Summary of Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination by Whitley and Kite - 3rd edition

Since Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech, race relations have improved. We find ourselves ‘modern’ and ‘civilized’, when it comes to racial questions and cannot believe that fifty years ago things were so different. Still, things are not so optimistic as they seem. There still are racial tensions in modern countries. In some countries there seems to be a double standard. Black people, for example, get a harsher punishment than White people for the same crime (Jena 6). One research also showed that the darker a person is, the bigger his punishment will be.

What is said about race and culture? 

Race is an important factor in psychological research just as sex and age. That’s obvious because that is one of the first things we see when we meet someone. Taking in information about race, age and sex is an automatic process and we therefore make assumptions on the basis of this information. This can lead to stereotyping. This text specifically says can, because sometimes people view others through the lens of race and sometimes they don’t. For example, in 1988 a centre was opened in an all white neighbourhood in Indianapolis. Convicted child molesters were supposed to be treated in that centre. Not one resident complained about this centre. When authorities decided to change the centre into a homeless centre for veterans and some of these veterans turned out to be black, the neighbourhood started complaining.

What are historical views of ethnic groups?

Views of social groups can change quickly. After 9/11, Americans started to have an extreme negative view of people from the Middle East. There was an increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes and violence against mosques. The ‘biggest’ example of changing views of social groups is probably people’s view of Italian immigrants. When Italian immigrants came to the United States in early 1900, they were ridiculed. They were even seen as non-White. Italians, Irish people, and Jews from Eastern Europe that came to the States were seen as another race back in the days while they were all white. Nowadays, these people are seen as white and immigrants from Europe don’t find disadvantages from their ethnical background anymore.

Usually when you ask somebody to determine what race another person is, he or she will base the answer on the skin colour of that person. Why do we base this on skin colour and not on another physical characteristic? Morning (2011) says race "is a system for classifying human beings that is grounded in the belief that they embody inherited and fixed biological characteristics that identify them as members of racial groups". 

The word ‘race’ was not used until 1600 and in that time it had another meaning than it has now. Race referred to any group of people with the same characteristics, like a group of nurses, teachers or doctors. In the late 1700s the word ‘race’ took on the meaning it has now, namely indicating groups of people that share common physical characteristics, like skin colour.

This shift in meaning began when Europeans were sailing the seas and discovering other continents. The native inhabitants of the continents (Africans, Asians and native Americans) had a different skin colour from Europeans. Racial categories were used to ‘prove’ the superiority of Europeans and justifying their actions against the other races.

Race is a social category and not a biological one. Scientists find more differences within a racial group than between racial groups. People often say that black people or Latin people have bigger lips than white people, but this is superficial and an unreliable way to distinguish between groups of people. These differences in skin colour, hair colour and other features are adaptations to the climate. For instance, since Africa is so warm, people developed a darker skin. When racial segregation in the United States was legal, people could change their racial classification because race was defined by law. Over the years, 63 racial categories existed. Race could never be changed by law if it were a biological fact. This only shows that there is just one race: the human race. Race is a set of social categories and is therefore an important psychological subject. Race plays a huge part in cultures. People from one culture share attitudes, beliefs and behaviour with one another and that’s why culture can influence stereotyping. People usually don’t know that they operate according to their cultural background. Their actions are (unconsciously) driven by cultural expectations.

Why does culture have an influence on the perception of race and ethnicity?

Cultural impact on stereotyping may lead to group privileges. To understand the influence of culture on perceptions and actions towards other social groups, you must first understand the meaning of culture. Culture is a unique meaning and information system, shared by groups of individuals and are about basic needs of survival, pursue of happiness and well-being. Members of these culture groups hold sets of beliefs about others, such as values, attitudes and opinions. White people, for example, don’t think a lot about their race. This is because they are the dominant group in the society and everything they believe or do seems normal to them. When White people buy a car or house, their race doesn’t play a huge role. When Black people have a really good job, White people are kind of surprised by that. They don’t expect Black people to have had a really high education. Culture also influences one's view of immigrants. They can be seen as bringing new values and customs into a host country, or they can be seen as competitors for host society's economic resources. 

What is group privilege? 

Privileges for groups are not limited to race. Men usually are privileged over women and heterosexuals over homosexuals. When one group gets an unearned favored state because of their race, gender or social class we call this group privilege. One group has certain advantages over other group(s) and members of that group usually don’t really know that they have an advantage over the other groups. These advantages are usually unearned. They are not handed to people who worked hard for it, but to people who belong to a certain group. Some people might think that the advantages one certain group gets are small and don’t have a huge impact. But all these little advantages have a big impact together. Every disadvantage against a person will hurt his or her self-esteem. Members of the privileged group usually think that discrimination is someone else’s problem and that they don’t have to do anything about it. So basically, discrimination is a problem for Black people, gays and women.

What is said about stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination?

What are stereotypes?

Lippman (1922) gave a great definition of stereotypes. He said that stereotypes are pictures in our head, not based on certain knowledge but made by oneself. Lippman’s definition still fits the definition of what we call stereotypes. Stereotypes are beliefs and opinions about certain groups. Stereotypes are pictures in our head that can come from shared beliefs we got from our culture. These beliefs can be learned from parents, friends, media and books. People also get beliefs by observing the world.

Researchers consider whether stereotypes are accurate or inaccurate. Stereotypes are not always completely false and may be based on truth from observation. But this truth may be exaggerated and used on all members of certain groups. Then there are really ‘stupid’ stereotypes. People once thought that if women were to be educated, blood would rush to their brains and it would reduce their reproductive capacities.

A third aspect has to do with the fact that stereotypes can be both descriptive and prescriptive. Stereotypes can either tell us which characteristics a group member is believed to have, but can also tell us what people believe group members should be like and should do. So when we think about educators at elementary school, we usually think about women and not men. Stereotypes can also be positive. An example of a positive stereotype is that Asians are high achievers or that men are good with reasoning. But don’t think that stereotypes are not as bad as they seem. Even positive stereotypes can have negative consequences. One example is that women are good with children and that they would make good elementary school teachers. This positive stereotype has a negative effect on men who want to become elementary school teachers. If stereotypes are bad, why did we start using them? Well, we use stereotypes to organize complex social world around us. We would otherwise have too much information to deal with and that’s why we use stereotypes.

What is prejudice?

Prejudice is a reaction or attitude towards people of certain groups. Reactions towards certain people can stem from emotions, either good or bad. These emotions are usually automatic and rise without conscious consideration. One group might react to the other if the other group threatens their own group or if the other group is interfering with their goals. Especially competition between jobs. But the other group may also be seen as threatening because it has other goals. Emotional reactions can also be caused by a reaction with other group members. People would feel disgusted when they interact with foreigners or gays. Also, emotional reactions can be constantly there. There are people who are always intolerant of other social groups.

