Prejudice and discrimination.

Recent Trends in Intergroup Contact

The jigsaw method

The Cultural Dimensions of Prejudice

Supports the view that prejudice is cultural, but this research has limitations.

The Vicious Cycle

The Persistence of Prejudice: Myrdal suggests prejudice is reinforced by everyday observation of the inferior status of the minority group, motivating further discrimination, which reinforces inferior status and validates prejudice.

Equal status contact hypothesis

According to Pettigrew (1998), inter-group contact will tend to reduce prejudice when four conditions are filled: the groups must have (a) equal status and (b) common goals and must (c) interact intensively in noncompetitive, cooperative tasks and (d) have the active endorsement of authority figures.

Power/Conflict Models: Group Interests

Herbert Blumer's theory is that prejudice develops due to groups feeling threatened by those below them. It was seen overtly during the Civil Rights movement, but in more recent times is far more subtle.

Limitations of the Contact Hypothesis

Reduction in prejudice is often situation specific (not generalized to other situations)

Socialization

The Development of Prejudice in Children: Research suggests people are born without bias and have to be taught whom to like and dislike. By age 3 or younger, children recognize the significance and permanence of racial groups and can accurately classify people. Children learn prejudice even when it is not overtly or directly taught.

The decline of traditional prejudice has been explained as having a few specific causes.

The Role of Education--Education levels have increased, but the reduction in prejudice could be due to correlation, how the questions are asked, or learning to hide true feelings.

The Role of Group Competition

The Role of Group Competition 1. The one common factor that seems to account for the origin of all prejudices is competition between groups. 2. Robber's Cave--Sherif's 1950s experiment at a summer camp for 11-12-year-old boys. He divided the boys into two groups and set up activities on a competitive basis. Prejudice grew intense and declined when the groups had to work cooperatively. This experiment illustrates that competition over resources and status and the desire to defend against perceived threats from other groups are primary motivations for the construction of prejudice and structures of inequality benefiting the dominant group. 3. Theoretical Perspectives on Group Competition and Prejudice: Power/Conflict Models

The Contact Hypothesis

The idea that stereotypes and prejudice toward a group will diminish as contact with the group increases.

The Content of American Stereotypes

When asked to characterize entire groups of people, even highly educated college students do so.

Summary and Limitations

1. Prejudice persists in part because it becomes part of the culture and is passed to younger generations. 2. But cultural causes alone are insufficient--not all members of a society have similar levels of prejudice or socialization experiences; socialization is not a passive process; we also learn egalitarian norms and values; attitudes

Situational Influences

Distinction between thought (prejudice) and action (discrimination). The situation shapes the relationship between prejudice and discrimination.

Hate Crimes are

Violent crimes aimed at individuals of a particular race, ethnicity, sexuality, or religion.

social distance scale

the degree of intimacy a person is willing to accept in his or her relations with members of other groups. Bogardus developed seven degrees of social distance, used as a scale.

Hate crimes

A. Hate crimes contradict the idea that prejudice is declining or becoming subtler. B. It is difficult to establish trends in incidents of hate crimes due to reporting and recording differences. C. Most reported hate crimes were racially motivated, with blacks as the target group. D. Potential causes of hate crimes: Perceived threats, frustration, fear, anger, scapegoating, structural changes in the economy.

Sociology of Prejudice

A. Prejudice has its origins in competition between groups; is more a result of competition than a cause; is created at a point in history to mobilize feelings and energy for competition and rationalize inequality; is absorbed into the cultural heritage and passed on to later generations, where it helps shape perceptions and reinforce inferiority. B. Prejudice caused by scapegoating or authoritarian personality structures will not be affected by changes in the social environment, education, or intergroup contact. C. Culture-based or traditional prejudice can be just as vicious and extreme as personality-based prejudice. D. Inter-group conflict produces vicious prejudice and discrimination, but the problems are inequality and scarce resources, not prejudice. E. Reducing prejudice will not necessarily change the situation of minority groups. Inequality and institutional discrimination are the main problems. F. Individual prejudice and discrimination are not the same as racism and institutional discrimination.

Power/Conflict Models: Marxist Analysis

Elites who control the means of production in a society also control the ideas and intellectual activity of the society. Elites who subordinate a minority group will develop and institutionalize ideologies to justify the arrangement.

Power/Conflict Models: Summary and Limitations

Marxism, Split Labor Market theory, and Group Interests conclude that prejudice emerges in a struggle to control or expand a group's share of scarce resources, and prejudice persists because some group gains from it. But no theory can account for prejudice in all its forms. Culture, socialization, family structure, and personality development also play a role in the origins of prejudice.

Comparative Focus

The Contact Hypothesis and European Prejudice--research in Europe supports contact hypothesis.

Intellectual capabilities

The Development of Prejudice in Children: Children are actively engaged in their learning and their levels of prejudice reflect their changing intellectual capabilities. Children as young as 5 or 6 months can make distinctions between categories or people, which suggests it is not just due to socialization. Distinctions may help children organize and understand the world and this need for primitive categorization may decline with increased intellectual capability. Levels of prejudice in children may reflect an interaction between mental capacities and environment, rather than simple socialization.

Power/Conflict Models: Split Labor Market Theory

The labor market is split into higher priced labor and cheaper labor. Higher priced labor attempts to exclude cheaper labor through prejudice and is the beneficiary of prejudice, not capitalists.

The jigsaw method

The name given to the technique used by Aronson to reduce prejudice within a group of mixed-race students

Modern Racism: The New Face of Prejudice.

This is the idea that prejudice in the United States is not declining but is just changing forms to a more subtle, complex, and indirect way of expressing negative feelings toward minority groups and opposition to change in dominant-minority relations. Attitudes associated with modern racism are consistent with the traditional assimilation model and human capital theory. It blames the victim, deflects attention from oppression and discrimination, stereotypes minority groups, and encourages negative attitudes without the traditional image of innate inferiority.

Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Stereotypes

Two general stereotypes of minority groups: extreme inferiority (to rationalize extreme inequality); relative success viewed in negative terms (in situations of less extreme differences).

Stereotypes

are generalizations about groups of people that are exaggerated, overly simplistic, and resistant to disproof.

The Robbers Cave experiment supports

but cannot prove the equal status contact hypothesis. More recent studies have generally supported contact hypothesis.

the theory of the authoritarian personality​

inks prejudice to early childhood experiences and personality structure, suggesting stern, highly punitive styles of parenting produce prejudice.

Individual prejudice

is a set of feelings or emotions that people attach to groups, including their own​ For example, someone may have a negative view of the Irish and call them "drunks"​ This is a generalized association with an entire group​

Prejudice

is partly a set of feelings or emotions that people attach to groups, including their own.

Selective perception

is the tendency to see only what one expects to see, which strengthens stereotypes

The scapegoat hypothesis

links prejudice to frustration or aggression, suggesting people "take it out" on less powerful substitute targets such as minority groups.

Affective and cognitive dimensions

prejudice vary by race, gender, and class. Stereotypes and feelings attached to black males, for example, differ from those attached to black females.