PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION:Activity on Cognitive Dissonance, Categorization

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Lesson 25

PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

Activities on Attitude Change:

Activity on Cognitive Dissonance

1. Rate your agreement on a 7-point scale in reference to following statement:

"Illiteracy is a serious problem that requires attention"

2. "Have you personally done anything to help reduce illiteracy?"

This activity was conducted for you to experience cognitive dissonance

Applied Social Psychology Lab:

Practical application of principles of attitude and behaviour change

Creating an image (public relation firms)

Education: Hidden propaganda for the establishment

Attitude change by successive approximation (to change strongly held views)

Prejudice and Discrimination:

Aims

To introduce the psychological factors that influence and drive prejudice and discrimination

Objectives

Compare and contrast the alternative theories of prejudice and discrimination

Evaluate cognitive and motivational components of inter-group bias

Inter-group intolerance

In English language, the pronouns us and them indicate the degree of social and psychological space

between the speaker and the social group to which these pronouns refer. People associated with "they"

pronouns usually are not like us. We state them like this, "they are disrespectful"; "they are different";

"they are dangerous, difficult, annoying", and so on. We sometime feel sorry for them but we don't want

them around us. They (sometime) may be good ones, but usually they are not like us.

Social groups associated with the "distancing" "they" and "them" pronoun labels are valued much less

than those with the embracing "we" and "us" labels.

This chapter is about the social psychology of inter-group intolerances

Prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice is a negative attitude towards the members of specific social groups. Attitude is general

type of feeling. Prejudice is specific form of feeling.

Discrimination is a negative behaviour directed toward members of social groups who are the object

of prejudice.

Stereotypes: Beliefs about the personal attributes shared by people in a particular group or social

category.

Social Psychology (PSY403)

Factors shaping prejudice & discrimination

1. Cognitive sources: Categorizing people

2. Emotional sources: Scapegoat & Authoritarian personalities

3. Social sources

Social inequalities: Unequal status, Religion, stereotype threat

Social identity

The minimal group paradigm

Social identity theory

Inter-group competition

Cognitive sources of prejudice

Categorization

One way we simplify structure our environment is to categorize by clustering things into groups.

For example, a biologist classifies plants and animals. In psychology, we classify people. Once

categorized, we begin to perceive people differently.

In multicultural societies, e.g., in USA, people of widely varying ancestry are labeled as Black and

White, on the basis of skin colour. Afro Caribbean males are often labeled as "angry black man",

and are considered dangerous. In Pakistan, Zaat and Beradri system is the basis of categorization.

Ethnicity and sex are powerful ways of categorizing people. For example in many parts of UK,

Pakistani people are called as Pakies, an insulting label.

By itself categorization is not prejudice, but it provides a foundation for that.

Social identity theory implies that those who feel their social identity keenly tend to categorize

people as us or them.

Out-group Homogeneity Effect

Merely assigning people to different social groups can create out-group homogeneity effect, the

perception of out-group members as being more similar to one another than one's own group.

"They are all alike, while we are diverse". Our tendency to perceive out-group members as similar to

one another sets the stage for developing beliefs about their personalities, abilities, and motives" These

beliefs are called stereotypes, a type of schema.

In-group homogeneity effect can also arise when there are many minorties at one place and they feel

similar to each other on the basis of minority category.

Stereotypes are beliefs about people that put them into categories and don't allow for individual

variation.

The function of stereotyped thinking

Quickness: Stereotyped thinking provides us with rich and distinctive information about people we do

not personally know (Gilbert & Hixon, 1991). Quickness is one of the most apparent qualities of

stereotyped thinking and provides basis for immediate action in uncertain circumstances. It provides

shortcuts to thinking.

We don't have to get to know a person by time consuming method. However, it may result into faulty

conclusions and judgments.

Social Psychology (PSY403)

Appears to "free-up" cognition for other tasks; this resource-preserving effect has an evolutionary basis

(Gilbert, 1989).

Filtering social judgments through stereotypes results in ignoring information that is relevant but

inconsistent with the stereotype.

