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Prejudice (Key Term (Prejudice: biased attitude or feeling towards another…
Prejudice
Key Term
Prejudice: biased attitude or feeling towards another group, or a member of another group, based on generalisations about what that group is like
A traditional view of prejudice (Allport, 1954) is consistent with the wider three-component attitude model:
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Affective - Strong feelings (usually negative) about the attitude object and the qualities it is believed to possess
Conative - Intentions to behave in certain ways towards the attitude object (the conative component is an intention to act in certain ways, not the act itself)
Not all believe in the tripartite model and there are other definitions of prejudice that include discriminatory behaviour. i.e. Brown (1995) defines prejudice as: the holding of derogatory social attitudes or cognitive beliefs, the expression of negative affect, or the display of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership of that group. In other words, derogatory social attitudes and hostile behaviour towards certain people is because of their membership to a particular group
Forgas (1983) showed that students have clear beliefs about different campus groups. Engineering students were described in terms of their drinking habits (beer, lots and lots of beer), cultural preferences (sports and little else) and style of dress (practical and conservative).
This is a prejudgement. So, it's assumed that all engineering students are like that. If these beliefs (cognitive component) are not associated with any strong feelings (affect) or particular intention to act (conation), then we probably wouldn't call this prejudice, just a harmless generalisation
BUT, if these beliefs (cognitive component) are associated with strong negative beliefs (affect) about the engineering students and their characteristics, then a pattern of conations would almost inevitably arise. You would probably avoid them, maybe humiliate them whenever possible or even dream about a world without them. This is clearly prejudice but not much of a social problem
Stereotypes: specific beliefs about members of another group. Often a generalisation of a group following experience with an individual of that group
Discrimination: actions or behaviour, usually negative, towards an individual or a group based upon their group identity
Targets
Ageism
Mitchell (2002) identified 4 distinct general stereotypes that may be particularly attributable to real changes in behaviour due to ageing, but are also influenced by value differences in the social environment you are born into and go through early adult development in:
Traditionalists: born between 1925 and 1945, are practical, loyal and hardworking; respectful of authority; and rule followers
Baby boomers: born between 1946 and 1960, are optimistic, value teamwork and cooperation; are ambitious and are workaholics
Generation X: born between 1961 and 1980, are sceptical, self-reliant risk-takers who balance work and personal life
Millennials (Generation Y): born between 1981 and 1999, are hopeful, they value meaningful work, diversity and change; and are technologically savvy
Sexism
Focuses on prejudice against women. This is because women have historically suffered most as the victims of sexism - primarily because of their lower power position relative to men in business, government and employment.
Sex roles may have persisted because, although they provide men with structural power, they have provided women with dyadic (twofold) or interpersonal power.
Fiske (1988): "The typical woman is seen as nice but incompetent, the typical man as competent but maybe not so nice."
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Young and James (2001): examined the work experiences of men, a traditional workplace majority, as minority members of a female-dominated occupation. They used social tokenism (the practice of doing something only to prevent criticism and to make it seem as though people are being treated fairly) and social categorisation theories to test a set hypothesis
Archer et al (1983): Face-ism is the media depiction that gives greater prominence to the head and less prominence to the body for mean, but vice versa for women.
They analysed 1750 visual images of men and women (newspaper and magazine pictures, as well as drawings made by students) and discovered that in almost all instances this was the case.
Racism
Rogers and Prentice-Dunn (1981) conducted an experiment in Alabama where white or black confederates insulted white ppts, who then had an opportunity to administer a shock to the confederate. Angered whites gave larger shocks to the black confederate. In another condition where no insults were forthcoming, ppts gave smaller shocks to the black confederate than to the white confederate
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One unobtrusive way of detecting racism/prejudice is in terms of social distance - how close, psychologically or physically, people are willing to get to one another.
Schofield (1986) found that racist attitudes persist in contexts of close social distance (such as marriage), although they may have disappeared in less close social relations (attending the same school).
Categories and their stereotypical attributes are implicitly linked in memory. Concealed prejudice can be detected by unobtrusive methods that reveal underlying stereotypical association.
However, this could just be due to in-groups and out-groups and people trusting those who look more familiar than those who don't. This is supported as people took longer to answer when looking at unfamiliar faces
Implicit Association Test (IAT): ppts were shown pictures of black and white people. It found that people were more likely to label white people as good than black people.
Personality Explanations
Adorno et al (1950)
Described what they believed to be a personality syndrome that predisposed certain people to be authoritarian. The theory proposed that autocratic and punitive child-rearing practices were responsible for the emergence in adulthood of various clusters of beliefs
Constructed a questionnaire known as the Californian F-scale, intended at first to assess tendencies towards fascism, but which turned out to be a purported measure of general authoritarianism
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Authoritarian: in other words, they reject moral values that are important to me
Social dominance theory
Sidanius and Pratto (1999) describe a relatively sophisticated, but nonetheless mainly 'individual differences' analysis of exploitative power-based intergroup relations - called social dominance theory
Explains the extent to which people accept or reject societal ideologies or myths that legitimise hierarchy and discrimination equality and fairness
People who desire their own group to be dominant and superior to outgroups have a high social dominance orientation, which encourages them to reject egalitarian ideologies and to accept myths that legitimise hierarchy and discrimination. These kind of people are more inclined to be prejudiced than people with low social dominance orientation
Theory that attributes prejudice to an individual's acceptance of an ideology that legitimises intergroup-serving hierarchy and domination, and rejects egalitarian ideologies
In other words: if they make economic gains, people like em will be worse off
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