People who think of themselves as not being prejudiced, might unconsciously be prejudiced. Usually these feelings are not extreme but feelings of unease and anxiety. These people don’t want to be prejudiced, but learned these things from their social background.

What is discrimination?

Discrimination is treating people differently because they are member of a certain group. This does not have to be a negative treatment. Just as with prejudice and stereotyping, there could also be positive discrimination, such as treating people better because of their group membership. Discrimination can manifest itself in different ways. It can be verbally and behaviourally. People from certain groups can be ignored, made fun of, be insulted, intimidated and assaulted.

Interpersonal discrimination is when one person gets treated unfairly by another because of the person’s group membership. This occurs from person-to-person level. This may occur because the assaulters hold certain stereotypic beliefs. This leads people to think (and behave) that their own group is superior to the other. This can be passive, like personally ignoring Black people and helping White people first or it can be active, by making mean remarks.

Organizational discrimination isdiscrimination that occurs at the workplace and is caused by the company itself. Usually this is racial or gender discrimination. White men are over represented as managers and white women and minority groups are underrepresented. Women are over represented in clerical jobs and men in skilled jobs (like electricians). Minority men are over represented as labourers (working in a factory) and white men are over represented in prestigious jobs. People may argue that these findings are misleading, because minority workers didn’t have the same chances as white people did. One research, however, showed that white people get paid more than black and Hispanic people, even if they all have the same degree of education and the exact same job. White men were paid better than any other group, except the group of Asian men.

Institutional discrimination is a type of discrimination that occurs when the norms or policies of a social institution (like family, education and criminal justice system) result in different outcomes for members of one group than for another group. Usually, decisions are made that are neutral to sexual orientation, sex and race but they end up having an impact on a certain group. This type of discrimination usually occurs subtle. Examples of this type of discrimination are segregation of schools and events that occurred when hurricane Katrina came to New Orleans. Some people said that the United States president of that time, George W. Bush, did not do enough to help the people in New Orleans because they were mostly Black.

Cultural discrimination is when a certain group retains power within a culture and decides what the cultural values should be. They reward people who hold these values and punish people who have different cultural values. The culture of minority groups is in danger that way. Cultural discrimination can occur in subtle ways, like in advertisement or toys. Dolls usually are white and blond and have European features. It kind of tells us that the more European someone looks, the more beautiful he or she is. One research showed that even Black people perceived others with a lighter skin as being more attractive than people with a darker skin. This can have serious outcomes. Black people convicted of murdering a white person are more likely to get the death penalty if they have black (stereotypical) features.

There are governments that endorse cultural discrimination. In Australia part-Aboriginal children were taken from their homes and put in schools miles and miles from their parental home. The government did this, because it thought that by not having a lot of contact with the Aboriginal culture, these children would ‘lose’ their Aboriginal side and would behave according to white culture. The characteristics of their white ancestry were valued, but the characteristics of their Aboriginal side were not. It is really hard to recognize cultural and institutional discrimination and especially by those who are not affected by it.

What is the relationship between stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination?

The relationship between these three things is complex. Knowing something about stereotypical beliefs does not mean that you are prejudiced. A research showed that low-prejudiced and high-prejudiced individuals knew the same things about a certain stereotype, but low-prejudiced people rejected that stereotype while high-prejudiced people accepted it. As said before, people learn these stereotypic beliefs from the media, friends and family, but it does not mean that they accept it.

A bigger problem is that people can access stereotypes unconsciously and that even people who are low in prejudice can be influenced by this. Luckily, people who are aware that prejudice is wrong and try to eliminate their prejudice can do so successfully. Researchers also make a distinction between implicit prejudices (reactions towards groups that occur automatically) and explicit prejudices (attitudes that people are aware of and can easily control). 

What are targets of prejudice?

Take into account that people belong to many social groups at once, known as intersectionality. This intersectionality can also influence one's experiences. People usually categorize race-related information like they categorize gender-related information. Specific targets of prejudice are usually described with the word ‘ism’, like sexism and racism. Isms are not the same as prejudice. They go further. Isms have certain characteristics, with the first characteristic being that they combine prejudice with a group-centred worldview. This leads to a superiority of one group over the other. The second characteristic is that isms are based on the desire to control other groups. This is done by law and social issues and these groups try to prove scientifically that their ideas are valid. The last characteristic is that isms are reflected on behaviour. This can be done by hate crimes, by making jokes /verbally assaulting others or by ignoring others.

What is racism?

When people hear the word prejudice they usually think of racial and ethnic prejudice or racism. Most research on racial prejudice focuses on anti-black discrimination. There are three reasons why. Black people were treated really badly during the ‘slave period’ and even after that. They were seen as the bottom of society and even seen as lesser than human. Although other minority groups have been treated badly Black people had to suffer the most. Also, anti-black prejudice is more pervasive than prejudice against other groups. That’s also a reason why psychologists focus on Black people. The third is that prejudice has changed. It used to be extreme and since the 1980s it reached a more subtle form.

Nowadays, racism manifests itself in different ways in the United States. One way by which it manifests itself is by denigrating the other group’s culture. Rap music is usually identified with Black culture and is condemned in the United States. But one might wonder if this is because of violent and sexist lyrics or because it’s just part of the Black culture.

One study gave a set of violent lyrics to a group of white adults. The lyrics were from a folk song and one group was told that the lyrics were from a rap song, the second group was told that the lyrics were from a country song and the third group was told that the lyrics were from a folk song. When the song was labelled as a rap song, it got the most negative ratings. Also, when people learned that the song was performed by a Black person it got more negative ratings than a song performed by a white person. Another example is that minority groups are pulled over more frequently than white drivers. This is because people think that minorities are more likely to commit a crime, like drug trafficking.

What is said about gender and sexual orientation?

Prejudice is present against women in Western culture restriciting certain roles and women's influence in society. The benevolent aspects of female stereotypes are that they are weak, vulnerable and need protection. Transgender people believe that the gender they were ascripted at birth isn't matching their true selves and they receive widespread prejudice. Heterosexism descibes a system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any nonheterosexual form of behavior. This leads to prejudice against homosexuals or bisexuals. This is also called homophobia. Heterosexism seems to be more socially acceptable than other forms of prejudice.

What is said about age, ability and appearance?

Butler (1969) introduced the term ageism to refer to negative reactions individuals can have to older people. The benevolent component is also present, think about the doting grandparent image, but also includes negative stereotypes such as lack of competence, being weak. 

People can also feel great discomfort when being around people with physical disabilities (PWD). This may also be the cause of high unemployment rate for PWDs. 

Also weight, in the physical appearance part, can be a source of prejudice and discrimination. Attractive people always enjoy more advantages, and women are likely to be judged based on their physical appearance.People who are prejudiced against fat people often think it’s their own fault that they are fat. They are lazy and have no self-discipline. Also, prejudiced people dislike others who violate values. One value people hold dear is self-restraint. They often think that fat people violate this rule. 

What is said about classism?

Although the United States is a wealthy nation, it still has some poverty and different social classes. A person’s place in the social hierarchy is determined by one’s economic status, racial group or religious group. Classism is prejudice against a person’s social class. Usually people hold negative views against the poor and positive views against the wealthy. Poor people are more too often blamed for their situation. They are seen as lazy and not very intelligent and that’s the reason why they are poor (at least, this is what prejudiced people think).

Researchers bought fruit from a supermarket in a low socio-economic status neighbourhood, a middle class neighbourhood and an upper class neighbourhood. Participants had to evaluate the fruit for taste and appearance and they said that fruit from a low socio-economic neighbourhood was less fresh than the fruit from the other neighbourhoods. Some people even refused to taste the fruit from the low class neighbourhood. These results show there’s a strong relationship between social class and race: low status neighbourhoods have a higher percentage of minority residents than the other neighbourhoods.

What is said about religion?

Prejudice based on religion has existed for a very long time, but has been studied less than racial prejudice. This is maybe because prejudice based on religion has been less salient. During World War II anti-Semitism became salient and when the anti-Muslim prejudice rose, researchers started to research religious prejudice.

What are the theories of prejudice?

There are a lot of theories of prejudice, but not one covers the whole deal. Each theory usually covers one aspect of prejudice.

What is scientific racism?

Scientific racism is the interpretation that results are interpreted to show minority groups in a negative light. Scientific racism was used to prove superiority of the dominant group and to justify their actions against other groups. Before the 1920s scientists agreed that White people were superior to Black people. They showed that White people were more intelligent than Black people. The actions of White people against Black people were justified that way.

What is the psychodynamic theory?

In1920 scientists saw that prejudice wasn’t natural and that it’s a social problem, created by wrong beliefs. In the 1930s and 1940s social scientists searched for the reason why people turn to prejudice. They found their answer in the psychodynamic theory and found that people tended to blame the bad situations of that time (like the Great Depression) on somebody. They had to direct their frustration towards somebody and decided to do this toward minority groups.

After World War II scientists tried to figure out how scientists could support something like the Holocaust. They found that there are certain types of individuals who are more susceptible to prejudice than others called the authoritarian personality. These people are more likely to do and believe what authority figures tell them. This type of personality rooted in early childhood. Children who had to obey strict rules and were physical punished were more likely to develop an authoritarian personality. The psychodynamic perspective also shows that prejudice is used to improve one’s self-esteem.

What is the sociocultural theory?

In the late 1950s the U.S. civil rights movement arose and scientists started to view prejudice and stereotyping from a sociocultural perspective. The sociocultural perspective sees stereotypes as something that culture gives and that can’t be taken away easily. There are two underlying perspectives in this model: the structural-functionalist view and the conflict perspective. The first perspective thinks that people use/learn the culture’s stereotypes to gain social acceptance. The conflict perspective believes that a society exists out of groups with different values and that people adopt the viewpoint of their particular subgroup. The conflict perspective allows different attitudes toward a certain group.

An upcoming theory about stereotypes is the sociocultural theory. This theory thinks that from observing certain groups in social settings, we learn their roles and base our stereotypes on them. Nurses are usually women and we think that nurses are kind and concerned for others. That’s why we think that all women are kind and concerned for others.

What is the intergroup relations theory?

The sociocultural perspective evolved into an intergroup relations theory. This theory thinks that prejudice derives from the competition between groups. The relative deprevation theory is an example of intergroup relations theory. This theory thinks that prejudice is the result of the resentment people feel when they think that their group has been deprived of certain resources and that another group receives their resources. Some White people might think that Black people get more than a fair share of the resources and might be angry at Black people because of this. More recent research shows that people’s own identities play a big part in stereotyping. According to the social identity theory, people want to have a positive self-identity. A big part of one’s identity is made up of a group identity. People need to feel positively about the group they belong to, to reach this identity. The way to do this is to see one’s own group better than other groups.

What is the cognitive theory?

In the 1980s the cognitive theory played a huge part. There are three reason why psychologists moved to the cognitive theory. The first is about that everybody started to believe that prejudice was universal and inevitable and that social structural explanations could not account for this. Secondly, there was a realization that social structural explanations could not only account for the inevitability of prejudice. Third, there was a cognitive revolution, in which cognitive psychology became really popular in that time and so psychologists tried to find an explanation for prejudice in that field. According to the cognitive theory, stereotyping is a process people use to reduce a complex stimulus to a manageable level. Human beings use this to understand the massive amount of information that is given to them every day. A mechanism that is often used is simplification. It is much easier for our mind to think that every member of a certain group is the same than to think that every member is a complex individual. Stereotypes might be very helpful and don’t need to be bad. However, stereotypes might have negative outcomes.

What is the evolutionary theory?

The evolutionary theory tries to explain universal processes underlying prejudice and discrimination. Evolution is all based upon mechanisms fulfilling functions that promote transmission of a certain gene. Relatives decided to work together so their genes would have more chance to be passed on to the next generation. This is called kin favouritism. When societies started to develop, people began working together with non-relatives. They did this, because sometimes working with others helps the survival of one’s own genes, like hunting together. People developed cues to distinguish with whom it was safe to work together and whom not to work together, because this person might not return the favour. People who were perceived as potentially dangerous, were avoided, disliked and competed against. Although evolutionary psychology is new, psychologists from this field have found explanations for stereotyping. People wanted to protect their families from dangerous individuals and they evolved fear for strangers. Prejudice was a by-product of this. Outgroups are rejected because they may pose a threat towards the ingroup.

There is a lot of evidence for the evolutionary theory. Scientists have found that distinguishing between groups, favouring members of one’s group and believing that one’s group is better than others is universal. Also, it is found all over the world that people classify things into categories. There are, however, also problems with the evolutionary approach. The first one is that the evolutionary theory suggests that people always protect their kin. Research, however, has pointed out that women and children who were raped by somebody from the outgroup, were killed by their own group members. Another point can be made against evolutionary theory, is that it can’t explain why prejudice doesn’t occur always. An example of this is the frequent contact between Romans and Black Africans. There was no prejudice against these groups. Evolutionary psychology can’t explain why racial prejudice is not present in certain cultures.

It is important to keep in mind that even if the evolutionary point of view is true, prejudice is not excusable!

Why do people categorize?

Human beings categorize the world because they want to simplify it. They create categories on the basis of characteristics. People are placed into social groups on the basis of characteristics they have in common. After creating social groups, beliefs about these groups are created. With these beliefs, people guide their future interactions with individual group members. Keep in mind that people do not always make simplistic judgments. This all comes down to the task one is doing. If people are motivated, they will make thoughtful, complex judgments. Making judgments about others, however, is done by categorization.

Two aspects of categorization are important: the content of the stereotypes people have, which can be measures implicitly and explicitly. Researchers are also very interested in the process to which people form and use social categories. 

Stereotypes belong to schemas. These are structures that contain a person’s knowledge and beliefs about a social group. Both schemas and stereotypes influence somebody’s interpretation about social group members and kind of stir somebody’s expectation about the behaviour of members of a social group.

People don’t remember information in the same way they stored it in the brain. It is remembered generally. The gaps that exist in our brain are filled in with our expectations (from experiences and beliefs). So situational factors can influence how we perceive and remember a person. Stereotyping is an outcome of information processing.

What are types of categorization?

There are general social groups, like the races (Black people and White people) and specific groups (like priests and teachers). The categorization process is different for these two groups.

Basic social categories are categories for which a lot of information is available in memory. Examples of this are gender, age and race. When people know someone’s basis social category, they can draw conclusions about this person. When these categories can’t be easily determined, people feel confused. They don’t know what to do or how to interact with this person.

There are also other social categories that influence how people react towards each other. Attractive people are treated differently than unattractive people. Other examples are religion, sexual orientation and disability. We all have stereotypes about this. We also make snap judgments on facial expressions, posture and even colours (people who wear white are good, people who wear black are evil).

What are subtypes?

People notice basic category information first. But people tend to give more weight to some social categories than to others. People find knowing another’s sex more important than knowing another’s race. But people can notice more than one category at a time. When they do, they use a single category, like black man. This represents both basic categories and is called subtype. This leads to a more detailed understanding and a finer judgment.

People divide themselves into groups. The ingroup is always labelled as ‘us’ and the outgroup as ‘them’. You don’t expect that there will be much hatred or different treatment towards another group. Research, however, shows that otherwise. When people were put in one of two groups, they were allowed to give money to members of their own group or members of the other group. They usually gave money to their group, even if they didn’t know/haven’t interacted with their group members.

Sometimes groups are not even based on real differences. Participants were put into one of two groups: the people who had four or less answers correct and the people who had five or six answers correct. So these groups were created from the minimal conditions. This is called minimal group paradigm.

Which factors can affect categorization?

Evidence shows that people often categorize others based on various aspects of their physical appearance, think about weight, disability status, physical attractiveness or skin tone. 

What is prototypicality?

Prototypicality is a factor that has an affect on the speed and ease of categorization of an individual. A person is prototypical when he/she fits the observer's concept of the features characteristics of that category. The more prototypical a person is, the more quickly somebody will categorize that person, this concept is known as racial phenotypical bias. 

What are the consequences of categorization?

In- and outgroups can be created easily, as shown by experiments. Some people who try to avoid outgroup members to be a part of the ingroup use a bias called ingroup overexclusion. It's 'safer' to misclassify ingroup members as outgroup members, than to misclassify outgroup members as part of the ingroup. 

What are the origins of stereotypes?

People can easily create two groups, but how do they come up with the stereotypes of the ingroup or the outgroup?

What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?

People have stereotypes of naturally occurring groups. People see ingroups and outgroups differently. People think that their group members are different from each other and they think that members from the outgroup are all the same. This perception is known as the outgroup homogeneity effect. People think that members from the outgroup look alike, have the same traits and occupy similar social roles. Because of this, evaluations of outgroup members are more extreme than evaluations of ingroup members.

Reasons for the outgroup homogeneity effect are: People have more contact with the ingroup members than with members from the outgroup. Because of this, they have more information about members from the ingroup than members from the outgroup. They can identify their own group members better and will see their individuality better than members from the outgroup.

What are the reasons for the outgroup homogeneity effect?

1. Because people spend more time with their group members, and therefor have more information about them and their unique qualities. 
2. Interactions with ingroup members provide more information about the unique characteristics.
3. People want to see themselves as unique and try to find ways in which they differ from others.
4. Ingroup and outgroup comparisons are made at the group level.

What is the cross-racial identification bias?

This bias suggests that people from other races and ethnic groups all 'look alike' to people who are a part of the outgroup. People's own emotional state can influence this bias. 

What is the ultimate attribution error?

Members of other social groups are treated stereotypically. Because of this, the ultimate attribution error can occur. This means that people think that their own group’s negative behaviour can be explained by situational factors, but that negative actions by members of other groups are due to their characteristics. This can lead to stereotypic beliefs about the outgroup. Positive behaviours by an outgroup are dismissed as due to special advantages or luck. Positive behaviours by ingroup members are attributed to personality traits. The ultimate attribution error can always happen. This effect may be very strong if two groups have a conflict with each other or when emotions run high. The behaviour of a single minority group member can influence how people think about all group members from other groups. When people see one black guy act mean, they might think that every black person is mean.

What is the social role theory?

Some people think that we get our beliefs about social groups by watching the world around us. According to the social role theory, people observe others and pay attention to the social roles they occupy. They associate this role with the individual. This is because of the correspondence bias. This means that people don’t know how much impact situational factors may have on behaviour. People usually think that someone’s actions reflect his/her personality. Because of the social roles we perceive people in and the correspondence bias, stereotypes are created. We usually see mothers as caregivers and they are usually in a lower employee role. Because of this we see women as kind and warm.

What are illusory correlations?

Stereotypes represent a relationship between group and a characteristic (Asians are good at math). Information about a group first needs to be encoded. This encoding can go wrong. This means the illusory correlation. This is the belief that incorrectly links two characteristics (like race and personality traits). This link can arise when you see an outgroup member perform an uncommon behaviour.

How do transmission of stereotypic beliefs work?

Stereotypes exist at the individual level. How are stereotypes actually shared? Well, children learn a lot from their parents. Parents also decide whom their children interact with and what they’re allowed to see on the television. And these things influence the things people learn about social groups. Parents teach children stereotypes directly and indirectly. Racial stereotypes usually are taught through indirect means.

Peer influence plays also a big part in stereotyping. When children get older, peer influence gets more important than parental influence. Peers have an influence on attitudes and behaviour. Research shows that interacting with peers who are low in prejudice; make a person who is high in prejudice more accepting of other people.

This may influence stereotype development by the social learning theory. According to this, people learn about social behaviour directly or vicariously. Directly means that somebody is being punished or rewarded for his/her actions and learns from it. Vicariously means that somebody is observing the consequences of another person’s behaviour. They keep doing the things they have been awarded for or actions they saw somebody else be rewarded for and don’t do the things/ don’t hold the beliefs they have been punished for or see somebody else be punished for. So if children are encouraged to read books or watch shows about characters from different backgrounds (these characters have to be positive though) they are more likely to develop positive racial stereotypes than children who don’t watch these shows or read these books.

What is the role of the media?

Another big source of influence is the media. The media is filled with stereotypes. One research showed that a lot of American movies portray Arabics as brutes, uncivilized and as religious fanatics. Newspapers usually use pictures of Black people to represent the poor. Even when the media presents someone in a non-stereotypical role, they tend to still give a stereotypic picture. When they show a female cop, they usually focus on her attractiveness and not on her bravery. Advertisements also portray people in stereotypic roles. Usually being White is more portrayed than other ethnic groups, as they are not seen too often in advertisements. White people are more likely to be portrayed as the authority figure, in parent roles or spousal roles. Asian Americans are more likely to be portrayed as children and African Americans are more likely to be seen in aggressive roles. Latinos are hardly put in commercials. There is also sex-role stereotyping in advertisement. Men are more often portrayed as authority figures than women and men most often do voice-overs of commercials. Women are more likely to be objectified and young women are seen more in advertisement than old women.

One might say that this doesn’t affect us. But research shows otherwise. Children hold more gender and racial stereotypes when they watch more television. Adults are also influenced by the media. The more news-media adults watched during the war against Iraq, the more likely they had implicit prejudice towards Muslims. Watching more television also related to negative stereotypes of older adults. This is because older adults are mainly portrayed in negative roles. Older adults are usually portrayed as crime victims or they are being ridiculed.

What is the role of language in stereotype transmission?

Stereotypes are also shared through language. There are more expressions describing women’s promiscuity than men’s. This shows that there’s a double standard. Men having many sexual partners is more socially acceptable than women having many sexual partners. Also, people's first association with the word doctor is 'male', so we feel te need to note that it's a female doctor helping somebody. White men don't get those qualifiers. When people use qualifiers for non-traditional groups, it makes them stand out. This increases the chances that they will be categorized on that basis. Words can also mock other ethnicities. In North America people use ‘mock Spanish’. They create words, like ‘el stupido’ to call somebody dumb. This, however, implies that Spanish-speaking people are not intelligent.

Some stereotypes are more likely to be shared than others. This is because people find some stereotypic traits more communicable than others. People also find conversations about these high communicable traits more interesting than conversations about the less communicable traits.

How to define accuracy?

In everyday life people need to figure out if their stereotypes are accurate or not. When a woman takes a walk at night and sees another man, she must figure out if the man is a possible danger or if the man is also out for a walk. An African American student wonders if she will be evaluated on her performance or skin colour by her Caucasian professor. As said before, stereotypes are the products of human information processing that contain a bit of truth. So how big or little is this ‘bit of truth’? Well, it depends on how accuracy is measured. If you measure it by percentage estimates, you look if social group members typically do possess the stereotypic characteristics associated with them. You can also estimate stereotype accuracy by considering the perceived dispersion. If people think that Asians are good at math, they would estimate that there was low variability on this trait. But if you believe that not all Asians are good in math, then you think this trait has a high variability. Accuracy can also be assessed by ranking.

It is maybe dangerous to say that some stereotypes are accurate. People might use that as an excuse to treat people differently, just like White people used to do to the Black people. Even less harmful stereotypes could be used in a wrong way. People think that all basketball players are tall. This does not mean that a school coach should discourage or reject a shorter player. For the tall people it is not always a blast as well that these stereotypes exist. Tall people are usually asked if their dream is to be a basketball player. What we can learn from this is that stereotypes may have a bit of the truth in them, but that relying on them at the individual level may lead to judgments errors.

What is the risk of assuming accuracy?

It is difficult for psychologists to decide whether stereotypes are accurate. Even if a lot of people agree with each other that a certain group has a certain characteristic, this does not mean that these are actual attributes. It is quite difficult to find operational definitions of characteristics. Especially because stereotypes are not based on verifiable demographics but on abstract attributes. Another problem is group comparison. If you want to see whether Black people are more athletic than others, whose ability do you measure? Those of black men or white men? Does the difference also exist for women? Does this also differ if other socio-economic factors differ? These are some of the questions psychologists struggle with.

Another problem with stereotype accuracy is that perceivers have motivations that affect their responses. If somebody feels threatened he or she will be less able to draw accurate conclusions about the characteristics of the outgroup. This person will probably form negative opinions about the outgroup. Another problem for accuracy is the shifting standards model.

This means that judgements are influenced by relative comparisons. Evaluating someone is subjective and one might compare a woman who pushed someone to other women (and might find the pushing woman to be aggressive) or she could compare the woman to people in general (and might come to the conclusion that it is not rare to push somebody and that this woman is not aggressive). This means that assessments are not stable and that assessments depend on the reference point the participants adopt when they evaluate someone. This means thatrating scales are subjective and could not be used as estimates of stereotype accuracy.

The previous text shows that stereotype accuracy is a big issue and psychologists ask themselves if stereotype accuracy should be studied further. It may be impossible to measure stereotype accuracy, but on the other hand science needs empirical research.

Research supports the idea that prejudice has decreased the past few years, but is this truly the case? This chapter focuses on this question by looking for evidence in favor and against the continuation of prejudice. Furthermore, by examining some theories looking at the explanation of the contemporary form of prejudice. Three important points to be made in advance:

1. Most of the theories discussed were developed to explain anti-Black prejudice on the part of White people in the United States. 
2. In this chapter they use the word 'people' to refer to White people.
3. The theories say that, because of the historical legacy of racism in American society, almost all White people are prejudiced to some degree. 

What is the transformation of prejudice?

Prejudice is still alive in the United States, but in a more subtle form. 

How does prejudice continues?

Evidence for the continuing of prejudice comes from results of research named bogus pipeline. Participants answer questions while their physiological responses are measured by what they believe to be an effective lie detector. Then researchers compare these responses to the earlier responses given by the participant's to the same question. The idea is that people don't want to be caught lying, and so reveal their true attitudes rather than attitudes that are true to a social desirability response bias. It's called 'bogus' because the lie detector doesn't provide any more information. 

Assessments and self-reports of behavior also show that prejudice continues, especially in close contact. Evidence for continuation also comes from the experience of women or members of minority groups. White people don't perceive discrimination the same way Black people do. 

Is it true that only bad people are prejudiced?

Evidence has shown that people have a contradiction between the nonprejudiced responses to questions about race, gender and sexual orientation. However, at the same time, they are still prejudiced in everyday behavior. 

Jim Crow racism is the race and prejudice of the era prior to the war.

1. One's belief was that being White was inherently superior to the other races. 
2. There is also a firm belief that it was right to keep minorities at a distance through racial segregation
3. The use of laws and the power of government to establish racially segregated school systems and curtailment of voting rights. 

Jim Crow was a Black character, created by a White show performer, wearing makeup and parodied the African facial features. 

After World War II there was a change in the norms regarding race, when the ideology of the Nazis was seen as dangerous and un-American. 

Should people stop complaining about unequality?

People also learn prejudiced believes through socialization. People have negative emotions regarding certain minority groups, that are seen as implicit prejudices which people are not aware of having. But despite the lack of consciousness, it still influences the way White people react to minority groups. Racial resentment is the idea that prejudice no longer exist because there have been laws set up to deal with this problem, so the minority groups should just stop complaining. Americans think they have given some kind of special treatment to minority groups to aid there advancement in society, so those minority groups need to stop complaining in their eyes, because they already got there special treatment. 

What are the theories of contemporary prejudice?

The theories regarding the new form of prejudice are based upon three propositions:

1. There has been a genuine schange in the social norms since World War II in the direction that there needs to be equality for all people. 
2. Not everyone has accepted this norm to the same degree (started among the highly educated, liberal Americans).
3. The people who haven't fully accepted the new norm still are motivated to act in a nonprejudiced way. 

What is implicit prejudice?

Implicit prejudice is about the intergroup stereotypes and attitudes that people activate in their memory when encountering a member of an outgroup without the person being aware or conscious of the activation of these thoughts. 

Explicit prejudice are the intergroup stereotypes and attitudes that people intentionally retrieve from their memory, when for instance, being asked for your opinion. These prejudices people can monitor on self-report measures, because they are aware of them being activated. 

Implicit prejudices are developed into children's minds through the process of associative learning: negative images and emotions are repeatedly linked to outgroups, and over time these negative associations will develop into implicit prejudices. 

What is modern-symbolic prejudice?

When people have a set of beliefs about a particular group 'they' instead of specific individuals, such as the 'Black people' it is called symbolic prejudice. These beliefs can be expressed behaviorally as 'acts', such as voting against black candidates. This symbolic racism is in contrast to the old-fashioned prejudice which is more based on the biological inferiority of Black people and the stereotypes, such as laziness, low intelligence. 

Often, White people don't see this as a problem because they think that symbolic prejudice isn't linked to race directly, but it's linked to race through political and social issues. This symbolic prejudice is now called modern prejudice.

What are the characteristics of Modern-Symbolic prejudice?

The belief system is characterized by five themes:

1. Racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exist.
2. Any remaining Black-White difference in economic outcomes result from Black people's lack of motivation to work hard. Thus, inequality is linked to the characteristics of the victim (Black people) and not the continued prejudice and discrimination.
3. Because Black people are unwilling to work to get what they want, their contributing anger over inequality is unjustified. The idea is that discrimination no longer hinders Black people, so they should stop complaining and work to get what they want without a special treatment.
4. Rather than working to get ahead, Black people seek special favors from government and corporations. 
5. Relative to White people, Black people have been getting more than they deserve economically because of the special favors given to them by the government. 

What is the psychological bases of Modern-Symbolic prejudice?

The themes described reflect a certain set of emotions and beliefs. 

The first is about mild to moderate anti-Black emotions. People who support the principle of equality for all, still feel to some degree a negative emotion towards Black people. Secondly, there is also a believe in traditional values, especially the White values; hard work, individualism, self-reliance, self-restraint etc. Thirdly, egalitarianism is a value system that reflects onto the believe that all people are equal and should be treated identically. 

The term equality has two different meanings:

1. Equality of opportunity, the principle that everyone should have an equal, fair change at success in life.
2. Equality of outcome, the belief that the government should ensure equality for all. 

Modern-Symbolic prejudice is rooted in the tension between the belief that there is racial equality in terms of equal opportunity and other factors that include implicit anti-Black affect and values. Furthermore, there is a constant denial of the continuing of discrimination, Black people should just work harder to get the same success. So, staying in this circle, there is still continuing racial inequality. 

What is aversive prejudice?

Aversive racism/prejudice are the attitudes of a person who tries to ignore the existence of Black people, tries to avoid contact at all. 

What are the characteristics of aversive prejudice?

People who experience this truly believe in equality, but still retain those implicit egative feelings towards minorities, such as discomfort or uneasiness. 

How does aversive prejucide differs from modern-symbolic prejudice?

1. People who experience aversive prejudice are generally against the support of equality-enhancing social programs such as affirmative action.
2. People who experience aversive prejudice are more motivated to see themselves as unprejudiced because the lack of prejudice is a important part of their self-concept.
3. White people experiencing aversive prejudice prefer to avoid most interracial contact because it arouses the negative emotions linked to those minority groups.

What is the psychological bases of aversive prejudice?

People categorize themselves in certain discrete social groups, leading to the fostering of biases because people tend to believe that their own groups are better than other groups. Also, every White person has a level of implicit prejudice, but people who experience aversive prejudice also genuinely believe in the American ideals of racial fairness, equality and justice. 

How to link aversive prejudice to behavior?

The predicted behaviors of aversive prejudice are about the avoidance of intergroup contact, overly positive intergroup behavior, a pro-White bias in ambigious situations, discrimination when the behavior can be justified as unprejudiced and derogation of members of minority groups who have a higher status.

Why use avoidance of intergroup contact?

People try to avoid contact with minority-group members. This avoidance is motivated through feelings of anxiety and discomfort. During interaction, White people show this by nonverbal cues such as avoiding eye contact. Where does this discomfort come from?

• Negative stereotypes.
• Prior negative experiences with members of the other group.
• Lack of knowledge about the other group, which makes people uncertain about how to behave in interracial situations.
• Stigma by association (someone is rated more negatively when sitting next to a very obese women, instead of sitting next to an average-weight person).

Why use overly positive intergroup behavior?

People have a desire to appear unprejudiced, which will lead people to treat the minority group as overly positive in the interaction. When told to give feedback to a Black and a White person writing an essay, people will be more positive about the Black writer to be seen as less prejudiced.

What is the pro-White bias?

People will show a pro-White bias in ambigious situations. When applying for a job, a White person who shows ambiguous qualifications is much more often recommended to others than a Black participant who also shows ambiguous qualifications. 

What is anti-minority discrimination?

People experiencing aversive prejudice will discriminate against members of other groups when the behavior can be justified as unprejudiced. 

What is the derogation of higher-status minority-group members?

One of the implicit beliefs is that White people belief they have a White superiority, so there will be a big discomfort when Black people are in a higher-status positions. 

What is ambivalent prejudice?

The theories of contemporary prejudice have shown that White Americans have adopted an idea of racial equality, which leads to see themselves as unprejudiced. Ambivalent prejudice holds that White people genuinely accept the principle of racial equality, but that they also have developed positive attitudes towards Black people, next to the lingering negative attitudes. 

Two sets of values are important for ambivalent prejudice:

1. Individualism emphasizes the role of personal responsibility, self-reliance, and hard work pays off. 
2. Egalitarianism and humanitarianism beliefs that all people should be treated equally and that people have responsibility to help other who are disadvantaged. 

The theory also holds that people only become aware of the influence of their ambivalent attitudes, when they become aware of their inconsistent feelings towards the minority groups. 

Cognitive dissonance holds that people prefer that all their attitudes, beliefs, behaviors etc are consistent. Any contradictions lead to unpleasant emotions, which people are motivated to reduce. 

What is the problem of benevolent prejudice?

The theory about ambivalent prejudice views the positive side of intergroup ambivalence as something good, this can also lead to people having positive beliefs about members of outgroups. Benevolent prejudice is the apparently positive beliefs and emotional responses to outgroups that can have negative consequences for those groups. 

Why is awareness of social categories important?

As said before, adults use stereotypes to classify and order their world. Children form categories on the same basis as adults and they also do this to simplify the world. But children have more limited mental abilities and will therefore need categorization even more. Categorization lets children free some mental resources for other tasks. Life without categories would be chaotic and inconvenient categorization helps people develop a picture of the social world. Children see that all people differ and if they did not their world views would be inaccurate. Some children who noticed this will be prejudiced and others will not. Researchers who study children’s awareness divide awareness in two types: explicit and implicit. The first one is explicit awareness and the second one implicit awareness. Explicit awareness means conscious awareness to social groups. Children may also be aware of conscious groups before they learn to speak. This is implicit awareness.

How does implicit awareness of social groups work?

Before children start producing words about categories, they are aware of groups of social categories. They can discriminate between gender, age and race. Even infants can discriminate between social categories. Babies were shown a certain picture a couple of times until they got familiar with this picture. Some of the babies then got to see another picture with a person from another race or gender than the first picture. Those babies spend more time looking at this picture than at a picture of a person from the same group as the first one. This means that babies see differences between groups. Race was not a meaningful category for them. From a certain age, however, children start differentiating between races. Infants also differentiate between races and also between physical attractiveness. Research found that infants look more at attractive faces than non-attractive faces. This might stem from the perception that something beautiful is something good. 

What is explicit awareness?

By the age of 2,5 years children have learned how to use gender labels appropriately. One research gave children a set of photos to put together and they were free to make their categories. White 7 year-olds usually used ethnicity to sort the photos. When asked specific tasks, like sorting the photos to play together, they used gender as the category which to sort the photos in. So the context in which one sorts the photographs influences the way in which children categorize them.

One way to examine categorization in children is the doll-technique. Examiners give a child two dolls, one white and one black. They then ask which doll looks like a white child. Three year-olds don’t know the correct answer, but four year-olds do usually know the correct answer. Preschool years are critical in the development of awareness of social groups based on race. That is only between Black and White. Asians and Latinos are differentiated at a later age. This might be because children might not see perceptually obvious features distinguishing White people, Asians and Latinos. Between the age of five and seven children learn to distinguish between White and Asian people. Identifying Latinos was more difficult. Between the age of four and nine children learned how to distinguish between Latinos and White people.

What are the patterns of prejudice development?

Recognizing different social categories does not mean that one prefers one category over the other. Children add values to social categories and some call this category preference, others call this prejudice. Category preference means that children prefer one group over the other. This does, however, not mean a derogation of other groups. People sometimes think that children are prejudiced or discriminate. They sometimes exclude other children from activities. But it’s hard to say if it are negative attitudes that underlie this type of behaviour. Even when children verbally express prejudice they don’t know truly what they are saying or the effect it has on the children they say it to.

How does the development of racial prejudice work?

It is sometimes hard to examine children on their prejudice. The most commonly method used on children’s attitudes about race is the Preschool Racial Attitude Measure (PRAM). Children are forced to choose one of two options here. They usually have to choose from photographs or listen to a story and answer questions based on the story. A problem with this method is that by choosing one category over the other children do not automatically reject the other category. If a child chooses the white child it does not mean that he or she rejects the black child. Maybe a child likes both children, but just likes one more than the other. If you use a continuous measure of prejudice you can overcome this problem. One of these measures is the social distance scale. One of the questions from this scale is ‘Would you feel comfortable living next to a Black family?’ Children can choose from five answers, ranging from yes, definitely and no, definitely. The child is not forced to choose from two alternatives. When asked about it with a continuous scale white children preferred other white children the most, but only slightly more than other ethnic groups. So they did not just have negative attitudes about children from other ethnic groups.

Another measure is looking how often children interact with other ethnicities. The assumption is that children do not interact with those they dislike. Sometimes children are also asked how much they like to interact with every classmate.

White children begin to develop positive and negative racial attitudes between the ages of three and four. Racial prejudice reaches the highest level at the age of five-seven years old. Children who were five gave the highest racial stereotypical responses while children of eight and nine years gave the lowest stereotypical responses. Prejudice seems to decline after the age of nine.

How does the development of racial attitudes work?

Black children begin to develop racial attitudes at the age of three to four years. At the age of three, black children’s attitudes were either pro-Black or unbiased. There has no typical ethnic attitude been found between the ages of five and seven years in black children. Some had unbiased attitudes while some had pro-black or pro-White attitudes. Between the ages of seven to ten years the pro-White bias disappears and children are more pro-Black. This does not mean, however, that they dislike White people. They just become neutral to them. The children who used to be pro-White become neutral those who were neutral become pro-Black and those who were pro-Black become even more pro-Black. Black people show more variability in their social preference patterns than White people. This is maybe because black children have more complex views of racism than white children.

Children from other ethnicities show the same pattern of attitudes as the black children. Biracial children reflect both black and white attitudes.

Some researchers don’t want to assess young children’s attitudes directly. Children are easily distracted or just don’t want to answer your question. Researchers who observe children’s behaviour found results that contradict the previous part about the development of racial attitudes in children. That research showed that preschool children preferred to play with somebody from their own ethnicity. Observation studies, however, show that preschool girls preferred to play with girls their own race and preschool boys showed a pro-White preference. Contradictory results were also found for older children.

How does the development of gender-based prejudice work?

