Lesson 7: Prejudice PDF

Lesson 7: Prejudice ABOUT THE LESSON: Prejudice is a baseless and often negative preconception or attitude toward members of a group. Prejudice can have a strong influence on how people behave and interact with others, particularly with those who are different from them, even unconsciously or witho...

Lesson 7: Prejudice ABOUT THE LESSON: Prejudice is a baseless and often negative preconception or attitude toward members of a group. Prejudice can have a strong influence on how people behave and interact with others, particularly with those who are different from them, even unconsciously or without the person realizing they are under the influence of their internalized prejudices. (verywellmind.com) When people hold prejudicial attitudes toward others, they tend to view everyone who fits into a certain group as being "all the same." They paint every individual who holds particular characteristics or beliefs with a very broad brush and fail to really look at each person as a unique individual. Expected Output : Essay, Quiz Module Time Allotment (weeks or hours) : 1 Week (3 hours) At the end of the lesson, you will be able to: LO1. identify the current relationships that one is engaged in. LO2. form new positive relationships. Lesson Proper: PREJUDICE: DISLIKING OTHERS Prejudice. A preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members. Prejudice is an attitude. It can be easily remembered as the ABCs of attitudes: affect (feelings), behavior tendency (inclination to act), and c ognition (beliefs). A prejudiced person may dislike those different from self and behave in a discriminatory manner, believing them ignorant and dangerous. Like many attitudes, prejudice is complex. The negative evaluations that mark prejudice often are supported by beliefs, called stereotypes. Stereotype. A belief about the personal attributes of a group of people. Stereotypes are sometimes over generalized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. The problem with stereotypes arises when they are over generalized or just plain wrong. To presume that most American welfare clients are African American is to over generalize, because it just isn’t so. University students’ stereotypes of members of particular fraternities (as preferring, say, foreign language to economics, or softball to tennis) contain a germ of truth but are overblown. Individuals within the stereotyped group vary more than expected. Prejudice is a negative attitude; discrimination is negative behavior. Discriminatory behavior often has its source in prejudicial attitudes.. Discrimination. Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members. Racism. 1. An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given race, or 2. Institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race. Sexism. 1. An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given sex, or 2. Institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given sex. Prejudice: Subtle and Overt Prejudice provides one of the best examples of our dual attitude system. We can have different explicit (conscious) and implicit (automatic) attitudes toward the same target. Keeping in mind the distinction between conscious, explicit prejudice and unconscious, implicit prejudice, let’s examine two common forms of prejudice: racial prejudice and gender prejudice. Racial Prejudice IS RACIAL PREJUDICE DISAPPEARING? Which is right: people’s perceptions of high prejudice in others, or their perceptions of low prejudice in themselves? And is racial prejudice becoming a thing of the past? Psychologists usually capitalize Black and White to emphasize that these are socially applied race labels, not literal color labels for persons of African and European ancestry. Gender Prejudice GENDER STEREOTYPES From research on stereotypes, two conclusions are indisputable: Strong gender stereotypes exist and, as often happens, members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes. Men and women agree that you can judge the book by its sexual cover. Stereotypes (beliefs) are not prejudices (attitudes). Stereotypes may support prejudice. Yet one might believe, without prejudice, that men and women are “different yet equal.” Question: “Misogyny” is the hatred of women. What is the corresponding word for the hatred of men? Answer: In most dictionaries, no such word exists. GENDER DISCRIMINATION Being male isn’t all roses. Compared to women, men are three times more likely to commit suicide and be murdered. They are nearly all the battlefield and death row casualties. They die five years sooner. And males represent the majority with mental retardation or autism, as well as students in special education programs (Baumeister, 2007; S. Pinker, 2008). One such bias can be seen in analysis of birth announcements (Gonzalez & Koestner, 2005). Parents announce the birth of their baby boys with more pride than the birth of their baby girls. In contrast, they announce the birth of their baby girls with more happiness than the birth of their baby boys. It seems that even at birth, parents are already describing their boys in terms of status and their girls in terms of relationships. To conclude, obvious prejudice against people of color and against women is far less common today than it was in the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, techniques