Chapter 11: Responding to and Reducing Prejudice

December 6, 2018 9:43 AM

Prejudice From a Target's Perspective

- Perceiving Prejudice and Discrimination
○ Master status: The perception that a person will be seen only in terms of a
stigmatizing attribute rather than as the total self
○ Individual Differences in Perceiving Prejudice
▪ Stigma consciousness: The expectation of being perceived by other people,
particularly those in the majority group, in terms of one’s group
membership
□ Example: when women particularly high in stigma consciousness had
reason to think that a male stranger might be sexist, they evaluated an
essay he had written more negatively, which then led him to evaluate
their essays more negatively
□ Person-group discrimination discrepancy: The tendency for people to
estimate that they personally experience less discrimination than is
faced by the average member of their group
○ Motivations to Avoid Perception in Prejudice
▪ People differ in their sensitivity to prejudice, but people commonly
underestimate personal discrimination
▪ People may be motivated to sustain their faith that the way society is set up
is inherently right and good, thereby justifying the status quo
□ Buying into the status quo brings a sense of stability and predictability,
but it can lead stigmatized individuals to downplay their experience of
discrimination
▪ Because modern prejudice is less overt, it is difficult to know if and when
one is target of prejudice
▪ People may be motivated to deny discrimination out of optimism or a desire
to justify the social system
- Application: Is Perceiving Prejudice Bad for Your Health?
○ Prejudice can take a toll on a person's mental and physical health
○ Negative consequences, such as increased depression and lower life satisfaction,
are especially extreme when people blame themselves for their stigma or the way
people treat them
○ Example: there is an ongoing national debate about the use of Native American
images as mascots for school and sports teams
▪ Native American children and young adults are primed with these images,
their self-esteem is reduced, they feel worse about their community, and
they imagine themselves achieving less in the future
○ The experience of prejudice is a Chronic stressor that elevates the body’s
physiological stress response
▪ Over time, this stress response can predict poorer cardiovascular
functioning, the buildup of plaque in the arteries, and artery calcification,
putting people at greater risk for coronary heart disease
- The Harmful Impact of Stereotypes in Behaviour
○ Holding a stereotype can change how observers interact with targets, sometimes
causing targets to act stereotypically
▪ Example: you suspect that the clerk at the café is going to be rude, so you
are curt with her. She responds by being curt back to you. Your initial
judgment seems to be confirmed
○ Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) Study
▪ Teachers’ stereotypic expectations of their students actually changed how
those students performed in school
▪ Some students were randomly labelled as "bloomers" and "non-bloomers"
based off a coin flip
▪ Study demonstrates the power of positive expectations in creating self-

Exam Notes Page 1

 ▪ Study demonstrates the power of positive expectations in creating self-
fulfilling prophecies
○ Confirming Stereotypes to Get Along
▪ Targets sometimes inadvertently act stereotypically to get along with others
▪ The more motivated people are to affiliate and interact positively with
someone, the more likely they will be to behave in ways that are consistent
with the other person’s stereotypes, a form of self-stereotyping.
○ Objectification
▪ Self-objectification: A phenomenon whereby intense cultural scrutiny of the
female body leads many girls and women to view themselves as objects to
be looked at and judged
□ Viewing the self as an object to be looked can undermine health and
performance
▪ Women who are particularly susceptible to such self-objectification
experience frequent shame
□ The more shame they feel, the more vulnerable they are to disordered
eating, depression, and sexual dysfunction
○ Stereotype Threat
▪ Stereotype threat: The concern that one might do something to confirm a
negative stereotype about one’s group either in one’s own eyes or the eyes
of someone else
▪ Example: stereotype threat partly accounts for lower standardized-test
scores among Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans than for their White
and Asian peers, and for why women perform less well than men on tests of
mathematical ability
□ Has also been shown to impair memory performance of older adults,
driving performance of women, athletes’ performance in the face of
racial stereotypes, men’s performance on an emotional sensitivity task,
and women’s negotiation skills
▪ Stereotype threat is more likely to impair some conditions more than others.
Strongest effect when:
□ The stigmatized identity is made salient in the situation (e.g., being the
only women in a high-level math class).
□ That identity is chronically salient, due to high stigma consciousness
or high identification with the group
□ The task is characterized as a diagnostic measure of an ability for
which one’s group is stereotyped as being inferior
□ Individuals are led to believe their performance is going to be
compared with that of members of the group stereotyped as superior
on the task
□ Individuals are explicitly reminded of the stereotype
○ Social Identity Threat
▪ Disidentification: The process of disinvesting in any area in which one’s
group traditionally has been underrepresented or negatively stereotyped
□ The feeling that your group does not belong in a domain can repel
people from that domain
▪ Exmaple: women who go into male-dominant domains find themselves
having to suppress their more feminine qualities
- What's a Target to Do? Coping with Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination
○ Ways to overcome stereotype threat include: identifying with role models,
reappraising anxiety as normal, and self-affirmation
□ Combating Stereotype and Social Identity Threat
 Identification with Role Models
◊ When individuals are exposed to role models (people like
them who have been successful) the stereotype is altered
and they feel inspired to do well
 Reappraisal of Anxiety

Exam Notes Page 2

  Reappraisal of Anxiety
◊ When stereotypes are difficult to change, targets can
reinterpret what the stereotypes mean.
 Example: when people think that they are stereotyped
to do poorly, they are more likely to interpret
difficulties and setbacks as evidence that the
stereotype is true and that they do not belong. They
perform better, though, if they reinterpret difficulties
and setbacks as normal challenges faced by anyone
 Self-affirmation
◊ Self-affirmation theory: posits that people need to view
themselves as good and competent. When they encounter a
threat to their positive self-view in one area of life, they
compensate by affirming other deeply held values
○ Social Strategies for Coping With Prejudice and Discrimination
▪ To address or minimize their experience of prejudice in social interactions,
stigmatized targets use confrontation, compensation, concealment, and
coming together
□ Confrontation
 Wanting to experience positive outcomes and to believe in
fairness can make someone less likely to perceive discrimination.
◊ Even when people feel they have been the targets of biased
attitudes or perceptions, they don’t always say that
discrimination has occurred or do anything to confront the
person responsible.
 Example: You are working on a class project in small groups,
and you have to take turns choosing what kinds of people you
would want with you on a deserted island. One young man in the
group consistently makes sexist choices
◊ Most women said they would confront the guy in some
way, probably by questioning his choice or pointing out
how inappropriate it is
◊ But when women were actually put in this situation, over
half of them did nothing at all
 Sexists remarks go unchallenged because those who do the
confronting are often viewed negatively
 Target empowerment model: A model suggesting that targets of
bias can employ strategies that deflect discrimination, as long as
those methods aren’t perceived as confrontational
□ Compensation
 Targets of prejudice also can cope with stigma by compensating
for the negative stereotypes or attitudes they think other people
have toward them
 Example: when overweight women were making a first
impression on a person and were led to believe that that person
could see them (and thus knew their weight), they acted in a
more extraverted way than if they were told that they could not
be seen. They compensated for the weight-based biases they
expected others to have by being extra friendly
 Potential cost of compensation is that it can disrupt the smooth
flow of social interaction.
◊ This is because the specific concerns that weigh on the
mind of the target, and thus trigger their compensation,
might be quite different than what weighs on the mind of
the perceiver
□ Concealment
 When people are concerned about being discriminated against,

Exam Notes Page 3

  When people are concerned about being discriminated against,
they might sometimes choose to cope by concealing their stigma
 Exmaple: common in the case of sexual orientation, which,
unlike race or gender, is easily concealed
□ Coming Together
 Creating and celebrating a shared identity with others who are
similarly stigmatized
 Rejection identification theory: The idea that people can offset
the negative consequences of being targeted by discrimination by
feeling a strong sense of identification with their stigmatized
group
 Safety in numbers applies not only to physical protection but to a
less tangible sense of symbolic protection as well
○ Psychological Strategies for Coping With Prejudice and Discrimination
▪ To minimize the negative psychological effects of social devaluation.
Stigmatized targets can discount negative outcomes or devalue domains
where they experience discrimination
□ Discounting
 Attributional ambiguity: A phenomenon whereby members of
stigmatized groups often can be uncertain whether negative
experiences are based on their own actions and abilities or are
the result of prejudice
 Example: a woman is passed over for a promotion in favor of a
male colleague. If the woman can dismiss the boss who rejected
her as a sexist bigot, then she can maintain her opinion of herself
as competent and intelligent
 People can also protect their self-esteem more effectively by
claiming discrimination when they can be certain that
discrimination did occur
□ Devaluing
 Devaluing the areas of life where they face pervasive
experiences of prejudice and discrimination
 Example: getting bad grades in school might carry little weight
in how you see yourself if academics take a backseat to your
social calendar
 When people fail, fear rejection, or are excluded from a domain
or type of activity, they can quite easily devalue that domain
◊ Might be part of the reason that women are less likely to
pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering
○ These strategies can benefit targets in some situations, but they can also backfire
or create new problems

