Prejudice: the Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon

Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon by E. Aronson, T.D. Wilson, and R.M. Ekert Adapted from Social Psychology, 2005

1. Prejudice is ubiquitous; in one form or another, it affects us all. It would be wrong to conclude that only minority groups are the targets of prejudice at the hands of the dominant majority. Of course, this aspect of prejudice is both powerful and poignant. But prejudice is a two-way street; it often flows from the minority group to the majority group as well as in the other direction. And any group can be the target of prejudice.

2. Prejudice is an attitude. Attitudes are made up of three components: an affective or emotional component (prejudice), representing both the type of emotion linked with the attitude (e.g., anger, warmth) and the extremity of the attitude (e.g., mild uneasiness, outright hostility); a cognitive component (stereotyping), involving the beliefs or thoughts (cognitions) that make up the attitude; and a behavioral component (discrimination) relating to one's actions—people don't simply hold attitudes: they usually act on them as well.

PREJUDICE: THE AFFECTIVE COMPONENT

3. Prejudice refers to the general attitude structure and its affective (emotional) component. Technically, there are positive and negative prejudices. For example, you could be prejudiced against Texans or prejudiced in favor of Texans. In one case, your emotional reaction is negative; when a person is introduced to you as "This is Bob from Texas," you will expect him to act in particular ways that you associate with "those obnoxious Texans." Conversely, if your emotional reaction is positive, you will be delighted to meet another one of "those wonderful, uninhibited Texans," and you'll expect Bob to demonstrate many positive qualities, such as warmth and friendliness.

4. While prejudice can involve either positive or negative affect, social psychologists (and people in general) use the word prejudice primarily when referring to negative attitudes about others. In this context, prejudice is a hostile or negative attitude toward people in a distinguishable group, based solely on their membership in that group. For example, when we say that someone is prejudiced against blacks, we mean that he or she is primed to behave coolly or with hostility toward blacks and that he or she feels that all blacks are pretty much the same. Thus the characteristics this individual assigns to blacks are negative and applied to the group as a whole. The individual traits or behaviors of the individual target of prejudice will either go unnoticed or be dismissed.

STEREOTYPES: THE COGNITIVE COMPONENT 5. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the looks and characteristics of the following people: a high school cheerleader, a New York cab driver, a Jewish doctor, a

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 1 black musician. Our guess is that this task was not difficult. We all walk around with images of various "types" of people in our heads. The distinguished journalist Walter Lippmann (1922), who was the first to introduce the term stereotype, described the distinction between the world out there and stereotypes—"the little pictures we carry around inside our heads." Within a given culture, these pictures tend to be remarkably similar. For example, we would be surprised if your image of the high school cheerleader was anything but bouncy, peppy, pretty, nonintellectual, and (of course!) female. We would also be surprised if the Jewish doctor or the New York cab driver in your head was female—or if the black musician was playing classical music.

6. It goes without saying that there are male cheerleaders, women doctors who are Jewish, and black classical musicians. Deep down, we know that New York cab drivers come in every size, shape, race, and gender. But we tend to categorize according to what we regard as normative. And within a given culture, what people regard as normative is very similar, in part because these images are perpetuated and broadcast widely by the media of that culture. Stereotyping, however, goes a step beyond simple categorization. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members. Once formed, stereotypes are resistant to change on the basis of new information.

7. But be aware that stereotyping is not necessarily emotional and does not necessarily lead to intentional acts of abuse. Often stereotyping is merely a technique we use to simplify how we look at the world—and we all do it to some extent. For example, Gordon Allport (1954) described stereotyping as "the law of least effort." According to Allport, the world is just too complicated for us to have a highly differentiated attitude about everything. Instead, we maximize our cognitive time and energy by developing elegant, accurate attitudes about some topics while relying on simple, sketchy beliefs for others. To the extent that the resulting stereotype is based on experience and is at all accurate, it can be an adaptive shorthand way of dealing with complex events. However, if the stereotype blinds us to individual differences within a class of people, it is maladaptive, unfair, and potentially abusive.

8. The potential abuse of stereotyping's mental shortcuts can be blatant and obvious—as when one ethnic group is considered lazy or another ethnic group is considered greedy. But the potential abuse can be more subtle—and it might even involve a stereotype about a positive attribute. For example, in 1992, Twentieth Century Fox produced an amusing film about two-on-two street basketball called White Men Can't Jump. The implication is that African American men are better at basketball than white men. Well, it turns out that during the past twenty-five years, some 75 to 80 percent of the players in the National Basketball Association have been African American (Gladwell, 1997; Hoose, 1989). This figure is far greater than one would

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 2 expect from comparative population statistics (approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population is African American).

9. So what here is abusive to the minority? What's wrong with the implication that black men can jump? The abuse enters when we ignore the overlap in the distributions —that is, when we ignore the fact that a great many African American kids are not adept at basketball and a great many white kids are. Thus if we meet a young African American man and are astonished at his ineptitude on the basketball court, we are, in a very real sense, denying him his individuality. And there is ample evidence that this kind of potentially abusive stereotyping occurs (Brinson & Robinson, 1991; Edwards, 1973).