Stereotypes against Alien Cultures: Narratives from Mental Health Professionals in UK

A research was conducted in the UK to explore how far the perceptions of mental health professionals are

derived from cultural stereotypes (Burr, 2002). Some important narratives stated by mental health

professionals during focus group discussions are as under:

Narratives about traditional feminine roles:

"I think the roles of women, the expectations, and because there is quite a lot of pressure and to conform, so

South Asian women might find themselves quite isolated"

"My concept of the Asian women is that they are very much in the dark almost on the corners".

Here people not familiar to South-Asian countries' culture assume that people particularly women

belonging to these cultures are more likely to be depressed because of cultural pathology.

Stereotypes: Cultural conflicts

"If they adapt to British culture, and perhaps if their Asian or ethnic values are not so rigid, then it may be

easy"

"They all try to carry on their tradition in an alien culture, so you can see how their conflict is. I am amazed

that they are not all depressed really. I think that they should all go home.... They don't fit here"

"They are swamping the country. They are just descending to these areas. They are probably thinking that

streets are paved with gold, going to be mightily disappointed"

According to mental health professionals in the UK, the only idea to resolute conflict is that people

belonging to alien cultures adopt western culture and leave the `inferior rigid culture'.

Stereotypes: Arranged Marriage

"I think it will be very lonely, I didn't realize how many people lose their own families when they go into

an arranged marriage, you know, and their husband's family is more their family. It must be horrible"

The idea mentioned here that arranged marriage is inherently psychologically damaging is questionable.

Stereotypes: Expectations & Awareness

"We would be really depressed at some conditions that some cultures are faced with, but they just get on

with it"

"I think Asian women are socially conditioned to take all those blows. They are the ones to take the

entire heavy load. They can't say they are depressed. Only when they come to a place like this, that's

when we start to see symptoms"

Mental health professionals in the UK believe that South-Asian people/ women are not capable to be

depressed. Here Western therapists are ignoring the strengths of Asian cultures, while may have

provided many positive buffers against distress.

Emotional sources of prejudice

Frustration & Aggression: The scapegoat theory

Prejudice is viewed by some people as displaced aggression onto a group that serves as a scapegoat.

When

the cause of our frustration is intimidating or unknown, we often direct hostility

Social Psychology (PSY403)

The targets for this displayed anger can vary. Following their defeat in world-war I, and resulting

economic depression, many Germans saw Jews as villains. One German leader explained, "The Jew is just

convenient....if there were no Jews, the anti-Semites would have to invent them" (quoted by G.W. Allport,

1958, p. 325)

When cotton prices were low and economic frustrations were high, White considered black people as an

easy scapegoat. So, there was more lynching of African Americans in the years of economic depression

after the civil war (1882- 1930 (Hoveland & Sears, 1940).

One source of frustration is competition (realistic group conflict theory). Goal fulfillment of one group

becomes the frustration of the other group.

Emotional sources of prejudice: Prejudice as a personality type

Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswick fled from Nazi Germany during world-war II and were motivated to

find out the psychology underlying the mass genocide of millions of Jews and other undesirables by

Nazi Germany. Using psychoanalytic perspective, Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswick set out to discover

how people with certain personality characteristics might be prone to inter-group hostility

Used interviews, case histories, surveys identified authoritarian personality

Authoritarian people confirm rigidly to cultural rules and values and believe that morality is a clear right

and wrong choices

The authoritarian personality is characterized by submissiveness to authority and intolerance for those

who are weak

Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Stanford (1950) constructed The `F' (Fascist) scale to

measure authoritarian personality.

Authoritarian personality results from personality conflicts and harsh childrearing practices

Social learning theory

In 1980s interest in the authoritarian personality was revived by Altemeyer when he stated that the

origin of authoritarian personality is not personality conflicts from childhood. Adolescents who socialize

with authoritarian disciplinarians develop similar tendencies by modeling and reinforcement. Altemeyer

(1981, 1988) suggested that the authoritarian personalities are caused by people learning a prejudicial

style of thinking during adolescence

Studies conducted over the past 20 years support social learning perspective (Duckitt & Fisher, 2003)

Reading

· Franzoi, S. (2003). Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 8.

Other Readings

· Lord, C.G. (1997). Social Psychology. Orlando: Harcourt Brace and Company.

David G. Myers, D. G. (2002). Social Psychology (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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