CHAPTER
13
PREJUDICE AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS 1
ABC’S OF INTERGROUP RELATIONSHIPS: PREJUDICE,
DISCRIMINATION AND STEREOTYPES
Prejudice: a negative feeling toward an individual based solely on his/her
membership in a particular group.
Derived from the Latin term for ’prejudging’
The best-known form of prejudice is:
Racism: prejudiced attitudes towards a particular race.
Racism can take the form of overt, blanket
statements of disliking and disapproving of
certain groups.
This creates a pattern that some psychologists have called:
Aversive racism: simultaneously holding egalitarian values an negative feelings toward people of
other races
They believe in racial equality and equal opportunity but they also feel
uncomfortable around minorities and try to avoid them when possible.
Prejudiced feelings sometimes lead people to discriminate against others:
Discrimination: unequal treatment of different people based on the groups or categories to which
they belong
E.g. the policy of apartheid discriminated against black people in all
aspects of life and segregation was extended to hospitals (e.g. patients
were supposed to be attend by white doctors), education (e.g. there
were separate schools/universities and learning systems for each racial
group), transport (e.g. separate train carriages and buses).
1
The euphemistic term for a human zoo is ‘Ethnological expositions. The crude term for them is
‘Freak Shows’. (Sara Baartman).
,Stereotypes: beliefs that associate groups of people with certain traits
They refer to what we believe/thin about certain group and they can be
good or bad.
o E.g. one might stereotype older people as wise (good) or slow (bad).
Stereotypes are sometimes difficult to change. One reason us that people tend to
put exceptions to the stereotypes general rule into a separate category called a:
Subtype: categories that people use for individuals who do not fit a general stereotype
E.g. is a man meets a woman who doesn’t fit the stereotype of the
warm and nurturing type, he can either discard or modify his
stereotype of women or he can put her into a subtype, such as ‘career
woman’ or an ‘athlete’.
PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION and STEREOTYPES are the
ABC’s of intergroup relationships.
Behavioral Cognitive
Affective component: component:
component:
DISCRIMINATI STEREOTYPIN
PREJUDICE ON G
The human mind seems naturally inclined to sort objects into groups rather than
thinking about each object separately. This process is called:
Categorisation: the natural tendency of humans to sort objects into groups
Categorisation makes it much easier to make sense of a complicated
world.
Social categorisation: The process of sorting people into groups on the basis of characteristics
they have in common (race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation) is called:
People tend to be cognitive misers (they generally think in easy, simple
ways that minimise mental effort). Categorising people is an easy and
efficient way of simplifying the world and reducing mental effort.
Biased judgements based on stereotypes and prejudices are not only unfair and
immoral, in some cases, they ca have lethal consequences.
, If a police officer possessed the stereotypical expectation that black people are more likely to
be violent and aggressive than white people, it could influence split-second decisions
whether to shoot black suspects, with tragic consequences. Research in the US using
computer simulations has found that people (whether police officers of college students) are
more likely to mistakenly shoot at unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.
When a research participant sees an ambiguous scene with a possibly dangerous man who
may or may not be armed, the participant is more likely to shoot at the man if he is black
than if he is white (even if he is not actually armed).
Although it is tempting to treat this is an instance of anti-back prejudice among white people,
the bias is not confined to white research participants: African Americans are also more likely
to shoot at possibly threatening man if he is black than if he is white.
One big difference between sorting people and sorting things is the level of
emotional involvement.
E.g. when sorting people into heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual,
the sorter belongs to one of the categories and feels emotionally
attached to it. In contrast, someone who sorts fruits into apples and
oranges is probably not emotionally attached to these categories
Outgroup members (‘them’)
People who belong to a different group or category than we do
Ingroup member (‘us’)
People who belong to the same group or category as we do
Most people assume that outgroup members are more similar to each other than
ingroup members are to each other. This false assumption is called the:
Outgroup Homogeneity bias: the assumption that outgroup members are more similar to one
another than ingroup members are to one another
This bias is reflected in statements such as ‘They’re all alike’ and ‘If
you’ve seen one, you’ve seen all of them!’
Research has shown that eyewitnesses are more accurate at
identifying people of their own racial group than at identifying people
to a different racial group.