10. A particularly interesting manifestation of stereotyping takes place in the perception of gender differences. Almost universally, women are thought to be more nurturant and less assertive than men (Deaux & Lewis, 1984). It is possible that this perception may be entirely role-related—that is, women have traditionally been assigned the role of homemaker and thus may be seen as more nurturant (see Deaux and La France, 1998). At the other end of the continuum, evolutionary social psychologists (Buss. 1995, 1996b; Buss & Kenrick, 1998) suggest that female behavior and male behavior differ in precisely those domains in which the sexes have faced different adaptive problems. From a Darwinian perspective, there are powerful biological reasons why women might have evolved as more nurturant than men. Specifically, among our ancient ancestors, for anatomical reasons, women were always the early caregivers of infants; women who were not nurturant did not have many babies who survived. Therefore, their non-nurturing genes were less likely to be passed on.

11. Although there is no clear way of determining whether or not care-giving is more likely to be part of a woman's genetic nature than a man's, it does turn out that the cultural stereotype is not far from reality. Research has shown that compared to men, women do tend to manifest behaviors that can best be described as more socially sensitive, friendlier, and more concerned with the welfare of others, while men tend to behave in ways that are more dominant, controlling, and independent (Eagly, 1994; Eagly & Wood, 1991; Swim, 1994). Indeed, if anything, some of the data indicate that the stereotype tends to underestimate the actual gender differences (Swim, 1994). Again, as with our basketball example, considerable overlap exists between men and women on these characteristics. Nonetheless, as Eagly (1995, 1996) has argued, the differences are too consistent to be dismissed as unimportant.

12. Needless to say, the phenomenon of gender stereotyping often does not reflect reality and can cut deeply. In one experiment, for example, when confronted with a highly successful female physician, male undergraduates perceived her as being less competent and having had an easier path toward success than a successful male

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 3 physician (Feldman-Summers & Kiesler, 1974). Female undergraduates saw things differently: Although they saw the male physician and the female physician as being equally competent, they saw the male as having had an easier time of it. Both males and females attributed higher motivation to the female physician. It should be noted that attributing a high degree of motivation to a woman can be one way of implying that she has less skill than her male counterpart (i.e., "She's not very smart, but she tries hard").

13. This possibility comes into clear focus when we examine a similar study (Deaux & Emsweiler, 1974). Male and female students were shown a highly successful performance on a complex task by a fellow student and were asked how it came about. When a man succeeded, both male and female students attributed his achievement almost entirely to his ability; when it was a woman who succeeded, students of both genders thought the achievement was largely a matter of luck. Apparently, if the sexual stereotype is strong enough, even members of the stereotyped group tend to buy it.

14. But this research was done three decades ago. American society has undergone a great many changes since then. Have these changes affected the stereotypes held of women? Not really. In a careful analysis of some fifty-eight more recent experiments Janet Swim and Lawrence Sanna (1996) found that the results were remarkably consistent with the earlier research. Specifically, they found that if a man was successful on a given task, observers of both sexes attributed his success to ability; if a woman was successful at the same task, observers attributed her success to hard work. If a man failed on a given task, observers attributed his failure either to bad luck or to lower effort; if a woman failed, observers felt the task was simply too hard for her ability level.

DISCRIMINATION: THE BEHAVIORAL COMPONENT

15. This brings us to the final component of prejudice—the action component. Stereotypical beliefs often result in unfair treatment. We call this discrimination: an unjustified negative or harmful action toward the members of a group simply because of their membership in that group. For example, if you are a fourth-grade math teacher and you have the stereotypical belief that little girls are hopeless at math, you might be less likely to spend as much time in the classroom coaching a girl than coaching a boy. If you are a police officer and you have the stereotypical belief that African Americans are more violent than whites, this might affect your behavior toward a specific black man you are trying to arrest.

16. In one study, researchers compared the treatment of patients in a psychiatric hospital run by an all-white professional staff (Bond, Di Candia, & McKinnon, 1988). The researchers examined the two most common methods used by staff members to handle patients' violent behavior: secluding the individual in a timeout room and

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 4 restraining the individual in a straitjacket and administering tranquilizing drugs. An examination of hospital records over eighty-five days revealed that the harsher method —physical and chemical restraint—was used with black patients nearly four times as often as with white patients. This was the case despite the virtual lack of differences in the number of violent incidents committed by the black and white patients. Moreover, this discriminatory treatment occurred even though the black patients, on being admitted to the hospital, had been diagnosed as slightly less violent than the white patients.

17. This study did uncover an important positive finding: After several weeks, reality managed to overcome the effects of the existing stereotype. The staff eventually noticed that the black and the white patients did not differ in their degree of violent behavior, and they began to treat black and white patients equally. While this is encouraging, the overall meaning of the study is both clear and disconcerting: The existing stereotype resulted in undeserved, harsher initial treatment of black patients by trained professionals. At the same time, the fact that reality overcame the stereotype is a tribute to the professionalism of the staff, because, in most cases, deeply rooted prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination are not easy to change.

A PROGRESS REPORT

18. Significant changes have taken place in American society in the past 50 years. For example, the number of blatant acts of overt prejudice and discrimination has decreased sharply, legislation on affirmative action has opened the door to greater opportunities for women and minorities, and the media have increased our exposure to women and minorities doing important work in positions of power and influence. As one might expect, these changes are reflected in the gradual increase in self-esteem of people in these groups. Recent research suggests that there might not be any major differences in global self-esteem between blacks and whites or between men and women (Aronson, Quinn, & Spencer, 1998; Crocker & Major, 1989; Steele, 1992, 1997).

19. While this progress is real, it would be a mistake to conclude that prejudice has ceased to be a serious problem in the United States. Prejudice still exists in countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways. However, for the most part in America, prejudice has gone underground and become less overt (Pettigrew, 1985, 1989). Fortunately, during the past half-century, social psychologists have contributed greatly to our understanding of the psychological processes underlying prejudice, which has helped them begin to identify and demonstrate some possible solutions. Perhaps in the future, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination will decline significantly.

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______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 5 Global Questions 1. What is the MAIN purpose of this article? a. To discuss the reasons for people’s prejudices b. To explain the different aspects of prejudice c. To analyze why prejudice is so common today d. To show how prejudice affects all of us

2. List the three parts of attitudes and their alternate names. Then fill in the blanks to describe their meanings. Name of Part Alternate Name Explanation (ONE WORD) (ONE WORD) This includes the kind of ______and 1.______its (or: ______) ______.

This includes ______and 2.______

This refers to ______3.______

3. Fill in the blanks with ONE WORD to summarize the main ideas of paragraphs 3-4: Although prejudice can be either ______or ______, usually it refers to ______feelings.

4. What is the formal definition of a stereotype?

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5. Does stereotyping always result in deliberate mistreatment of others? Circle one answer: YES / NO Quote from the text to support your answer. Par. # ______

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6. What is the topic of paragraphs 10-14? ______

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 6 7. Have people’s stereotypes of women changed in the last thirty years? YES / NO Quote from the text to support your answer. Par. # ______

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8. What do the examples and research study in paragraphs 15-17 illustrate? Fill in the blanks with ONE WORD each. They show how a ______may cause people to ______against others, but ______can sometimes change this situation.

9. Are the writers of the article generally optimistic or pessimistic about the future of prejudice in the United States? Circle one answer: OPTIMISTIC / PESSIMISTIC Which specific facts do they base their attitude on? Give 3 examples. a. ______b. ______c. ______

Close Reading Questions 1. Mr. Cohen hired a Thai worker to do some work in his house. After the man left, Mr. Cohen noticed that he had left a big mess. He was very angry at the man, and decided never to hire this Thai worker again. According to the text, is Mr. Cohen prejudiced against Thai people? YES / NO Explain why or why not.

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2. Why do people from the same culture have similar stereotypes?

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 7 ______

3. Why does everyone use the technique of stereotyping? ______

4. In paragraph 7, the writer discusses how stereotypes can be positive or negative. a. When is stereotyping a positive way of dealing with complexity? ______b. When is stereotyping negative? ______

5. What idea is illustrated by the example in paragraph 8? ______

6. How can a positive stereotype be abusive? (Give an example of this based on the positive stereotype below.) Positive Stereotype: All Chinese people are smart. Abuse: You meet a Chinese person, and ______

7. Why might women be more nurturant than men? Give two possible explanations. a. ______b. ______

8. Complete the sentence: In paragraph 11, the writers cite research that shows that

______9. a. Aside from stereotypes not reflecting reality, what idea does the research in paragraphs 12 and 13 show about gender stereotyping? ______b. What stereotypical ideas about women are reflected in these studies? ______10. What idea does the work of Swim and Sanna show?

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 8 a. Men's intellectual abilities account for their success on different tasks. b. American society has gone through serious changes in the last thirty years. c. The past research on gender stereotyping is outdated and irrelevant. d. The attitude to women with respect to their successes remained largely the same.

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 9 11. Read about the research study that was done in a psychiatric hospital (paragraphs 16-17). Then fill in the chart below. The researchers wanted to know if the staff at Infer: What was the research the hospital would question? ______Method Who were the subjects in the study? The ______and ______in a psychiatric hospital. What was the procedure of the The researchers looked at study? ______for ______days. Results What did the researchers find? a. They found that the black patients received ______than the white patients even though ______and in spite of the fact that ______b. The researchers found one positive thing: ______

Discussion What was unusual about this case? The fact that the staff was able to ______

______Prejudice: The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon / 10