that are sensitive to subtle prejudice still detect widespread bias. And in parts of the world, gender prejudice makes for misery. Therefore, we need to look carefully and closely at the social, emotional, and cognitive sources of prejudice. Prejudice exists in subtle and unconscious guises as well as overt, conscious forms. Researchers have devised subtle survey questions and indirect methods for assessing people’s attitudes and behavior to detect unconscious prejudice. Racial prejudice against Blacks in the United States was widely accepted until the 1960s; since that time it has become far less prevalent, but it still exists. Similarly, prejudice against women has lessened in recent decades. Nevertheless, strong gender stereotypes and a fair amount of gender bias are still found in the United States and, to a greater degree, around the world. What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? What social conditions breed prejudice? How does society maintain prejudice? Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice A principle to remember: Unequal status breeds prejudice. Masters view slaves as lazy, irresponsible, lacking ambition—as having just those traits that justify the slavery. Historians debate the forces that create unequal status. But once those inequalities exist, prejudice helps justify the economic and social superiority of those who have wealth and power. Historical examples abound. Where slavery was practiced, prejudice ran strong. Some people notice and justify status differences. Those high in social dominance orientation tend to view people in terms of hierarchies. They like their own social groups to be high-status—they prefer being on the top. Being in a dominant, high status position also tends to promote this orientation (Guimond & others, 2003). social dominance orientation. A motivation to have one’s group dominates other social groups. Indeed, people high in social dominance orientation often support policies that maintain hierarchies such as tax cuts for the well-off, and they often oppose policies that undermine hierarchy, such as affirmative action. People high in social dominance orientation also prefer professions, such as politics and business that increase their status and maintain hierarchies. They avoid jobs, such as social work, that undermine hierarchies. Status may breed prejudice, but some people more than others seek and try to maintain status. Socialization Prejudice springs from unequal status and from other social sources, including our acquired values and attitudes. The influence of family socialization appears in children’s prejudices, which often mirror those perceived in their mothers (Castelli & others, 2007). Even children’s implicit racial attitudes reflect their parents’ explicit prejudice (Sinclair & others, 2004). Our families and cultures pass on all kinds of information—how to find mates, drive cars, and divide the household labors, and whom to distrust and dislike. THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY  Ethnocentric. Believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group, and having a corresponding disdain for all other groups.  Authoritarian personality. A personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of out-groups and those lower in status. RELIGION AND PREJUDICE Those who benefit from social inequalities while avowing that “all are created equal” need to justify keeping things the way they are. What could be a more powerful justification than to believe that God has ordained the existing social order? For all sorts of cruel deeds, noted William James, “piety is the mask” (1902, p. 264). In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to sanctify the present order. The use of religion to support injustice helps explain a consistent pair of findings concerning North American Christianity: (1) church members express more racial prejudice than nonmembers, and (2) those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian beliefs express more prejudice than those professing more progressive beliefs (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Batson & others, 1993; Woodberry & Smith, 1998). CONFORMITY Once established, prejudice is maintained largely by inertia. If prejudice is socially accepted, many people will follow the path of least resistance and conform to the fashion. They will act not so much out of a need to hate as out of a need to be liked and accepted. Thus, people become more likely to favor (or oppose) discrimination after hearing someone else do so, and they are less supportive of women after hearing sexist humor (Ford & others, 2008; Zitek & Hebl, 2007). Conformity also maintains gender prejudice. “If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in an 1891 essay, “we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot—because they have never seen one anywhere else.” Children who have seen women elsewhere—children of employed women—have less stereotyped views of men and women (Hoffman, 1977). In all this, there is a message of hope. If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can diminish. And so it has. MOTIVATIONAL COGNITIVE SOURCES OF PREJUDICE What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? Prejudice may be bred by social situations, but motivation underlies both the hostilities of prejudice and the desire to be unbiased. Frustration can feed prejudice, as can the desire to see one’s group as superior. But at times, people are also motivated to avoid prejudice. Frustration and Aggression: realistic group conflict theory. The theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources. Competition is an important source of frustration that can fuel prejudice. When two groups compete for jobs, housing, or social prestige, one group’s goal fulfillment can become the other group’s frustration. Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others social identity. The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships. Working with the late British social psychologist Henri Tajfel, a Polish native who lost family and friends in the Holocaust and then devoted much of his career to studying ethnic hatred, Turner proposed social identity theory. Turner and Tajfel observed the following: 1. We categorize: We find it useful to put people, ourselves included, into categories. To label someone as a Hindu, a Scot, or a bus driver is a shorthand way of saying some other things about the person. 2. We identify: We associate ourselves with certain groups (our ingroups ), and gain self-esteem by doing so. 3. We compare: We contrast our groups with other groups ( outgroups ), with a favorable bias toward our own group.  Ingroup. “Us”—a group of people who share a sense of belonging, a feeling of common identity.  Outgroup. “Them”—a group that people perceive as distinctively different from or apart from their ingroup.  ingroup bias. The tendency to favor one’s own group. NEED FOR STATUS, SELF-REGARD, AND BELONGING Status is relative: To perceive ourselves as having status, we need people below us. Thus, one psychological benefit of prejudice, or of any status system, is a feeling of superiority. Most of us can recall a time when we took secret satisfaction in another’s failure—perhaps seeing a brother or sister punished or a classmate failing a test. Motivation to Avoid Prejudice Motivations not only lead people to be prejudiced but also lead people to avoid prejudice. Try as we might to suppress unwanted thoughts—thoughts about food, thoughts about romance with a friend’s partner, judgmental thoughts about another group—they sometimes refuse to go away. People’s motivations affect prejudice. Frustration breeds hostility, which people sometimes vent on scapegoats and sometimes express more directly against competing groups. People also are motivated to view themselves and their groups as superior to other groups. Even trivial group memberships lead people to favor their group over others. A threat to self-image heightens such ingroup favoritism, as does the need to belong. On a more positive note, if people are motivated to avoid prejudice, they can break the prejudice habit. The basic point is this: Stereotyped beliefs and prejudiced attitudes exist not only because of social conditioning and because they enable people to displace hostilities, but also as by-products of normal thinking processes. Categorization: Classifying People into Groups One way we simplify our environment is to categorize —to organize the world by clustering objects into groups (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000, 2001). SPONTANEOUS CATEGORIZATION We find it especially easy and efficient to rely on stereotypes when we are pressed for time (Kaplan & others, 1993). preoccupied (Gilbert & Hixon, 1991). tired (Bodenhausen, 1990). emotionally aroused (Esses & others, 1993b; Stroessner & Mackie, 1993). too young to appreciate diversity (Biernat, 1991). Ethnicity and sex are powerful ways of categorizing people. Racial Categorization Quickly: What race is this person? Less prejudiced people respond more quickly, with less apparent concern with possibly misclassifying someone (as if thinking, “who cares?”). PERCEIVED SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Picture the following objects: apples, chairs, pencils. There is a strong tendency to see objects within a group as being more uniform than they really are. It’s the same with people. Once we assign people to groups—athletes, drama majors, math professors—we are likely to exaggerate the similarities within the groups and the differences between them (S. E. Taylor, 1981; Wilder, 1978). Mere division into groups can create an outgroup homogeneity effect —a sense that they are “all alike” and different from “us” and “our” group.  Outgroup homogeneity effect. Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another than are ingroup members. Thus “they are alike; we are diverse.”  own-race bias. The tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race. (Also called the cross-race effect or other-race effect. ) DISTINCTIVENESS FEEDS SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS STIGMA CONSCIOUSNESS  stigma consciousness. A person’s expectation of being victimized by prejudice or discrimination.  group-serving bias. Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one’s own group).  just-world phenomenon. The tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.  