The outgroup homogeneity bias has a simple explanation:
We don’t have as much exposure to outgroup members as we do to
ingroup members. So we don’t have much chance to learn about how
13
PREJUDICE AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS 1
ABC’S OF INTERGROUP RELATIONSHIPS: PREJUDICE,
DISCRIMINATION AND STEREOTYPES
Prejudice: a negative feeling toward an individual based solely on his/her
membership in a particular group.
Derived from the Latin term for ’prejudging’
The best-known form of prejudice is:
Racism: prejudiced attitudes towards a particular race.
Racism can take the form of overt, blanket
statements of disliking and disapproving of
certain groups.
This creates a pattern that some psychologists have called:
Aversive racism: simultaneously holding egalitarian values an negative feelings toward people of
other races
They believe in racial equality and equal opportunity but they also feel
uncomfortable around minorities and try to avoid them when possible.
Prejudiced feelings sometimes lead people to discriminate against others:
Discrimination: unequal treatment of different people based on the groups or categories to which
they belong
E.g. the policy of apartheid discriminated against black people in all
aspects of life and segregation was extended to hospitals (e.g. patients
were supposed to be attend by white doctors), education (e.g. there
were separate schools/universities and learning systems for each racial
group), transport (e.g. separate train carriages and buses).
1
The euphemistic term for a human zoo is ‘Ethnological expositions. The crude term for them is
‘Freak Shows’. (Sara Baartman).
,Stereotypes: beliefs that associate groups of people with certain traits
They refer to what we believe/thin about certain group and they can be
good or bad.
o E.g. one might stereotype older people as wise (good) or slow (bad).
Stereotypes are sometimes difficult to change. One reason us that people tend to
put exceptions to the stereotypes general rule into a separate category called a:
Subtype: categories that people use for individuals who do not fit a general stereotype
E.g. is a man meets a woman who doesn’t fit the stereotype of the
warm and nurturing type, he can either discard or modify his
stereotype of women or he can put her into a subtype, such as ‘career
woman’ or an ‘athlete’.
PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION and STEREOTYPES are the
ABC’s of intergroup relationships.
Behavioral Cognitive
Affective component: component:
component:
DISCRIMINATI STEREOTYPIN
PREJUDICE ON G
The human mind seems naturally inclined to sort objects into groups rather than
thinking about each object separately. This process is called:
Categorisation: the natural tendency of humans to sort objects into groups
Categorisation makes it much easier to make sense of a complicated
world.
Social categorisation: The process of sorting people into groups on the basis of characteristics
they have in common (race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation) is called:
People tend to be cognitive misers (they generally think in easy, simple
ways that minimise mental effort). Categorising people is an easy and
efficient way of simplifying the world and reducing mental effort.
Biased judgements based on stereotypes and prejudices are not only unfair and
immoral, in some cases, they ca have lethal consequences.
, If a police officer possessed the stereotypical expectation that black people are more likely to
be violent and aggressive than white people, it could influence split-second decisions
whether to shoot black suspects, with tragic consequences. Research in the US using
computer simulations has found that people (whether police officers of college students) are
more likely to mistakenly shoot at unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.
When a research participant sees an ambiguous scene with a possibly dangerous man who
may or may not be armed, the participant is more likely to shoot at the man if he is black
than if he is white (even if he is not actually armed).
Although it is tempting to treat this is an instance of anti-back prejudice among white people,
the bias is not confined to white research participants: African Americans are also more likely
to shoot at possibly threatening man if he is black than if he is white.
One big difference between sorting people and sorting things is the level of
emotional involvement.
E.g. when sorting people into heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual,
the sorter belongs to one of the categories and feels emotionally
attached to it. In contrast, someone who sorts fruits into apples and
oranges is probably not emotionally attached to these categories
Outgroup members (‘them’)
People who belong to a different group or category than we do
Ingroup member (‘us’)
People who belong to the same group or category as we do
Most people assume that outgroup members are more similar to each other than
ingroup members are to each other. This false assumption is called the:
Outgroup Homogeneity bias: the assumption that outgroup members are more similar to one
another than ingroup members are to one another
This bias is reflected in statements such as ‘They’re all alike’ and ‘If
you’ve seen one, you’ve seen all of them!’
Research has shown that eyewitnesses are more accurate at
identifying people of their own racial group than at identifying people
to a different racial group.
The outgroup homogeneity bias has a simple explanation:
We don’t have as much exposure to outgroup members as we do to
ingroup members. So we don’t have much chance to learn about how
