Prejudice
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attitudes - likes and dislikes for identifiable aspects of the environment - objects, persons, events or ideas.  Attitudes are the affective component of a three-part system that also includes beliefs (the cognitive component) and actions (the behavioural component).

major problem - the degree of consistency between the components.  In general attitudes predict behaviour best when they are strong and consistent and based on a person's direct experience and specifically related to the behaviour being predicted.

cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957) -when a person's actions are inconsistent with his/her attitudes, the discomfort produced by this dissonance leads the person to bring his attitudes into line with the actions.

Prejudice

An extreme attitude:

cognitive component:              the stereotype

affective component:              strong feeling of hostility or liking

behavioural component:           according to Allport(1954) 5 stages:

                           anti-locution ( e.g. abuse, jokes, insult)

                           avoidance ( keeping distance)

                           discrimination ( housing, rights, employment )

                           physical attack (against person or property)

                           extermination ( violence against whole group)

Allport and Kramer (1946) found relationship between prejudice and perception - more prejudiced people were able to distinguish Jews from non-Jews more than general population.

The prejudiced person must be able to classify everybody as a member of the good or the bad race / sex or else will experience cognitive dissonance.

Blue eyes brown eyes experiment

Poskocil (1977) - whites may feel anxious or uneasy when dealing with blacks, which produces differential treatment - Crosby (1980) found that whites were less likely to help black stranded motorists, less likely to make an emergency phone call for a black, and more likely to report black shoplifters)

Origins of prejudice:

does it stem from personality variables or primarily as a result of the interaction of personal and social variables (e.g. environment, upbringing)

Adorno and his theory of the Authoritarian personality stresses the first emphasis

1950 - Adorno proposed the `Authoritarian personality - predisposed to hostility to out-groups; belief in convention and intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty; them and us.

using factor analysis on personality inventories developed a number of scales - including the F scale (fascism scale) revealing anti-Semitism as a general factor rather than an isolated prejudice.  Found that the authoritarian personality was hostile to people of inferior intelligence, servile to those of higher status, contemptuous of weakness, rigid and inflexible, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty,  unwilling to introspect feelings, and an upholder of conventional values and ways of life.

Authoritarian have often experienced a harsh, punitive, disciplinarian upbringing, with little affection and often reveal latent hostility towards parents which may be displaced upon minority groups (so that they become the objects of hostility) and/or projected

onto these groups (whereby the authoritarian feels threatened by them.

Rokeach(1960) developed dogmatism scale - dogmatic - closed mindedness, lack of flexibility, authoritarianism, emphasised differences between us and them, paranoid outlook on life (I often feel people are looking at me critically), uncompromising in beliefs and intolerant of others; these defences serve as defences against dogmatic person's self-inadequacy

Eysenck (1954) - tough mindedness/ tendermindedness - toughminded=authoritarian/dogmatic

yet although overt discrimination stronger in southern states, no higher scores on measures of authoritarianism so group norms more powerful as a determinant of behaviour than personality factors.

the greater the competition for scarce resources the greater the hostility between various ethnic groups (e.g.  Maykovitch, 1974, found high levels of racism among lower class whites who felt that blacks were taking their jobs away)

Sheriff (1966) argues that inter-group conflict arises as a result of a conflict of interests when two groups want to achieve the same goal but cannot have it hostility is produced between them.  NB  Robbers Cave experiment

Tajfel (1971) - mere perception of the existence of another group can itself produce discrimination, when people randomly distributed, the knowledge of other group's existence leads to devt of in-group and out-group attitudes (known as the minimal group)

The reduction of prejudice

Brown (1986) -

non-competitive contact of an equal status

regular contact of unequal status (e.g. blacks as dishwashers and servants) will only reinforce prejudice.  Research into integrated housing vs. segregated housing has indicated a reduction of prejudice in integrated housing projects ( Deutsch and Collins, 1951)

Yet de-segregated schools do not seem to have reduced prejudice - ethnic groups mixing predominantly with each other (Schofield, 82)

Brown (1986) - desegregated schools not supported by social infrastructure (prejudice remains in the home e.g.) and equal status contact in pursuit of common goals is NOT taking place - the socio-economic status differences still exist and have an impact o achievement differences so that students end up in pursuit of different goals.

the pursuit of common (super ordinate) goals only attainable by co-operation

Stouffer (49) and Amir (69) found that inter-racial attitudes improved markedly when blacks and whites served together as soldiers in battle and on ships, although relationships were not so good at base camp.

Jigsaw classroom technique of Aronson - children assigned to small inter-racial learning groups to which each group given material representing one piece of jigsaw of the lesson to be learned.  Children came to like each other better as individuals but their reduced prejudice did not generalise to those ethnic groups as a whole

(see also Robbers Cave experiment)

Nevertheless Blanchard (1975) found that the white worker who realises that their black co-workers may share many of the same aspirations and attitudes begins to discard stereotyped images of blacks (and vice versa)

Other Notes in this Category

1. Attitudes
2. Attitudes and Behaviour
3. Attribution
4. Conformity
5. Crowds and Territoriality
6. Goffman - Symbolic Interactionist
7. Impression Formation
8. Inference Model
9. Intuition model
10. Is there a conformity personality?
11. Obedience
12. Persuasion
13. Prejudice
14. Self Concept
15. Self-attribution processes
16. Social Influence
17. Stereotypes and Stereotyping
18. The Primacy-Recency effect
19. Zimbardo

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