AGGRESSION AGGRESSION “Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In all of nature, there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.” —Lewis Thomas (1981) Aggression. - Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone. This definition excludes unintentional harm such as auto accidents or sidewalk collisions; it also excludes actions that may involve pain as an unavoidable side effect of helping someone, such as dental treatments or—in the extreme—assisted suicide.  Hostile aggression - (Also called affective aggression.) Behavior intended to harm another, either physically or psychologically, and motivated by feelings of anger and hostility  Instrumental aggression - behavior intended to harm another in the service of motives other than pure hostility (for example, to attract attention, acquire wealth, and to advance political and ideological causes) THEORIES OF AGGRESSION What Are Some Theories of Aggression? In analyzing causes of hostile and instrumental aggression, social psychologists have focused on three big ideas: (1) There is a biologically rooted aggressive drive; (2) aggression is a natural response to frustration; and (3) aggressive behavior is learned. INSTINCT THEORY AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY Freud speculated that human aggression springs from a self-destructive impulse. It redirects toward others the energy of a primitive death urge (the “death instinct”). Lorenz, an animal behavior expert, saw aggression as adaptive rather than self destructive. The two agreed that aggressive energy is instinctive (unlearned and universal). If not discharged, it supposedly builds up until it explodes or until an appropriate stimulus “releases” it, like a mouse releasing a mousetrap.  instinctive behavior - An innate, unlearned behavior pattern exhibited by all members of a species. NEURAL INFLUENCES Because aggression is a complex behavior, no one spot in the brain controls it. But researchers have found neural systems in both animals and humans that facilitate aggression. When the scientists activate these brain areas, hostility increases; when they deactivate them, hostility decreases. Docile animals can thus be provoked into rage, and raging animals into submission. (amygdale and prefrontal cortex) BIOCHEMICAL INFLUENCES Blood chemistry also influences neural sensitivity to aggressive stimulation.  ALCOHOL Both laboratory experiments and police data indicate that alcohol unleashes aggression when people are provoked (Bushman, 1993; Taylor & Chermack, 1993; Testa, 2002).  TESTOSTERONE Hormonal influences appear to be much stronger in lower animals than in humans. But human aggressiveness does correlate with the male sex hormone, testosterone.  LOW SEROTONIN Another culprit often found at the scene of violence is a low level of the neurotransmitter serotonin, for which the impulse-controlling frontal lobes have many receptors. In both primates and humans, low serotonin is often found among violence-prone children and adults (Bernhardt, 1997; Mehlman & others, 1994; Wright, 1995). Moreover, lowering people’s serotonin levels in the laboratory increases their response to aversive events and their willingness to deliver supposed electric shocks or to retaliate against unfairness (Crockett & others, 2008).  BIOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR INTERACT It is important to remember that the traffic between testosterone, serotonin, and behavior flows both ways. Testosterone, for example, may facilitate dominance and aggressiveness, but dominating or defeating behavior also boosts testosterone levels (Mazur & Booth, 1998). Frustration Aggression Theory The theory that frustration triggers a readiness to aggress.  Frustration. The blocking of goal-directed behavior. Frustration grows when our motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expected gratification, and when the blocking is complete.  Displacement. The redirection of aggression to a target other than the source of the frustration. Generally, the new target is a safer or more socially acceptable target. Frustration-Aggression Theory Revised The point is not that deprivation and social injustice are irrelevant to social unrest, but that frustration arises from the gap between expectations and attainments. When your expectations are fulfilled by your attainments, and when your desires are reachable at your income, you feel satisfied rather than frustrated (Solberg & others, 2002).  Relative deprivation. The perception that one is less well- off than others with whom one compares oneself.  Social learning theory. The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded and punished. Albert Bandura (1997) proposed a social learning theory of aggression. He believes that we learn aggression not only by experiencing its payoffs but also by observing others. As with most social behaviors, we acquire aggression by watching others act and noting the consequences. In Bandura’s famous experiment, children exposed to an adult’s aggression against a Bobo doll became likely to reproduce the observed aggression. What Are Some Influences on Aggression? Under what conditions do we aggress? In the previous section, we examined some theories of aggression. Now we dig deeper and examine some specific influences: aversive incidents, arousal, the media, and the group context. Arousal. The principle seemed to be: A given state of bodily arousal feeds one emotion or another, depending on how the person interprets and labels the