prejudice

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Four-way 18th-century English prejudice

A prejudice is an implicitly held belief, often about a group of people. Race, economic class, gender or sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age and religion are other common subjects of prejudice. It can be used to characterize beliefs about other things as well, including "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence."^[1]

Forms of prejudice

John Farley put prejudice into three categories:^[2]

• Personal / Individual Discrimination is directed toward a specific individual and refers to any act that leads to unequal treatment because of the individual's real or perceived group membership.
• Legal Discrimination refers to "unequal treatment, on the grounds of group membership, that is upheld by law."^[3] Apartheid is an example of legal discrimination, as are also various post-Civil war laws in the southern United States that legally disadvantaged negros with respect to property rights, employment rights and the exercise of constitutional rights.
• Institutional Discrimination refers to unequal treatment that is entrenched in basic social institutions resulting in advantaging one group over another. The Indian caste system is a historical example of institutional discrimination.

As with prejudice generally, these three types of discrimination are correlated and may be found to varying degrees in individuals and society at large. Many forms of discrimination based upon prejudice are outwardly acceptable in most societies.

Origins of prejudice

Prejudice has been researched extensively, and psychologists generally take the following approaches: arousal, personality, intergroup interaction and learning.

Arousal approach

Following the psychodynamic perspective, some traditional psychologists described prejudice a result of frustration. Psychodynamics theory assumed that human mind contains psychic energy, which serves as a tool for psychological activities and can only be discharged through catharsis – the completion of the activities – to maintain equilibrium (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). Impediment of dissipation results in frustration, which can only be corrected through aggression. Prejudice is an occasion in which a group of people is frustrated by a stronger group which is too powerful or remote to be aggressed against; thus the group displaces its aggressive impulse onto weaker groups, which serve as scapegoats. When a boy is scolded by his parent, for example, he may choose to displace the frustration onto his sibling since he is unable to fight back against his parent.

Although empirical data generally confirmed a correlation between frustration and aggression (Hovland & Sears, 1940; Miller & Bugelski, 1948), researches showed neither a necessary nor a sufficient causal relationship between frustration and aggression. Critics argue that this theory can only explain limited factors of intergroup aggression. Moreover, the theory has been criticised on grounds of its reductionism (Billig, 1976; Brown, 2000; Hogg & Abrams, 1988).

Personality approach

Another classical explanation on prejudice concerns the personalities which create tendency on prejudice against minorities. Historically, psychologists suggested various personalities contributing to discrimination, including authoritarianism, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, dominant orientation, etc (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Rokeach, 1948; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). In general, people having these personalities tend to bias towards their own group and refuse to accept belief-contradicting information, thus remain their stereotype on the prejudiced group. Concerning the origin of the prejudice personalities, psychologists following the psychodynamics perspective attribute the cause to excessive harsh and disciplinarian practices in childhood experience (Adorno et al., 1950). However, as the overemphasis on parental influence of psychodynamics theory has been strongly criticized in the previous century, modern psychologists adopted interracial contact as a more important determinant than childhood experience on shaping people’s prejudice traits (Stephan & Rosenfield, 1978). Personality theory has also been criticized on underemphasizing situational and socio-cultural factors such as the competition of resources between groups, and being unable to explain sudden change in attitude and behaviour. this can also be summarized as a distinguish behaviour on the peronnel level

Intergroup approach

Some social psychologists explain prejudice as the effect of group interaction. According to social identity theory, when we are identified with a group, we show some general characteristics including ethnocentrism, ingroup favoritism, intergroup differentiation and so on, which contribute to prejudice. Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, and Flament (1971) further devised the minimal group paradigm to illustrate the necessary condition for group identification, stating that merely categorizing people into group is sufficient to induce the general characteristics. Besides, group interaction would almost inevitably induce intergroup competitions, the realistic conflict between group could also accentuate the negative stereotypes on the out-group. Some empirical data disconfirmed the minimal group paradigm by showing that social categorization is not sufficient for intergroup behaviour (Grieve & Hogg, 1999). Moreover, since many variables are operating in intergroup studies, this approach has also been criticized on being unable to identify causal relationship between group formation and prejudice due to potential confounding (Dion, 1979; Turner, 1981).