Exam Notes Page 4

The Prejudice Personality
- Authoritarian personality: A complex of personality traits, including uncritical
acceptance of authority, preference for well-defined power arrangements in society,
adherence to conventional values and moral codes, and black-and-white thinking.
Predicts prejudice toward outgroups in general
- Need for structured knowledge: A personality trait defined as a general preference for
thinking about things in simple, clear-cut ways
○ Tend to stereotype outgroup members more than do individuals who are relatively
tolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty
- Right-wing Authoritarianism
○ Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA): An ideology which holds that the social
world is inherently dangerous and unpredictable and that maintaining security in
life requires upholding society’s order, cohesion, and tradition. Predicts prejudice
against groups seen as socially deviant or dangerous
○ High-RWA individuals:
▪ Authoritarian submission: the tendency to submit to and comply with those
they consider legitimate authority figures
□ View the social world as dangerous
▪ Conventionalism: conformity to traditional moral and religious norms and
values
□ Feel that “The ‘old-fashioned ways’ and ‘old-fashioned values’ still
show the best way to live
□ Are motivated to maintain security (societal order, cohesion, stability,
tradition)
▪ Authoritarian aggression: the desire to punish individuals or groups that
authorities label wrongdoers
□ Are prejudiced against groups that threaten to disrupt collective
security because they appear dangerous or deviant
○ High-SDO individuals:
▪ Social dominance orientation (SDO): An ideology in which the world is
viewed as a ruthlessly competitive jungle where it is appropriate and right
for powerful groups to dominate weaker ones
▪ Are competitively driven to maintain the dominance of some groups over
others
▪ Believe that society should be structured hierarchically, with some groups
having higher social and economic status than others
▪ Are therefore prejudiced against groups that they perceive as lower in

Exam Notes Page 5

 ▪ Are therefore prejudiced against groups that they perceive as lower in
society's status hierarchy
▪ “Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place.”
- Social Dominance Orientation

Reducing Prejudice
- Working From The Top Down: Changing the Culture
○ One of the great challenges in reducing prejudice lies in changing these laws,
customs, and norms
○ Example: when the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of
Education declared public-school segregation unconstitutional, the United States
imposed a legal backbone behind reducing prejudice
○ A change in behavior (in this case, by law) often can lead to a change in attitude.
▪ People strive for consistency between the two. As cognitive dissonance
theory teaches us, once behavior changes (e.g., more interaction with and
civil behavior toward outgroups), relevant attitudes tend to fall in line (e.g.,
more tolerant attitudes toward outgroups)
○ Long-term, systematic reduction of prejudice requires changing laws, customs,
and norms
- Connecting Across a Divide: Controlling Prejudice in Intergroup Interactions
▪ People are less likely to express their prejudice publicly if they believe that
people in general will disapprove of such biases
○ A Dual Process View of Prejudice
▪ Process 1:
□ Stereotypes and biased attitudes are brought to mind quickly and
automatically (through a reflexive or experiential process)
▪ Process 2:
□ People employ reflective or cognitive processes to regulate or control
the degree to which those thoughts and attitudes affect their behavior
and judgment
 depends on people’s motivations for controlling their thoughts
▪ When people realize they need to cooperate with an outgroup person, they
can be motivated to be nonbiased in their interactions with the outgroup
○ Prejudice Isn't Always Easily Controlled
▪ people make judgments of others when they are already aroused or upset
□ In these situations, cognitive control is impaired, so people likely will
fall back on their prejudices and stereotypes