arousal. Sexual arousal and other forms of arousal, such as anger, can therefore amplify one another (Zillmann, 1989). Love is never so passionate as after a fight or a fright. In the laboratory, erotic stimuli are more arousing to people who have just been frightened. Similarly, the arousal of a roller-coaster ride may spill over into romantic feeling for one’s partner. A frustrating, hot, or insulting situation heightens arousal. When it does, the arousal, combined with hostile thoughts and feelings, may form a recipe for aggressive behavior. Elements of Hostile Aggression An aversive situation can trigger aggression by provoking hostile cognitions, hostile feelings, and arousal. Social-psychological research on pornography has focused mostly on depictions of sexual violence, which is commonplace in twenty-first-century top-renting adult videos (Sun & others, 2008). A typical sexually violent episode finds a man forcing himself upon a woman. She at first resists and tries to fight off her attacker. Gradually she becomes sexually aroused, and her resistance melts. By the end she is in ecstasy, pleading for more. We have all viewed or read non-pornographic versions of this sequence: She resists, he persists. Dashing man grabs and forcibly kisses protesting woman. Within moments, the arms that were pushing him away are clutching him tight, her resistance overwhelmed by her unleashed passion. In Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara is carried to bed protesting and kicking and wakes up singing. Aggression can serve a number of different purposes, including: 1. To express anger or hostility 2. To assert dominance 3. To intimidate or threaten 4. To achieve a goal 5. To express possession 6. A response to fear 7. A reaction to pain 8. To compete with others  Catharsis. Emotional release. The catharsis view of aggression is that aggressive drive is reduced when one “releases” aggressive energy, either by acting aggressively or by fantasizing aggression.  Pro-social behavior. Positive, constructive, helpful social behavior; the opposite of antisocial behavior.  Social scripts. Culturally provided mental instructions for how to act in various situations.  REDUCING AGGRESSION The best way to reduce incidents of aggression among young people is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Below are some of the strategies on how to better manage aggressive behaviours (www1.health.gov.au) Preventing aggression By being aware of the potential for aggression, you may be able to take steps to prevent it.  Do not invade 'personal space' unless you are applying first aid. It is very easy to feel threatened and to misinterpret situations when intoxicated.  Keep other clients from becoming involved.  Be calm and speak slowly and clearly while keeping communications short, simple and to the point. Avoid long-winded explanations. Concentration spans are short when people are intoxicated, and memory is impaired.  Be patient, and repeat information where necessary.  Personalise your communications. Be on a first name basis with the young person. Acknowledge their feelings and needs, and try to satisfy any reasonable desires the young person may have.  Don't confront an intoxicated person. Nobody likes to be confronted at the best of times. Confrontation and intoxication is a volatile mix. Self-protection strategies If a young person does become aggressive:  Ensure that you have an exit strategy in case you need to protect yourself.  Call for help from other staff members.  Call the police if the situation is beyond your control. While these actions may seem self-evident, it is not uncommon for health and welfare workers to do and say things that exacerbate tension and aggression when under stress - particularly when we take insults personally, or attempt to be authoritarian with young people. General defusion strategies Although it is not an everyday occurrence, there may be times when a situation involving an intoxicated young person escalates into violence. Some knowledge of general defusion strategies may therefore be helpful. Defusion strategies can include:  When violence is threatened, stop what you have been doing and actively listen. Now is not a time for problem solving, reframing, or pointing out irrational thinking.  Avoid excessive questioning.  Be aware of your body language – use non-threatening gestures make eye contact.  Take any other young people away from the situation if you think it is safe to leave the individual alone. Reference Book: Myers, D., & Twenge, J. (2016). Social Psychology Twelfth Edition. New York City, New York: McGraw-Hill Education Images Source:  Google Images Below are the suggested articles that you can consider reading. This online article will provide you additional knowledge about this lesson  https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-prejudice-2795476  https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/drugtreat- pubs-front12-wk-toc~drugtreat-pubs-front12-wk-secb~drugtreat-pubs-front12-wk- secb-4~drugtreat-pubs-front12-wk-secb-4-3 Here is a suggested video link that will give you more realizations and inspire you about the concept of Prejudice and Discrimination Title: Prejudice and Discrimination: Crash Course Psychology #39  Website Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0iP2Zm6a4