Learning approach

Learning theories provide a way of understanding how behaviour develops and propagates among generations. Dominant learning theories concern learning and responding to conditioning.
Modeling, which is also known as learning by vicarious experience in social learning theory (Bandura, 1973), refers to learning a behaviour through observing another individual engaging in that behaviour. Since observation is already enough for learning the behaviour, the individual does not need to participate in the behaviour. According this theory, people can acquire prejudiced thinking by merely observing others' discriminative behaviour. For example, children may acquire a gender stereotype by observing their parents treating males and females differently. This effect would be especially amplified when the model is rewarded for the behaviour.
People can also learn to prejudice through association learning including classical and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, a subject is instructed with flawed reasoning when an attribute is presented (e.g. greedy) with a specific group (e.g. merchants) repeatedly. The subject then links the attribute to the group, resulting in prejudice. Operant conditioning refers to alteration of behaviour by regulating the consequences following it. Reinforcement in is a kind of consequence or a procedure that specifically leads to an increase in frequency of the behaviour immediately preceding it. If an individual gains acceptance to his/her reference group (Kelley, 1952) by discriminating towards other groups or individuals, he/she is then be motivated to continue this discrimination due to the reinforcement following it.
Although, empirical results often showed significant correlation between parents’ and child’s attitude, the correlations were typically low (Connel, 1972), especially after the child grew up. This suggests that learning theory can only explain part of the reason behind prejudice. Moreover, learning theorists suggest that prejudice is learned from others and therefore are unable to explain how prejudice emerges from the very beginning.

Contemporary theories

Contemporary theories of intergroup bias (prejudice) tend to explain intergroup bias in terms of various social psychological motivations (Miles, Mark & Hazel, 2002). They are social identity theory, terror management and subjective uncertainty reduction theory.

Terror management theory

Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski (1999) in their terror management theory proposed that people have a need for self-preservation which is raised and frustrated by their awareness of the inevitability of their own death. To deal with their mortality, people adopt a cultural world view that imbues subjective reality with stability and permanence and provides standards of value against which judgments of self-esteem can be made. According to Terror management theory, people evaluate in-group members positively because similar others are assumed to support, and therefore validate, their own cultural world view; in contrast, they evaluate out-group members negatively because dissimilar others are assumed to threaten their world view. There is extensive evidence that people show greater intergroup bias when they are made aware of their own mortality (Florian & Mikulincer, 1998).

Subjective uncertainty reduction theory

Moreover, Hogg (2000) in his subjective uncertainty reduction theory proposed that people are motivated to reduce subjective uncertainty by identifying with social groups, which provide clear normative prescriptions for behaviours and thus imbues people with a positive valence. Some evidence shows that manipulations of subjective uncertainty influence levels of both in-group identification and intergroup bias. For example, a positive relationship has been found between the need for closure and both in-group identification and intergroup bias (Shah et al. 1998).

For further interest, reader may refer to introduction to social psychology by Vaughan and Hogg (2005) or Annual Review of Psychology.

Sociology

• Sociologists termed prejudice an adaptive behaviour. Biased views might be thought needed at times for survival. There is not always enough time to form a legitimate view about a potential foe before adopting a defensive stance that could save lives. Prejudice is non-adaptive when it interferes with survival or well-being.

Common misconceptions

At times the terms prejudice and stereotype are confusing:

• Prejudices are abstract-general preconceptions or abstract-general attitudes towards any type of situation object or person.
• Stereotypes are generalizations of existing characteristics. These reduce complexity.

