5 Prejudice
5 Prejudice
Prejudice? Discrimination?
Stereotype? Racism?
Racism
An individual’s prejudicial
attitudes and discriminatory
behavior toward people of a
given race
Stereotype
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
• Glass Ceiling
Barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent
qualified females from advancing to top-level positions.
• GENDER STEREOTYPES AND THE “GLASS CLIFF”
• When, then, are women most likely to gain access to
high-status positions—or break through the glass
ceiling?
• Definition of discrimination:
• Prejudice is a negative attitude; discrimination is
negative behavior. Discriminatory behavior often has its
source in prejudicial attitudes.
• 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.
• 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
• 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?