Exam Notes Page 6

 fall back on their prejudices and stereotypes
▪ Can have difficulty with regulating their automatically activated thoughts
when they are pressed for time, distracted, or otherwise cognitively busy
□ Example: Teachers are more likely to be biased in their evaluations of
students if they have to grade essays under time pressure.
○ The Downsides of Control Strategies
▪ When people succeed in controlling their biases, some downstream
consequences of these efforts can be negative
▪ Failure of control strategies can happen even when it seems that one has
gotten past initial stereotypes to appreciate the outgroup person’s individual
qualities
▪ Reducing prejudice requires more than employing strategies to control
prejudice; it also requires going to the source and changing people’s
prejudicial attitudes
○ Individuals can prevent their automatically activated prejudices from affecting
their behaviour
○ However, controlling prejudice is not always easy and can backfire
- Setting the Stage for Positive Change: The Contact Hypothesis
○ Encourage people actually to interact with those who are the targets of their
prejudice
▪ If people of different groups interact, prejudice should be reduced
○ According to Allport's conditions, optimal intergroup contact can reduce
prejudice when it:
▪ Establishes equal status
▪ Enables people to become acquainted with outgroup members
▪ Encourages cooperation toward superordinate goals
□ Superordinate goal: A common problem or shared goal that groups
work together to solve or achieve.
▪ Is sanctioned by authorities
○ Optimal contact
▪ Reduces stereotyping
□ Involves members of different groups exchanging intimate knowledge
about each other. This allows the once-different other to be
decategorized
▪ Decreases intergroup anxiety
□ Unfamiliar can be unsettling, so by enhancing familiarity and reducing
anxiety, contact helps to reduce prejudice
▪ Increases empathy for the outgroup
□ Helps people to look past group differences to see what they have in
common with others.
○ When Do the Effects of Contact Generalize Beyond the Individual?
▪ Positive contact with an individual from an outgroup is most likely to
generalize to the outgroup as a whole when group categorization processes
are initially reduced but then reintroduced over time
▪ Stage 1:
□ Initial contact
□ Decategorization
□ Initial anxiety, but can lead to liking of the individual
▪ Stage 2:
□ Established contact
□ Salient categorization
□ Can lessen prejudice against the outgroup
▪ Stage 3:
□ Common ingroup identity
□ Recategorization
□ Maximum reduction in prejudice
▪ Common ingroup identity: A recategorizing of members of two or more

Exam Notes Page 7

 ▪ Common ingroup identity: A recategorizing of members of two or more
distinct groups into a single, overarching group
▪ Acknowledging both subgroup and superordinate identities can allow
positive effects of contact to generalize
○ Does Contact Increase Positive Attitudes?
▪ Contact situations often are framed from the perspective of reducing biases
held by a majority group
▪ When minority-group individuals are exposed to prejudice against their
group, which is more likely to occur in the initial stages of contact, this
prejudice can intensify their negative attitudes toward the majority group
▪ Allport's optimal conditions for contact biases more for members of the
majority than for minority group
○ Implementing Optimal Contact in a Jigsaw Classroom
▪ The jigsaw classroom is an application of optimal contact to education
▪ Jigsaw Classroom
□ The lesson is divided into subtopics
□ Expert groups are assigned to each subtopic
□ Experts create an artifact that summarizes their subtopic
□ Experts return to teach this new knowledge to the jigsaw group
□ Each piece forms the larger lesson
- Reducing Prejudice Without Contact
○ Perspective Taking and Empathy
▪ Perspective taking increases empathy and decreases negative stereotypes
▪ Example: In the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., Jane Elliott taught her third-grade class about prejudice by having them
feel what it is like to be targeted by negative stereotypes
○ Reducing Prejudice by Bolstering the Self
▪ Bolstering people's good feelings about themselves helps them feel less
threatened by those who hold differing views
○ Reducing Multiculturalism with a More Multiculturalism Ideology
▪ Multiculturalism is perhaps the most effective ideology for reducing biases
help by the majority while also valuing diverse perspectives held by
minority groups
▪ Colorblind ideology: The idea that group identities should be ignored and
that people should be judged solely on their individual merits, thereby
avoiding any judgment based on group membership
□ It encourages efforts simply to control any biases or prejudices that
one has toward an outgroup. Risk is that these efforts can also backfire
□ Everyone should conform to the status quo and act as if ethnic
differences don’t matter
▪ Multicultural ideology: A worldview in which different cultural identities
and viewpoints are acknowledged and appreciated

Exam Notes Page 8

Exam Notes Page 9