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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Defining Prejudice
Preconceived negative judgment of a group and its
individual members
 Supported by stereotypes
 Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Defining Prejudice
Discrimination
 Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members
Racism
 Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward
people of a given race
Sexism
 Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward
people of a given sex

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit
Dual attitude system
 Explicit
 Conscious

 Implicit
 Automatic

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Racial Prejudice
Is racial prejudice
disappearing?

Changing Racial Attitudes of White Americans from 1958 to 2011

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Racial Prejudice
Subtle forms of prejudice
 Labor market discrimination
 Patronization
 Avoiding criticisms

 Overpraising accomplishments

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Racial Prejudice
Automatic Racial Prejudice
 Involves primitive regions of the brain associated with fear
(amygdala)
 Critics note that unconscious associations may only indicate

cultural assumptions, perhaps without prejudice

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Gender Prejudice
Gender stereotypes
 Strong gender stereotypes exist
 Members of the stereotyped group accept the stereotypes

 Most believe that men and women are different yet equal

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Gender Prejudice
Sexism: Benevolent and Hostile
 Attitudes toward women have changed rapidly
 Most see women as understanding, kind, and helpful

 Gender Discrimination
 Disappearing in democratic Western countries
 Non-Western countries gender bias is still strong

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What Is the Nature and Power of
Prejudice?
Gay and Lesbian Prejudice
Gay marriage support is mixed but increasing.
Harrassment hurts.
Rejection happens.

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice
Social dominance orientation
 Motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups
 Being in a dominant high-status position tends to promote

this orientation and justification

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Socialization
Authoritarian personality
 Personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority
and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status
 Ethnocentricity

 Believing in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and

cultural group, and having a corresponding disdain for all

other groups

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Socialization
Religion and Racial Prejudice
 In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to sanctify
the present order
 Use of religion to support injustice helps explain a pair of

findings concerning North American Christianity

 White church members express more racial prejudice than

nonmembers
 Those professing traditional or fundamentalist Christian

beliefs express more prejudice than those professing more

progressive beliefs

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Socialization
Conformity
 If prejudice is socially accepted, many people will follow the
path of least resistance and conform to the fashion
 If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as

fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can

diminish

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What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Institutional Supports
Government
Schools
Magazines and newspapers
 Face-ism
Films and television

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory
Displaced aggression
 Hate crimes
Realistic group conflict theory
 Prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce
resources

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our
answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group
memberships
 We categorize
 We identify

 We compare

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
Ingroup bias
 Ingroup bias expresses and supports a positive self-concept
 Ingroup bias feeds favoritism

 Must ingroup liking foster outgroup disiking

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
Need for Status, Self-Regard, and Belonging
 Terror management
 People’s self-protective emotional and cognitive responses

when confronted with reminders of their mortality

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What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
Motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to
modify their thoughts an actions
 Self-conscious people will feel guilt and try to inhibit their
prejudicial response

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
Spontaneous categorization
 Social identity theory implies that those who feel their social
identity keenly will concern themselves with correctly
categorizing people as us or them
 Necessary for prejudice

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
Perceived similarities and differences
 Outgroup homogeneity effect
 Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one

another than are ingroup members

 Own-race bias
 Tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of

their own race

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
Distinctive people
 Feeds on self-consciousness
 Stigma consciousness
 Person’s expectation of being victimized by prejudice or

discrimination

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
Vivid Cases
 Given limited experience with a particular social group, we
recall examples of it and generalize
 Can prime the stereotype

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
Distinctive Events Foster Illusory Correlations
 Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership
and individuals’ presumed characteristics
 Attentiveness to unusual occurrences can create illusory

correlations

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What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
Attribution: Is It a Just World?
Group-Serving Bias
 Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also
attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions
Just-World Phenomenon
 Tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that
people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what
they get

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments
Whenever a member of a group behaves as expected,
we duly note the fact; our prior belief is confirmed
When a member of a group behaves inconsistently with
our expectation, we may interpret or explain away the
behavior as due to special circumstances

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments
Subtyping
 Accommodating individuals who deviate from one’s
stereotype by thinking of them as “exceptions to the rule”
Subgrouping
 Accommodating individuals who deviate from one's
stereotype by forming a new stereotype about this subset of
the group

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Social beliefs can be self-confirming
Prejudice affects its targets

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
Stereotype Threat
Disruptive concern,
when facing a negative
stereotype, that one will
be evaluated based on a
negative stereotype

Stereotype Vulnerability and Women’s Math Performance

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What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
Do Stereotypes Bias Judgments of Individuals?
Yes, but people often evaluate individuals more
positively than the groups they compose
Strong Stereotypes Matter
Stereotypes Bias Interpretations
Affect how events are interpreted
 We evaluate people more extremely when their behavior
violates our stereotypes

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