See also

Look up prejudice in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiversity has learning materials about Prejudice

• Adultism
• Allophilia
• Allport's scale
• Bias
• Civil Rights
• Discrimination
• Heterosexism
• Intercultural competence
• Intolerance
• Judging
• Labelling
• Ladys
• Multi-culturalism and diversity
• Persecution
• Police Brutality
• Political correctness
• Racism
• Rivalry
• Sex
• Sexism
• The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss, an allegory of racism (some readers see parallels to anti-Semitism)
• Tolerance

References

• Aberson, C. L., Healy, M., & Romero, V. (2000). Ingroup bias and self-esteem: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 154-173.
• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. M. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 11, 1177-1196.
• Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: Asocial learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Billig, M. (1976). Social psychology and intergroup relations. London: Academic Press.
• Brown, R. J. (2000). Group processes (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
• Connell, R. W. (1972). Political socialization in the American family: The evidence reexamined. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 323-333.
• Dalrymple, Theodore (2007). In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas / ISBN 1594032025
• Dion, K. L. (1979). Intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesiveness. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 211-224). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
• Dollard, J., Doob, L. W., Miller, N. E., Mowrer, O. H. & Sears, R. R. (1939). Frustration and aggression. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Farley, John E., Majority - Minority Relations (4th Ed.), Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-131-44412-3
• Floriab, V, & Mikulincer, M. (1998). Terror management in childhood: Does death conceptualization moderate the effects of mortality salience on acceptance of similar and different others? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1104-1112.
• Grieve, P., & Hogg, M. A. (1999). Subjective uncertainty and intergroup discrimination in the minimal group situation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 926-940.
• Hogg, M. A. (2000). Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes. European Review of Social of Social Psychology, 11, 223-255.
• Hogg, M. A., & Abrams D. (1988). Social identifications: A social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. London: Routledge.
• Hogg, M. A., & Abrams D. (1993). Towards a single-process uncertainty-reduction model of social motivation in groups. In M. A. Hogg & D. Abrams (Eds.), Group motivation: Social Psychological Perspectives (pp. 173-190). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
• Hovland, C. I., & Sears, R. R. (1940). Minor studies in aggression: VI. Correlation of lynchings with economic indices. Journal of Psychology, 9, 301-310.
• Jack Levin and William Levin, The Functions Of Discrimination and Prejudice (2nd Ed.), Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., ISBN 0-060-43964-5
• Kelley, H.H. (1952). Two functions of reference groups. In G.E. Swanson, T.M. Newcomb, & E.L. * Hartley (Eds.), Readings in social psychology (2nd ed., pp.410-414). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
• Miles, H., Mark, R., & Hazel, W. (2002). Intergroup bias. Annual Review Psychology. 53, 575-604.
• Miller, N. E., & Bugelski, R. (1948). Minor studies in aggression: The influence of frustrations imposed by the ingroup on attitudes toward outgroups. Journal of Psychology, 25, 437-442.
• Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 741-763.
• Robertson, Ian, Society: A Brief Introduction, New York: Worth Publishing, 1989, ISBN 0-879-01415-6
• Rokeach, M. (1948). Generalized mental rigidity as a factor in ethnocentrism. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 15, 111-138.
• Shah, J. Y., Kruglanski, A. W., & Thompson, E. P. (1998). Membership has its (epistemic) rewards: Need for closure effects on in-group bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 383–393.
• Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991). A terror management theory of social behaviour: The psychological functions of self-esteem and cultural worldviews. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 24, pp. 93-159). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
• Stephan, W. G., Rosenfield, D. (1978). Effects of desegregation on racial attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 795-804.
• Tajfel, H., Billig, M., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1, 149-177.
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
• Turner, J. C. (1981). The experimental social psychology of intergroup behaviour. In J. C. Turner & H. Giles (Eds.), Intergroup behaviour (pp. 66-101). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Vaughan, G. M., & Hogg, H. A. (2005). Introduction to social psychology (4th ed.). French Forest NSW, Australia: Pearson Education. R.H Walterbottom and FK Dipwad

External links

• Prejudice: Its Forms and Causes from Del Mar College, Corpus Christi, Texas
• Sexual Prejudice - Understanding Homophobia and Heterosexism from U.C. Davis Psychology Department
• Summary of social psychology research on prejudice, with references
• Are Stereotypes True?
• Are We Born Racist? Essays on the psychological roots of bias and strategies for overcoming prejudice from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley