6: Prejudice and Intergroup Relations

even artificial groups in the lab can be induced to show derogatory attitudes towards outgroup as a result of threat to ingroup Brown and Ross (1982) arranged for group members to receive feedback from another group, which was openly derogatory, casting aspersions on the ingroup's intellectual abilities or only slightly negative or slightly positive

annoyance with the outgroup increased in high and moderate threat conditions

economy and lynchings

as economy receded and times got hard in southern US back in the day, numbers of lynchings increased

Esses avoided both these problems in a series of studies conducted in Canada participants presented with false magazine articles about a fictitious immigrant group in one condition the article highlighted the scarcity of jobs in canada and the success of immigrants int he labour market in the control condition only neutral information was given

as expected, attitudes towards the fake immigrant group and immigration in general were less favourable in the 'competition' condition

some support for this inverted U-shaped relationship was obtained in 2 studies by Jetten (1998) they varied the distance between groups in their alleged perceptual styles or beliefs and the distributions of each group's score around those means e.g. very heterogenous group or rather homogenous by the simultaneous manipulation of these two factors, the experimenters were able to create 2 groups that were either extremely similar, very different, or in between (the other two combinations)

as they had predicted they found the most bias in the latter two conditions - very different or very similar ones

examples of this moderating role of identification Struch and Schwartz (1989) surveyed two neighbourhoods in jerusalem which had experienced an influx of ultra-orthodox jews - a threatening outgroup for members in these neighbourhoods amongst the measures administered were an index of perceived conflict between their group and the ultra-orthodox Jews, a measure of aggressive intentions towards the latter and ingroup identification scale results

consistent with RCT, perceived conflict was strongly correlated with aggression, but that correlation was even stronger for those who identified highly with their ingroup

in its expressive form, ingroup bias is all about reflecting - and hence confirming or validating - social reality clearly such 'expressive' bias is most likely to be displayed by members of higher-status groups as a form of

'gloating' over their superiority "we are better than you and dont you forget it"

Stephan intergroup anxiety

an apprehension about anticipated encounters with outgroup members, which is due to uncertainty as to how to behave, fears about how one will be treated and negative stereotypes of the outgroup all lead to prejudice

what is a second difficulty of RGCT

an explicit conflict of interests may not be necessary for the arousal of ingroup favouritism remember - sherif made the observation in one of his summer camp studies that, even before they had explicitly introduced the competition phase of the expt, the boys had shown an interest in trying to 'best' the other groups in various activities such apparently gratituous intergroup rivalry was demonstrated still more conclusively in the minimal categorization experiments -> people will readily favour members of own group as a consequence of mere categorization. this poses a serious problem for RGCT - for here is evidence that neither an immediate objective conflict of interests nor a prior history of intergroup competition are, in fact, necessary for the arousal of a rudimentary form of prejudice

evidence to support first option of this

- blacks who make comparisons with other blacks have higher self-esteem than blacks who make comparisons with whites - white respondents from poorer socio-economic backgrounds show more overt prejudice than more middle-class samples - may be motivated in part by the desire to avoid identity damaging comparisons with wealthier social classes and to seek positive distinctiveness in a relation to a similarly deprived group

Kelly (1988) intergroup attitudes amongst members of different political parties in Britain what were the measures

- how much sympathy they had with eachother's political views (a general evaluative measure) - how happy they would be at the prospect of spending an evening with a supporter from each party (a measure of liking)

what are the three issues that have preoccupied researchers in considering the main implications of SIT for our understanding of prejudice

- how people will react to intergroup similarity - status relationships between groups - process of identification itself. either as a causal agent in its own right or as a moderator of the effects of other variables

what determines people's aspirations for their ideal life?????? in relative deprivation theory, these aspirations are thought to derive from either or both of two kinds of comparisons

- one is temporal in nature and concerns one's recent past -> people extrapolate from their own groups experience of affluence/poverty and expect the future to be similar e.g. if living standards rise steadily this will generate an expectation of future increases thus Davies made J-curve hyp: dissatisfaction will be most likely to come after a period in which peoples living standards rise over a number of years followed by a sudden downturn. it is this sharp drop that produces the gap between actual and expected living standards which is necessary for the arousal of dep - the other comes from comparisons with other groups -> when we perceive another group to be doing better or worse than our own, esp when that group is similar/relevant to ingroup, its fate is likely to generate expectations for how well we think our group should be doing in turn, we will feel respectively deprived or gratified

Jetten and Spears (2003), in seeking to reconcile the conflicting findings on the effects of intergroup similarity, suggest there are two countervailing processes at work

- one is the SIT inspired notion of reactive distinctiveness, in which group members react to a perception that the ingroup is insufficiently well-defined from other groups - the other is reflective distinctiveness, which is a more veridically based judgement whereby objectively different groups are seen as indeed distinct

Grofman and Muller (1973) the strange case of relative gratification and potential for political violence - the V curve hyp conducted in town which had experienced civic disorder three years before respondents asked about present, past and future life but also about their support for various forms of civil disobedience and violence divided sample into three groups

- people who perceived a deterioration over time - no change 0 improvement over time those who experienced a negative change were more likely to favour political violence than those who perceived no change however those who perceived a positive change - temporal relative gratification - showed a similar endorsement of political violence

In such cases, Tajfel and Turner (1986) suggest other tactics may be adopted

- restrict oneself to only make comparisons with other similarly subordinate-status groups so that the outcome of those comparisons with other, similarly subordinate-status groups, so that the outcome of those comparisons may be more favourable to the ingroup - side-step those dimensions of comparison on which the subordinate groups is regarded as inferior and to find some new dimensions, or new values, so that the group can achieve some prestige

what underlies such anti-immigration sentiment?

- scared they will put one's job at risk - make it harder to get a fair wage for the work i do - put pressure on public services like schools, hospitals and public housing moreso working class people that don't like them

evidence to support second option of this

- smokers who had been led to believe they were orally fixated and likely to posses a number of negative personality characteristics, saw themselves as more competent and likable than control participants -> creative bias, attempting to compensate for the devaluation of their group implied in the 'orally fixated' label - these compensatory strategies are even more prominent in groups with impermeable boundaries, where individual escape routes were not open to group members

in the final section the author will draw these three threads together, to show how prejudice can often be regarded as a response to intergroup threats what 3 threats

- threats to ingroups material interests - threats to its identity - threats to its social position

what is a problem with country level findings like this

- we don't know how people actually perceive the intergroup relationships in the countries - data is correlational so cannot make causal inferences

thus far we have considered prejudice as an undifferentiated negative intergroup reaction to threat in fact this may oversimplify things somewhat a similar level of prejudice in two groups may mask very different underlying emotions this was the conclusion which resulted from some theoretical analyses of intergroup emotions although they differ somewhat in their emphases, these intergroup emotions theories share some common assumptions

1. a person can experience emotions vicariously, through the group (s) that he/she belongs to -> people do not have to experience some event directly e.g. a threat to feel some emotion. if they perceive their group to be in a particular situation then they may feel emotions on behalf of group. for this to happen they must first identify sufficiently w group so that its fortunes matter 2. emotions which group members feel in any sitch depend on how they perceive the ingroup in relation to some outgroups e.g. status, economic threat 3. different emotions then lead to diff intergroup behaviours: anger more likely to generate hostility, fear and disgust avoidance

what are the circumstances which encourage the generation of these 'cognitive alternatives' generally 3 most powerful circumstances

1. boundaries between groups are relatively impermeable 2. status differences between them are somewhat unstable and likely to change 3. differences between groups are perceived as illegitimate, founded on unfair and arbitrary principles

being a strong ingroup should lead to

anger and confrontation

conflicting group interests: when we lose, you win

conflicting group interests: when we lose, you win

what is creative bias

creating a different social reality, one in which the ingroup might be seen in a less favourable light such forms of bias might be more readily found in similar or subordinate-status groups, although, as we shall see, there may be circumstances when even higher-status group members resort to them

from this they derive their key hypothesis that the achievement or maintenance of a satisfactory identity requires that

group members will search out various forms of positive distinctiveness for their ingroup where this is not possible, they may seek alternative group memberships, which offer greater scope for positive self-evaluation

the moderating effects of group identification are not restricted to conflict; they have also been found to change

group members' responsiveness to ingroup norms regarding how outgroups should be treated

study of income distribution in Britain illustrates both of these types of deprivation weekly levels of diff income groups in UK over 30ya all groups enjoyed income rise however rich and poor gap become bigger classic breeding ground for increased feeling of

group relative deprivation on the part of the poorer group

second problem with social identity theory concerns

group status relations and prejudice

a possible response to such awareness of intergroup past misdeeds is to feel some collective _______, and hence to seek to make reparations to the outgroup or atleast show less prejudice towards it indeed, there is evidence this often happens, however, to feel guilt on behalf of one's group is not without its _________ costs, since it implies an admission of moral failure and hence of damage to the ingroup's positive public image this may be a particularly bitter pill to swallow for those who strongly identify with the ingroup

guilt psychological

the most influential proponent of this realistic group conflict theory is Sherif, who was concerned like campbell to rebut the idea that prejudice could be understood primarily as a problem of individual psychology prejudice, in his view,

had its roots in the real or perceived conflicts of interests between one group and others

these findings provide some preliminary evidence that

intergroup comparisons do figure in people's conceptions of their own group, even if not as often as SIT originally seemed to imply

intergroup similarity

intergroup similarity

Prevailing national stereotypes often undergo sharp changes for better or worse according to developments in _____________ _________________, as new alliances are forged or wars are declared

international relations

negative stereotypes should not really be thought of a threat to prejudice along with symbolic/realistic threats etc but as an antecedent of threat (precursor) negative stereotypes should be considered as an ________ variable, partially mediating the effects of the other threats on prejudice

intervening

what is social identity according to Tajfel and Turner

it consists of those aspects of an individual's self image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself belonging in other words, we invoke a part of our social identity whenever we think of ourselves as being of one gender/ethnicity/class rather than another

threats however do not have to be physical to invoke prejudice can be threats to identity a crucial aspect of many cultural groups' identity is bound up with the

language they speak when this linguistic identity is threatened - for example by an outgroup member deriding it - people may react sharply, emphasizing their own language still further and trading insults with the outgroup

however, for this phenomenon to happen, it may be necessary for members of those lower-status groups to be able to conceive of the existence of some alternatives to the current state of affairs until they can imagine that the old order is neither fair nor inevitable, such groups

may be unlikely to engage in the psychologically risky comparisons with the 'superior' group

patriotism and nationalism are usually ________________ correlated to eachother

moderately well

Burnstein and McRae (1962) found _______ favourable evaluations of a black team member following task failure, and this was particularly evident in highly prejudiced subjects, whi should have been the most eager to denigrate him

more

these experimental findings bear out a distinction made by some political psychologists between __________ and _______________, both of which are forms of national identification

patriotism nationalism

patriotism v nationalism

patriotism - strong but not uncritical attachment to one's country, its culture or its physical geography nationalism - positive view of country where they believe their country is better than others/superior -> involves a strong element of social comparison

none of these responses, with the possible exception of this last one, are completely satisfactory for members of a lower-status group, because they leave the unequal relationship between themselves and the dominant group essentially unchanged hence, the possibility of unfavourable comparisons with that group remains why then do such groups not confront the dominant group's superiority directly, by agitating for social and economic change and by refusing to accede to the consensually accepted definitions of their group's worth? such a directly competitive intergroup orientation would be the most obviously predictable reaction from the premise of SIT, which is that people generally strive for a positive identity to avoid a negative one

people generally strive for a positive identity and avoid a negative one

the idea that deprivation is always relative to some standard forms the centrepiece of all theories of relative deprivation Gurr (1970) proposed that relative deprivation arises when

people perceive a discrepancy between the standard of living they currently have and the standard of living they believe they should be enjoying it is this gap between 'attainments' and 'expectations' that is thought to lie behind social discontent and prejudice

Struch and Schwartz (1989) (the study just talked about) measured variations in _____________ intergroup conflict

perceived

then attempted to discover what lead to feelings of threat % of foreigners in each country was reliably correlated with ____________ of threat, but crucially, this relationship was qualified by the ___________ variable the percentage of foreigners was only clearly related to perceived threat for those who had ____ minority group friends for those with _________ minority group friends, the foreigner variable was completely unrelated to threat thus intergroup contact can be seen to provide an important buffer against a potentially threatening demographic variable like the proportion of foreigners

perception contact no many

what might explain this seemingly paradoxical phenomenon Leach (2002)

perhaps perception that the ingroup's advantaged position is temporary or unstable -> prompt members of group to display enhanced ride in ingroup and/or disdain for outgroup psychological defences against an eventual decline in the ingroup's status position noteworthy that studies around this mostly employed measures of gratification that imply some temporal instability even though it is usually in the ingroups favour Leach argues that the emotions of pride and disdain have the potential to lead to negative attitudinal and behavioural responses towards outgroups

conflicting interests are not, however, necessary for the arousal of mild forms of prejudice groups show a tendency towards intergroup discrimination in the most minimal group situations one explanation of such spontaneous ingroup favouritism is based on the need for a

positive social identity social identities are thought to be maintained by making positively biased intergroup comparisons, so as to achieve some distinctiveness for the group

issue of causation: deprivation to prejudice or prejudice leading to feelings of deprivation? Duckitt and Mphuthing (2002) measured black South Africans' perceptions and feelings of deprivation and their prejudiced atittudes towards Afrikaans people before and after the 1994 transitional election in South Africa what did they find

pre-election levels of relative deprivation were significantly related to post-election levels of prejudice, but not vice versa

the fact that group-relative deprivation is based so firmly on group outcomes rather than on individual ones makes it much more suitable a construct than individual deprivation for the analysis of an intergroup phenomenon like ____________ it is also important to note that a sense of group deprivation cannot arise without some prior ________________ with the group in order to feel that our group is not doing well (enough), we must first identify with that group _______________ for its fortunes to matter to us

prejudice identification sufficiently

inspiration for this theory came from some accidental observations from american army researchers found dissatisfaction was higher in certain sections of the military where

prospects for career advancement were good e.g. airforce, than in others where the chances of promotion were poor e.g. military police

did he find more prejudice with worse economic climates

still true but less influential found evidence that the effects of a high proportion of immigrants were relatively more pronounced in countries with a lower GDP

Scheepers (2006) have pointed out that ingroup bias can serve several different functions. one of these is instrumental in nature:

such bias aims to assist or motivate the ingroup to achieve some particular goal this idea underlies much of the thinking behind the RGCT approach to prejudice

summary

summary

famous sherif study

summer camp

Stephan (2000) integrated threat theory

symbolic threats - perceived threats to the way the ingroup chooses to define itself and to symbolize its identity e.g. diff religions, worldviews, cultural values, languages realistic threats - economic competition, conflicts over land etc

what is a third major problem of RGCT

takes little account of how intergroup power and status differences might influence people's responses to conflictual or cooperative intergroup relations

effects of temporal relative deprivation and group relative deprivation on prejudice little research on ____________ - found unreliable associations between unemployment/economic troubles in the past and prejudice in the future

temporal basically link between temporal relative deprivation and intergroup prejudice i.e. when you compare your groups deprivation to earlier times in past

third topic of chapter implications of intergroup comparisons for people's sense of deprivation here the discussion returns to material issues such as income levels/living standards, but these are viewed firmly from a relative rather than an absolute perspective the conclusion from this section on relative deprivation is

that prejudice springs from how badly off we think we are, as much as it springs from conditions of objective oppression and disadvantage

how was this possible??? answer may lie in the different levels of relative frustration, or deprivation

the airforce personnel, athough objectively better off, had a ready and superior standard of comparison to hand - their promoted colleagues - and thus felt more aggrieved about their position the military police personnel with fewer such comparisons available, did not feel their deprivation so acutely

Mackie (2000) arranged for participants to read a series of headlines related to issue of civil rights for gays, and ensured all participants were pro gay rights majority of headlines either supported or opposed, thus conveying the impression to them that their groups position in country was strong or week participants then expressed various emotions towards the outgroup (opponents of gay rights) and indicated whether they would want actively to confront them or to avoid them

those in strong ingroup condition i.e. saw a majority of the headlines as being pro gay, did show more anger than those in the weak condition however the fear and avoidance reactions were less consistent with Mackie (2000) hypothesis - these emotions did not differ between the two groups

In 4 separate studies they asked people to do one of three things before filling out a questionnaire which contained measures of national identification and xenophobia

- write down several ways in which their country was a better country to live in than others (social comparison) - write down several ways in which their country was a better country to live in now than it used to be (temporal comparison) - write down why their country is a good one to live in

but, of course, that identification process is hardly an all-or-nothing affair - people identify with their ingroups to diff degrees thus the group and its outcomes matter to its members according to the strength of their attachment/identification with it from this assumption, two kinds of questions can be asked

1. do more highly identified people generally show more ingroup favouritism and/or prejudice? -> direct causal role between the strength of group identification and prejudice 2. do factors which impact psychologically on members of a group do so more for those that are more highly identified -> moderating role between strength of group identification and prejudice, such that some other causal agents of prejudice operate differently - more strongly or in an opposite direction - for high and low identifiers

in their ethnographic study of 30 tribal groups in East Africa, Brewer and Campbell (1976) found that

27 of these groups rated themselves more favourably than any other group being rated, whereas nearby groups were rated somewhat lower than more distant groups such a correlation is consistent with realistic group conflict theory, since neighbouring groups are more likely to become embroiled in disputes over grazing land, access to water and other scarce resources

perhaps the context par excellence which reveals the operation of realistic conflict motives underlying prejudice is that of immigration Britain, like many other industrialized countries in recent decades, has experienced considerable migration activity at its borders, both inwards and outwards immigrating rather than emigrating seems to excite concern ____% survey respondents indicated they thought that the number of immigrants to Britain should be reduce

74%

however it is clear the negative effects of relative gratification on prejudice do not always occur

:) but note their gratification was defined in social rather than temporal terms, so perhaps the crucial element of perceived instability of the intergroup status relations was not present

much intergroup conflict occurs due to each groups' respective economic and political concerns here we will consider prejudice as originating in the social relationships between groups the first section will concentrate on objective goal relationships e.g. do the interests of each group coincide or are in conflict? however we need to pay heed to their social psychological interests also one important factor in this respect turns out to be

a groups' social standing in relation to other groups

what about groups of subordinate/low status? SIT suggests if they evaluate their groups in comparison to other groups in society they will find they earn less etc live in poorer accommodation... thus materially and psychologically, they will experience disadvantage, and such unfavourable comparative outcomes should result in them having an unsatisfactory identity Tajfel and Turner suggest that one response to this situation is for members of such groups to

abandon their current social identity seek to leave their ingroup and to join another - more prestigious group

thus, the popularity of the frustration-aggression theory as an explanation of prejudice declined in its place there emerged a theory which placed less emphasis on ____________ levels of hardship and frustration but stressed the importance of ___________ deprivation

absolute relative this became termed relative deprivation theory

how does the concept of social identity help to explain the persistent tendency for people to display intergroup discrimination in MGP? pressure for group distinctiveness come into play - group members try to differentiate their ingroup positively from the outgroup by

allocating more money or points to fellow ingroupers than to outgroupers

this was Doosje's 1998 reasoning when they conducted a study with Dutch participants who were reminded of some historical atrocities committed towards Indonesia in the Dutch colonial period so long as those reminders were somewhat _____________, so that information about the atrocities was tempered by some alleged benefits of colonization, the more ___________ nationalistic Dutch participants showed less guilt and offered less by way of material reparations than their less strongly identified peers

ambiguous less It seems that those high identifiers sought to defend themselves from the uncomfortable psychological ramifications of feeling guilt by concentrating on the more favourable rather than on the darker side of their country's history

sometimes the identity threat needs only to be implied rather than overtly expressed Branscome and Wann (1994)

american participants watched boxing match blow to national pride or their guy one americans became more disparaging towards russians after but ONLY tho those participants for whom national identity was important

what of the proposition that people evaluate their group mainly by means of intergroup comparisons? no shortage of research demonstrating people's readiness to engage in comparisons of this sort when asked to do so, and they are usually as manifestly biased as the theory predicts however there is a surprising dearth of studies which have attempted to examine the prevalence of spontaneous comparisons an exception was a survey of international attitudes we conducted in 6 european countries (Brown and Haeger, 1999)

asked respondents to write down what came to mind when thought about their country 20% contained comparative references to other countries it was found that these intergroup comparisons were made more frequently by those with a higher level of ethnic identification

what is this phenomenon

basking in reflected glory i.e. if a group whom we strongly identify with does well it will make us feel better about ourselves

Seago (1947) found that stereotypes of Japenese people among American college students

became very much less favourable after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941

why could the prejudice not be explained through dissimilarity of beliefs among the participants

because at the start the groups were carefully composed so as to be as similar as possible

why can the prejudice seen in this expt not be attributed to some personality variable

because the changes were too generic and too rapid

Caplan (1970) noted how many black supporters of ________ ___________ in the USA in the 1960s came from middle and upper income brackets, rather than from the poorer (and most individually deprived) groups their own personal advantage relative to other blacks did not prevent them from perceiving the

black power relative disadvantage of blacks, as a group, to whites

Sachdev and Bourhis (1987) modified the MGP so that the two groups were of equal or unequal ability on a creativity measure participants then had to evaluate the creativity of the groups on another task results

both the high-status and equal-status groups showed very clear ingroup bias in their evaluations, while the lower-status groups tended to favour the outgroup the group members' satisfaction with their ingroup (roughly equivalent to their strength of identification) was similarly correlated with status

in the social comparison condition, the correlation between national identity and xenophobia was generally positive and significantly higher than in the other two conditions what was the correlation in the other two conditions

close to zero

it would be tempting to conclude that feeling more or less personally deprived has few implications for how prejudiced a person is tempting, but mistaken for one thing, personal dep has SOMETIMES been found to be associated with prejudice it seems feeling personally deprived is a first step towards a more _____________ sense of grievance presumably in order for this to happen, there needs to be a sufficiently strong sense of ___________ _____________ to connect the 'me' to the 'us' if that precondition is satisfied, this argument suggests that, if personal deprivation has any effects on prejudice, it does so THROUGH _______ deprivation

collective group identification group

we hypothesized, and subsequently confirmed in 3 empirical studies, that one would only expect a strong link between group identification and ingroup favouritism in groups which can be simultaneously characterized as _____________(where there is an emphasis on intragroup cooperation and group achievements) and '_______________' (where there is a concern for the ingroup's standing relative to other groups)

collectivist relational i.e. only find link between group identification and ingroup favouritism in collectivist groups and where there is a concern for their status against other groups

from such an analysis, one quickly comes tot he conclusion that members of dominant groups should manifest ingroup bias as a

demonstration of their elevated social position indeed the research supports this meta-analyses have showed high-status groups showed markedly more ingroup bias than low-status groups

powerful intergroup determinant of prejudice: relative...

deprivation

in such circumstances, the 'normal' finding that high-status groups show more bias than low-status groups ___________ and one observes increased levels of bias from both groups that these effects are often observed to be as strong in the 'superior' group as they are in the 'inferior' group suggests that ________________and delegitimating status relations also present a threat to the higher-status group's identity, and its members react with enhanced attempts to defend their now ________ superiority

disappears destabilizing fragile

using the psychoanalytic concept of _____________, Hovland and Sears suggested that the aggression would not be directed at the true source of the _____________ frustration (e.g. the capitalist system that produced it), but would be diverted towards more vulnerable and easily accessible targets such as members of 'deviant' and _____________ groups

displacement economic minority

subsequent to this more sophisticated instruments were developed in these, typically it is the _______________ investment, or ___________ subscale that is most reliably correlated to intergroup attitude measures

emotional commitment

an overarching cause of prejudice is threat threats may take material forms e.g. to economic well being or physical safety, or they may be more symbolic in nature like threats to cultural values or identity particular threats often instigate specific _____________ responses in group members, and these, in turn, lead to __________________ behaviours towards outgroups

emotional different

what are these four types of relationship

enemy: equal status and power groups in competition ally: equal status and power groups in cooperation dependent: greater status and power of the ingroup than of the outgroup barbarian: ingroups perception of its own moral superiority, in spite of the considerably greater power of the outgroup

measuring group identification Driedger (1976) aimed to measure people's identification with their _________ group and developed the first measure. We (Brown) adapted and shortened this scale so that it could be conveniently used for any kind of group in selecting the items for our 10-item scale, we had in mind the different aspects of social identity measured in Tajfel's definition of the construct: the awareness, evaluation and emotional significance of a person's group membership

ethnic Thus we included such items as 'I see myself as belonging to the X group', 'I consider the X group important' and 'I am glad to belong to the X group'

ethnic vs civic nationalism

ethnic - only be allowed to display nationalism if you're biologically from country civic - allowed even if you endorses etc country

in summary, then, it is clear that there is no simple relationship between the strength of a person's attachment to their ingroup and their inclination to disparage outgroups instead, we need also to consider the nature or content of that group identification and the context in which it is being expressed if intergroup comparisons are highly salient, either in the person's view of their identity or in a given situation, or if the identity is constructed in a strongly essentialist/ethnic way, then we can indeed

expect a strong association between identification and prejudice but there will be other occasions, other ways of seeing the ingroup, in which identification may be no less strong, but where there is little or no tendency to denigrate those who 'do not belong'

there, in the original SIT, the emphasis was much more on the implications of different socio-structural arrangements for the group members' search for some positive distinctiveness for their group typically, researchers focused on how this search manifested itself in variations in different forms of ingroup bias, and they paid little attention to

explicitly negative or affectively tinged intergroup attitudes - which are, after all, crucial components of prejudice

Bewer and Campbell (1976) found that ethnic groups in East Africa that were independently judged to be similar to one another tended to

express friendlier intergroup attitudes than culturally more disparate groups

however, another important function that ingroup bias serves is that of identification and this function can itself be subdivided into ___________ and _____________ modes

expressive creative

being in a weak ingroup should lead to

fear and avoidance

let us first consider privileged groups on a whole host of comparative criteria, such groups emerge as superior to other groups in society thus if we follow the simple logic of SIT, members of such group have

few identity problems they can satisfactorily view their ingroups as enjoying the desired state of positive distinctiveness, a perception with comfortable ramifications for their own view of themselves at first glance, then, one might expect members of high-status or powerful groups not to need to manifest much evidence of intergroup differentiation or prejudice however, while this does follow from a strict interpretation of social identity considerations, there are other reasons why we should not expect such an outcome

however, such a response is not inevitable members of subordinate groups may not always be so willing (or able) to reject their identity for instance if the boundaries between the categories are ________ and __________, as is the case with many ascribed group memberships like gender and ethnicity, then the option to leave the subordinate group may not be open

fixed and impermeable

group membership has implications for people's self-concept, particularly if the group is perceived to have done well (or badly) in relation to other groups Zander (1960) created cohesive and non-cohesive lab groups and set them to work on a fashion design task half the groups were told after they had done well relative to the other groups, while the remainder were alleged to have performed badly results

for the cohesive groups - those which mattered to their members - the group's apparent success or failure resulted in raised or lowered levels of self-esteem in its members

why did the equal and high-status groups show roughly similar levels of ingroup favouritism? this could well have been an illustration of the two different kinds of bias suggested above

for the higher-status group, this may have been an expression/restatement of their socially defined superiority the equal-status groups, in contrast, may have been attempting to achieve, or to create, some positive distinctiveness

we wondered whether these different constructions of what a group is might affect the relationship between strength of identification and prejudice for people who thought of their national ingroup in a more 'ethnic' way, there would be a clear positive correlation between national identification and having negative attitudes towards new members whereas

for those who saw their country in a more civic way, a similar level of national identification would not translate into prejudice

Cottrell and Neuberg took a diff approach, asking their white american participants to report how much they disliked and how negatively they evaluated each of nine outgroups elicited their emotional reactions to each of the groups as well as the extent to which they believed it posed a threat to the ingroup in various ways - health, physical safety, social values etc

found diff prejudice with diff outgroups outgroups with similar prejudice scores were associated with very different emotional reactions and perceptions of threat

what might account for this apparent co-variation of economic recession with anti-black violence? Hovland and Sears (1940) themselves believed that it was caused by

frustration drawing upon the frustration-agression theory, they hypothesized that the hardships generated by a depressed economy raised people's levels of frustration, which in turn generated increased aggression

however other expts have yielded more ambiguous results e.g. Stagner and Congdon (1955) failed to find increases in prejudice in students after the

frustration of failing some academic tests

in other words, from the point of view of many British people, there is a direct competition between themselves and immigrants for such scarce resources as jobs, housing and public services, and this seems to be

fuelling their anti-immigrant prejudice

what was another way they manipulated the threat to the mans identity

gave him quiz earlier about his sex role and then told him his score fell within the range of female scores

a straightforward prediction that can be made from SIT is that, if an outgroup becomes too similar to the ingroup, it threatens the ingroups distinctiveness, and hence it should instigate

greater ingroup bias and perhaps more dislike for that outgroup Freud labelled this phenomenon the 'narcissism of small differences'

findings have been confirmed by several other studies Tripathi and Srivastava (1981) studied Muslim attitudes towards Hindus in India Muslims disadvantaged minority in India but used to be a ruling group this change in status might be expected to lead to strong feelings of deprivation, and indeed another study found they did show more deprivation than the Hindus expts found a clear correlation between

group deprivation and ingroup bias against hindus

a key moderator affecting this relationship may well be the strength of

group identification perhaps in the majority of studies showing a similarity-attraction relation, the participants' group memberships were not so strongly engaged as to make them feel too close for comfort to another group and hence experience they need to react adversely to it

identification also moderates effects of threats to gender identity Mass (2003) believe that men's offensive sexual behaviour towards women is often motivated by the offenders feeling that their gender identity is threatened made a paradigm where male participants interacted with what they believed to be a female participant who was actually confederate in an expt on 'visual memory' this expt required each participant to select images from a number of computer files and to send these to the other participant - file icons labelled nature, animals, models, porno the measure of sexual harassment was the number and offensiveness of images selected from the porno file to be sent to the female confed who clearly expressed her displeasure via chat line when sent how did they make their male participants feel threatened?

having female confed reveal herself to be a feminist by saying feminist she got sent more and more offensive pornographic images effect of threat even more apparent for those men who identified more strongly with their gender

experimental research also supports a causal link between group relative dep and prejudice Grant and Brown (1995) asked groups of women to work on a brainstorming task for which they expected to receive around 10$ each but were warned this payment would depend on their evaluation by another group half groups learned other group evaluated them poor (deprivation group) and thus they would then get less money and vice versa compared to those who received what they expected, the deprived group showed markedly ___________ levels of ingroup bias against the other group,

higher they expressed consistently higher levels of dislike for them, and from then on expressed more derogatory remarks about them

allowing perceived conflicts to have a similar causal status to that of actual conflicts helps to explain why some manifestations of racism (for example) take the form of 'they (immigrants) are taking all our jobs/houses' etc, even though unemployment and homelessness rates amongst immigrant groups are frequently ______ than those found in the host community the cognitive beliefs may sometimes be more important than the _____________ ___________

higher demographic facts

the strength of group identification does not just determine prejudice in a direct fashion, however perhaps more frequently, it operates in a more indirect way, so as to amplify the effects of other causal agents what is the reason for this

if a particular factor is found to influence outgroup attitudes, for example by providing instrumental reasons to denigrate the outgroup or to promote the 'ingroup' - then that factor should have even greater impact on more highly identified group members, for whom the interests of the ingroup are closest to their hearts

however, sensible though such a broad interpretation of conflicting interest may be, it does pose a theoretical problem to us, students of prejudice

if perceptions of competing goals can underlie prejudice, and if such perceptions are not always correlated with the groups' actual relations, where do they come from?

Cialdini (1976) observed college football supporters on the days immediately following intercollegiate games

if their college had won, college scarves and merch were much more in evidence around campus than if it had lost the students' willingness to be identified as belonging to the group seemed to be associated with the group's fortunes in intergroup encounters

such intergroup comparisons can take on many different dimensions, both concrete e.g. wealth and less tangible ones e.g. social esteem these intergroup relations are important because they have implications for the social identities of the group members concerned where these identities are secure and positive, often bc the group has sufficient status and distinctiveness, the consequential intergroup attitudes and behaviour are likely to be very different from what they might be if the identities were

ill-defined or unsatisfactory in some way = second topic of chapter

Cowen (1958) DID find an increase in the negative affect towards blacks, but this did not generalize to

increases in more general ethnocentrism against other minorities

I want now to return to an issue raised by Vanneman and Pettigrew (1972) that of the respective roles played by personal and group deprivation in the genesis of prejudice research so far has showed only group dep seems to be systematically related to intergroup attitudes and behaviour, while personal deprivation seems more liked to

individual outcomes like personal unhappiness, stress and depression

must first make a distinction between two types of relative deprivation theory Gurr's relative deprivation and others which derive directly from frustration aggression theory, the stress is on the

individual's direct experience of relative deprivation - what I enjoy/suffer relative to what i expect = individual deprivation

what two things are always a reliable correlate of prejudice

intergroup anxiety negative stereotypes

what was its principal hypothesis

intergroup attitudes and behaviour will tend to reflect group interests where these are mutually incompatible, where what one group gains is at the expense of another, the social psychological response is likely to be negative: prejudiced attitudes, biased judgements, hostile behaviour where they are mutually compatible, or even better, complementary so that one group can only gain with the assistance of another, the reaction should be more positive: tolerance, fairness, amicability

what gives rise to relative deprivation? gap between expectations and achievements Crawford and Naditch (1970) surveyed black residents in Detroit, shortly after some rioting there respondents were asked to indicate where their present lifestyle was in relation to their ideal life = measure of dep those high in deprivation showed _____________ sympathy with the objectives of black militants than those scoring low

more

McLaren (2003) 6000 sample representative of 17 europe countries measure of prejudice was anti immigrant sentiment both realistic and symbolic threats posed by minority groups were assessed, percentage of immigrants in country and other variables how did contact correlate to prejudice

more contact, less prejudice however more realistic and symbolic threat, more prejudice once these were controlled, the percentage of immigrants in each country bears no relationship to prejudice

therefore, in summary, there are several strands of research that show how people's degree of attachment to their group greatly affects their reaction to diff intergroup factors if a particular variable is likely to cause people to be prejudiced, then it is a reasonably safe bet that

more highly identified gorup members will be even more prejudiced thus, the role of social identity processes in determining prejudice is somewhat different from what had been envisaged in the original version of SIT

these relationships are thought to give rise to corresponding images of, and action tendencies towards, the outgroup for example, people are likely to see an 'enemy' in hostile and aggressive terms and then to use those stereotypical images to justify attacking it for example, a 'barbarian', though also likely to be viewed negatively, may elicit

more placating kinds of behaviour, because of its greater power and hence because of the potential damage it can inflict upon the ingroup some support for this theory has been garnered, athough it seems that some of the predicted outcomes need the additional factor of emotional arousal to manifest themselves

Breakwell (1978) studied threats to identity among football fans she arranged for some participants - teenage boys - to learn they were not 'genuine' supporters because they had only attended a few games this group was then compared to another group of boys who believed themselves to be genuine fans

much more ingroup bias shown by boys who's identities had been threatened

Brown however found identification similarly moderating the effects of an actual intergroup conflict British passengers of a ferry going to France On first day of data collection, there happened to be a strike of French fishermen, who were blockading the French Channel ports; this meant that the British passengers could not travel that day - this was the high conflict group (and later compared to low conflict group which they got data from later when the strike was no longer on) consequences of the strike in terms of British negative stereotypes of French people were modified by their strength of

national identification no stereotype in low identification group

however where they differ is in their relationship to prejudice towards foreigners nationalism clearly _________________ correlated to xenophobia vs patriotism

nationalism clearly positively correlated toward prejudice toward foreigners but patriotism only weakly related

in summary, the evidence for a straightforward connection between how much an ingroup matters to its members and their prejudice towards outgroups is neither very strong nor very consistent i.e. controversy surrounding if enhanced ingroup identification leads to a more _________ ________ towards an outgroup or vice versa

negative attitude

results when correlated measures of their ingroup bias with measures of group identification and perceived goal incompatibility between the parties

obv showed bias toward ingroup consistent with both the social identity and the realistic group conflict approaches, levels of identification and of goal conflict were independently and positively correlated with the amount of bias the respondents displayed

Jetten and Spears argue that the joint operation of these two processes gives rise to a curvilinear relationship between intergroup similarity and ingroup bias: at extremes of similarity and difference the two processes might cancel eachother out; at intermediate levels

one might expect some moderate levels of bias

if perceptions of competing goals can underlie prejudice, and if such perceptions are not always correlated with the groups' actual relations, where do they come from?

one obvious explanation is that such beliefs stem from ideological attempts by powerful interest groups to manufacture social divisions, presumably as part of some long-term 'divide and rule' political strategy although such an argument seems legit it is hard to find empirical support for this moreover, the occurrence of such 'non-realistic' perceived conflicts, even in the rather more ideologically aseptic environment of the lab, suggests there may be other origins to such subjective competitive orientations it is to these that we now turn

what is the other kind of deprivation

one which derives from people's perception of their group's fortunes relative to what they expect for their group -> group/fraternalistic deprivation

Jetten (1997) varied identification experimentally, by leading psyc students to have a more or less favourable view of their group they also lead those same students to believe that their fellow ingroup members were typically fair in their dealing with members of the other university departments or usually favoured psyc students by varying the perceived ingroup norms in this way, the researchers hoped to discourage participants from showing ingroup favouritism in a resource allocation task, or to encourage them to show it results

only those in the high-identification condition followed the ingroup norms, displaying nearly twice as much bias against business students in the favouritism norm condition as in the fairness norm condition more authoritarian people may have internalized a general norm to show prejudice towards outgroups; they will do this even more when they identify especially strongly with their ingroup

faced with this inconsistency, researchers have sought to identify additional factors that might determine when identification does indeed lead to prejudice and when it does not one suggestion of ours was to speculate that the psychological processes proposed by SIT may not be

operative in all groups instead, they may depend on prevailing levels of individualism or collectivism in the group or among it's members, and on their inclination to engage in intergroup comparisons

lastly, group identification is likely to affect the way people react to the knowledge that

other members of their ingroup have treated an outgroup unfairly in the past

these findings may help us to understand the historical changes in minority group children's ethnic preferences reported earlier most minority groups occupy a subordinate position in their respective societies...and from 1935ish-1960 in the states, status relations were reasonably stable between B and whites thus, most studies of ethnic preference during this period showed that minority group children usually made

outgroup favouring choice and judgements contrast to this, studies conducted in the late 60s and into 70s during turbulent period of race relations reported ingroup favouring choices and preferences amongst black children e.g. blacks liking themselves because the situation between them and whites was unstable and illegitimate

basically, we cannot assume that ingroup favouritism is equivalent to, or leads to

outgroup hate/prejudice

other attempts to confirm this theory of prejudice have had mixed success Miller and Bugelski (1948) young american men at camp prior to camp they had measured men's ethnic attitudes towards Mexicans and Japanese one evening, when men were eagerly anticipating a night on the town, the experimenters suddenly announced that the evening out was cancelled and the men would be required to undertake some uninteresting tasks instead results

participants attitudes became significantly less favourable towards Mexican and Japanese after the frustrating event nice confirmation of displacement hyp since the two minority groups had nothing to do w mens frustrating

The linking idea is that prejudice seems to be the result of threat: threats to the material interests of the group (____________ _________ theory), threats to the distinctiveness or integrity of the group (____________ ________________theory) and threats to the group's social position (_______________ ___________________)

realistic conflict social identity relative deprivation

Campbell (1965) surveyed a number of theories from different disciplines and noted a common theme that some group conflicts are 'rational' or 'realistic' in the sense of being based on a real competition for scarce resources he labelled the perspective the

realistic group conflict theory

the question is, do these commonly used measures of ingroup bias

really represent prejudice?

relative deprivation

relative deprivation

prejudice towards an outgroup can also be caused by a sense of _____________ ______________ - the perception that one's own group is not doing as well as one believes it should be doing such expectations can derive from one's memory of recent gains/losses made by the ingroup or, more often, from comparing the ingroups position with that of an outgroup much research confirms the importance of relative deprivation in determining prejudice, although occasionally a paradoxical effect of relative _____________ has also been observed: groups expecting to do well in the future are sometimes more prejudiced than those anticipating little change

relative deprivation gratification

prejudice can usefully be regarded as the outcome of conflicting group goals

research shows that groups competing for scarce resources typically display more bias attitudes and greater mutual animosity than groups which are cooperating to achieve jointly desired objectives

strength of group identification plays an important role in explaining prejudice, but not in the obvious way - through the claim that greater identification leads to more prejudice this claim is true only if intergroup comparisons are ______________, or if the ingroup is defined in an ______________ way (ethinc; in other words if its definition implies that the ingroup has some fixed essence) more importantly, group identification __________ the effect of other variables: people who are more strongly attached to their ingroups usually react more sharply to other factors known to instigate prejudice

salient essentialist moderates

these are the bare bones of

self-identity theory

social identity processes are relevant in two main ways for understanding prejudice groups which are very ___________ to eachother may be more biased in order to enhance their mutual distinctiveness, but only if group members identify with them sufficiently strongly groups of unequal status do not show the same levels of ingroup favouritism; typically, ________ -status groups are more biased than _____-status groups, unless _____________ or _____________ factors are at work, tending to undermine the status hierarchy

similar higher low destabilizing or delegitimating

both of these findings again contradicted the SIT prediction that

similarity would provoke a greater search for positive distinctiveness

why is status a definitely important factor from the perspective from SIT

since group distinctiveness - feeling superior in some respect - derives principally from intergroup comparisons, it follows that the standing of the ingroup in its immediate social hierarchy should have important implications for its members' identities and, hence for their intergroup attitudes

social identity

social identity

to understand this pervasive ingroup bias, we must turn to a further concept, that of

social identity

social identity processes and prejudice

social identity processes and prejudice

what does image theory say

the functionalist perspective of realistic group conflict theory is elaborated upon, in order to specify the kinds of stereotypic images, intergroup affect and behavioural responses that are likely to be associated with different intergroup power relationships borrowing from international relations, image theory identifies four types of relatinoship

SIT has underlined the importance of the process of identification itself what is self-categorization theory

the idea that once someone identifies with a group, its fortunes, its attributes and its actions become incorporated as that person's fortunes, attributes and actions

this issue has been taken up in political science, in a branch of theorizing known as

the image theory

Brown (1978) examined the relationships among three groups of engineering workers by virtue of their longer training and of the labour market scarcity, one of these groups had historically been seen as having a higher status than the other two groups which group showed most ingroup bias towards outgroups

the one of the highest status

Laboratory research, on the other hand, has produced a more mixed set of results Brown led school children to believe they were undertaking a task with members of another school depending on experimental condition, that school was alleged to be similar to them in status in the sense that they seemed to perform as well as them academically, or it was alleged to be better or worse than them in addition, the prevailing attitudes towards different academic subjects in the two schools were depicted as being either similar or different both variables had effects on the children's intergroup attitudes...

the outgroup though to hold similar attitudes was generally liked better when the children believed they were about to cooperate with the other school, their levels of ingroup bias against the similar-status group were lower than the average of their biases against the higher-status and the lower-status group

Quillian (1995) analysed some data from the 1988 Eurobarometer Survey, which was collected from over 11000 people in 12 european countries what did he find

the proportion of immigrants in a country was positively correlated with anti-immigrant prejudice Germany, France and Belgium highest immigrants and highest prejudice levels with Spain, Ireland and Portugal at the lowest

the third problem with SIT

the role of group identification

Jetten (2004) notes one other complicating factor

the strength of group members' identification with the ingroup in their meta-analysis of 39 experimental tests of the similarity hypothesis, they concluded that the overall relationship between group similarity and various indicators of intergroup differentiation was effectively zero, however for those people who highly identified with their group and hence presumably cared more about its distinctiveness from others, clear signs of 'reactive distinctiveness' (similarity leading to more bias) could be observed

what social psychological processes might give rise to prejudice independently of, or in conjunction with, the objective factors just considered? as we saw, there are good reasons for supposing that social categorization and its byproducts of differentiation and stereotyping underlie much prejudiced thinking and judgement, however there is one feature of most intergroup phenomena that they cannot readily account for

there is usually an asymmetry in people's attitudes and behaviour, such that the ingroup (and not the outgroup) comes off best theoretical models based solely on the cognitive activity of the person can explain why groups are perceived as being more different from eachother than they really are and why they may be seen in crude and oversimplified terms...but they cannot so easily account for why those perceptions typically have a positive flavour when they refer to the ingroup and a negative, or at least a less positive hue when they focus on the outgroup

Tajfel and Turner (1986) further assume that people generally have a preference for seeing themselves positively rather than negatively. since part of our self-image is defined in terms of our group memberships, this implies that...

there will also be a preference to see our ingroups in a more positive light than those groups to which we do not belong

Guimond and Dambrun (2002) replicated it and applied to prejudice lead psyc students to believe future job prospects for psychologists would either be better or worse than those for students in economics and law measured prejudice against immigrants

they found consistent results - more prejudice in deprived and gratified conditions compared to control - even more in gratification

indeed, it may even be enough to recall or imagine a brief competitive episode, not necessarily involving someone from an outgroup, for an increase in prejudice to occur Sassenberg (2007) asked some white american students to remember or imagine a situation in which they had either cooperated or competed with somebody when subsequently tested

those in the competition condition showed more prejudice towards African Americans than those in the cooperation condition similar results were obtained in East Germany with prejudice towards West Germans and Muslims, after the participants took part in a brief game which was respectively competitive, cooperative or individual

much more attention to relative dep Vanneman and Pettigrew (1972) surveyed over 1000 white voters in 4 US cities and asked whether these respondents felt they were doing better or worse economically than other white workers like them (individual RD) and also how well whites were doing compared to blacks (group RD) they then divided their sample into 4 groups, according to whether their participants could be described as being 'gratified' (doing better than others) or 'deprived' in either or both of the individual and group senses which were the groups that showed the most anti-black sentiment

those who were group or doubly deprived i.e. not just individually deprived

threat as a cause of prejudice

threat as a cause of prejudice

there was, however, one other idea in SIT which has proved enduringly influential: the concept of

threats to identity

in the studies we have been considering here - in these experiments the question is not whether the similarity of interpersonal belief or the sharing of a common category membership is the more potent antidote to prejudice instead, different category memberships are taken as given, and the question is whether

two similar groups enjoy friendlier relations than groups which are different as we have seen the effects of similarity are far from being consistent, sometimes similarity seems to instigate more friendliness and to lessen bias, sometimes the opposite

it seems, then, we can understand some of the attitudes of higher and lower-status groups towards eachother by considering the identity processes involved in those diff group memberships however, the research it has inspired has generally suffered from a rather crucial defect from the perspective of arriving at a better understanding pf prejudice in this research, the main focus has usually been on

various measures of ingroup bias there is a good reason for this - since the theory posits the need for a positive and a distinctive identity, the obvious indices to choose from, from a research standpoint, are those which reflect some positive intergroup differentiation on the part of one's respondents

it turns out that subordinate grous do sometimes opt for this strategy; examples are

various movements for civil rights in the 1960s, instigated by black people in the USA and followed by Maoris in NZ and aboriginal people in Aus, Canada and South America and most dramatically of all, the abolition of the apartheid in South Africa

Pettigrew (2008) European surveys of anti-immigrant prejudice individual RD was ____________ correlated to prejudice but

weakly but that correlation disappeared altogether once group RD was controlled for group RD was strongly correlated to prejudice, and that assoc remained even when individual RD was controlled for

potential sources of threat at an individual level...e.g. becoming unemployed

were mostly unrelated to prejudice once those three powerful factors had their effects

however a third finding was more in line with that hypothesis...

where the outgroup was very similar indeed to the ingroup, both in attitudes AND status, the amount of bias increased it was as if a certain threshold of similarity had been crossed, beyond which the ingroup felt threatened by the psychological proximity of the outgroup

a final ambiguity in RGCT concerns

whether the negative interdependence, which it assumes to underlie prejudice, need always be based on real conflicts over such concrete things as land, money, or political power perhaps it could derive instead from perceived conflicts of interests of some kind or even merely from a competition over some rather less tangible assets such as prestige, or 'being the winner'

what is a major problem with RGCT

while it is clear that when groups are competing over some scarce resource they are likely to harbour more negative and biased intergroup attitudes than when they are co-operating with each other, such biases do not disappear altogether in the latter kind of situation. A number of studies have demonstrated that ingroup favouritism is remarkably hard to eradicate, even when groups have a material interest in its elimination

according to SIT what happens if someone threatens your positive identity

you increase your attempt at differentiating your ingroup from outgroup

basic more you like other groups the more similar you perceive them to

your own group these findings are rather inconsistent with the idea that, the closer or more similar groups become, the more they will seek to differentiate themselves