his anger and hostility
else where?
• The influence of family socialization appears in
children’s prejudices which often mirror those
perceived in their mothers.
• Children’s implicit racial attitudes reflect their
parents’ explicit prejudice
 A personality that is disposed to favor
obedience to authority and intolerance of
outgroups and those lower in status

With this is another theory, social dominance

orientation- a motivation to have one’s group
dominate other social groups

Theodor Adorno & colleagues (1950),

studied American adults and discovered
that hostility towards Jews often coexisted
with hostility towards other minorities
The authoritarian personality is prone to engage
in prejudice and stereotyping , towards anyone
who is considered different

They submit to those they see above

them and dominate people they can.
An authoritarian personality likes
strong, dominant leaders.

Aggression, hatred towards outgroup.

People need a sense of security and
hence turn to strong leaders who
promise to keep them safe
 Institutional Supports and Biases
• Why do some kids go to these schools?
• Do schools care for the socio -economic status of
their students?
• Can it be stated that prejudice is reinforced by
institutions?
• Social institutions e.g., schools, government,
media, etc.
• Social institutions may bolster prejudice through
overt policies
• Until 1970s in the US, many banks routinely
denied mortgages to unmarried women and
minority applicants
The Scapegoat Theory
 A theory proposing that prejudice occurs because
members of dominant groups use discrimination against
members of weak target groups to vent frustration and
disappointment

• When the cause of our frustration is intimidating or

unknown, we often redirect our hostility.
• Displaced aggression and hostility
• In earlier centuries, people vented their fear and hostility
on witches by burning or drowning them
• After 9/11, angry Americans expressed greater
intolerance towards immigrants and Middle Easterners
• Passions provoke prejudice
• Competition is a great source of frustration which can
fuel prejudice
• Realistic group conflict theory comes in stating that
prejudice arises from competition between groups for
scarce resources.
• Examples-In Canada, opposition to immigration since
1975 has gone up and down with the unemployment rate
• People voted for trump, because he would ban
immigrants. What do these immigrants do?
• When interests clash prejudice may be the result.
The Just World Phenomenon

• E.g. the situation of the security guard slapping the

woman at NADRA
• Was a slap alright in this situation?
• “The tendency of people to believe that the world is
just and that people therefore get what they deserve
and deserve what they get”.
Conformity and Prejudice (Myers Pg 322)

• Once established, prejudice is maintained largely by

inertia. If prejudice is socially accepted, many people
will follow the path of least resistance and conform to
the fashion. They will act not so much out of a need to
hate as out of a need to be liked and accepted
Sexist Humor and Sexism

• People become more likely to favor discrimination after

hearing someone else do so, and they are less supportive of
women after hearing sexist humor (Ford & others, 2008;
Zitek & Hebl, 2007)
• Gender prejudice –nursery and kitchen are the natural
sphere of a woman. STEM studies for females?
• “… The acceptance of sexist humor leads men to believe
that sexist behavior falls within the bounds of social
acceptability.”
“… In one experiment, Ford and his student colleagues asked
male participants to imagine that they were members of a
work group in an organization. In that context, they either
read sexist jokes, comparable non-humorous sexist
statements, or neutral (non-sexist) jokes. They were then
asked to report how much money they would be willing to
donate to help a women’s organization. “We found that men
with a high level of sexism were less likely to donate to the
women’s organization after reading sexist jokes, but not after
reading either sexist statements or neutral jokes,” Ford said.”
Assignment (5 marks)- Creating a Drama

• Form groups of 4 and create a drama on any topic/concept from

Social Psychology
• Time limit: 3 mins per group
• Q/Ans session will follow
• The concept should be well connected to your act
• Concept, portrayal, time management, group dynamics and
cooperation, and Q/Ans- 1 mark each
• Drama due next week
QUIZ 3

• Topics: Prosocial Behavior and Prejudice

• Date: May 4th, 2018
• MCQs