Toddlers begin to develop gender stereotypes before they can say ‘boy’ or ‘girl’. Children of 2,5 years old know what their own gender is and what the gender of others is. This does not mean that they understand the whole idea of gender. They don’t express gender roles until the age of nine. When they are two they already know which toys are for girls and which are for boys. In Western cultures children start to show a same-sex preference around the age of three. In different cultures same-sex preference occurs earlier or later in life. In cultures where mixed-sex groups are more common, homosociality, same-sex preference occurs later in life.

When children get older a shift occurs. When 4,5- year old children were asked which group –boys, girls, tomboys or sissies- they disliked the most, they said tomboys. When 8,5-year old children were asked the same question, they said sissies. This is because older children value male characteristics more than female characteristics in both sexes. During pre-adolescents, boys and girls liked gender-role traditional girls the most. This is not surprising, because prejudice becomes less prevalent as children become romantically interested in one another.

What are the processes of prejudice development?

What are the inner state theories?

Inner state theories think that prejudice is caused by something inside the person. Like said before, people with the authoritarian personality are more likely to hold prejudiced views. People with this personality had to obey strict rules when they were young and were punished severely. The child experienced psychological conflict. On the one hand he hated his parents and wanted to rebel, but on the other hand the child was afraid to rebel. Because of this conflict the authoritarian personality arises.

Punitive child-rearing practices lead to a conforming personality and this child sees the world as a threatening place. The child will seek security and control. Usually someone can find this in authoritarian political ideologies. In contrast, tolerant child-rearing practises lead to an independent personality and the people see the world as a safe place. They adopt social ideologies that emphasize personal freedom.

Some scientists, however, reject the role of childhood experiences as a source of authoritarianism. They think that authoritarian beliefs are adopted by socialization. This occurs in adolescence, because young children can’t understand the issues on which authoritarianism is based. There are two main sources of social learning. The first one is parents. Parents teach children to obey them and to obey authority figures. The second source is personal experience.

What are the cognitive development theories?

These theories think that children’s ability to understand the nature of social groups and their relations influence their intergroup attitudes. Because cognitive abilities change intergroup attitudes also change. These theories suggest that prejudice may be unavoidable at certain stages of one’s development but that it is not permanent and may decrease or disappear as the child grows older.

Piaget’s theory is one of the most popular theories of child learning processes. The theory proposes that children move through four stage of cognitive development:

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years): Children can’t internally represent people and therefore can’t hold attitudes about people and there’s no prejudice.
2. Preoperational stage (2-7 years): Children focus on themselves and can’t take someone else’s perspective and they only focus on one piece of information.
3. Concrete operational stage ( 7-11): Thoughts are logic and systematic, but are concrete and not abstract.
4. Formal operational stage (12 and above): In this stage the child starts to think abstractly.

According to Piaget developing prejudice goes through some of these stages. When children are four to seven years old they think everybody is the same. When children are seven to ten years old they focus on their social groups and they conceptualize other groups in terms of how they differ from their own groups. This also comes with positive attitudes towards their group and negative attitudes towards other groups. Piaget’s theory does not completely match the previously discussed findings. Piaget thinks that prejudice reaches its highest levels at the age of seven to twelve years, whereas research says that it is five years and that it declines after the age of eight years.

Aboud revised Piaget’s theory and came with his own theory. He thinks that different children can proceed through three stages at different ages. It all depends on one’s cognitive development. People might react differently towards people who are not their own ethnicity, because they have stranger distress. This means that anyone who looks different than who the child knows is seen as a stranger and the child fears this person. So the first stage of prejudice does not take the form of anger, but a form of fear and is expressed as social exclusion. In the second stage, children notice the similarities and differences between themselves and others. People start to categorize others according to social group membership. Children start to exaggerate the differences between their own group and other groups and this is the beginning of prejudice. Eventually children will become aware of similarities between their group and other groups and they might become more cognitively flexible and will prejudice less. In the third stage, children don’t just categorize on social group membership, but also on people’s individual qualities.

What is social learning?

The social learning theory can explain many aspects of social development in terms of three learning processes. The first one is direct teaching. That means that an individual is rewarded for behaving in a certain way. The second is observational teaching. This is imitating the attitudes or behaviours of a parent, peer or role model. The third one is vicarious learning. This means that the child sees someone else be punished or praised for a certain behaviour and learn from this.

What is the influence of parents?

Direct teaching of prejudice does not occur a lot: parents rarely discuss prejudice with their children. But when parents are members of hate groups, direct teaching of prejudice will occur. Schooling can also be a source of direct teaching of prejudice. Some people put their children on ‘Aryan-only’ schools or let them be home schooled so they won’t be corrupted by minority groups. Teaching of prejudice usually occurs directly in extremely racist families, but the most teaching of prejudice is indirect.

When examining prejudice, researchers examine the correlation of children’s attitudes with that of their parents. Usually, there is no correlation found. How can this be? Well, the effect of parental prejudice may operate through other factors. Prejudice can have an impact on issues like tolerance and political beliefs. Parents influence their children’s prejudice rather indirectly than directly. Mothers usually influence their children’s views on race and weight and fathers influence views on sex-role attitudes and homosexuality.

What is the influence of media?

Children can also learn things from the television or other media. People in books or series are usually portrayed in gender stereotypic roles. Also, some ethnicity groups are not often portrayed on the television and children might think that these groups are therefore not really important.

What is the developmental intergroup theory?

The developmental intergroup theory holds that the development of prejudice is a by-product of the cognitive development through which children come to understand the world. According to this theory the development of prejudice proceeds in three stages. In the first stage, children develop rules for group categorization. They focus on the physical characteristics, like skin colour and can’t focus on abstract characteristics. Also, children look at how adults classify other groups and they usually use the same system as adults. Also, children learn from society how to group people.

How to categorize?

When children have made these categories, they can assign people to them. They can start doing this when they realize that one’s membership in a category does not change over time. The complexity of the categories children form can change over time. When they just focused on just one single piece of information, they may later focus on more pieces of information to form categories.

When categorization is happening, the development of stereotypes and prejudices is also activated. Four factors contribute to this process:

• Essentialism is the belief that all members of a category have similar psychological characteristics and that these characteristics are unchanging. 
• Favoritism is the way in which children attribute positive traits to their own groups, although they do not necessarily derogate outgroups.
• Explicit teaching, but direct teaching of the prejudice is rare.
• Implicit teaching, in which children notice that, for instance, most teachers are female, or the way adults respond to members of social groups. 

At a certain point in time, there will be a drop-off in prejudice according to this theory. Not all researchers agree with this drop-off. Some say that real change occurs in someone’s social ability and one sees that other groups are not so bad after all. Others say that this drop-off is not a real change, but that children might try to control their prejudice because they think society thinks it’s bad.

How to reduce prejudice in children?

What is school desegregation?

Researchers used to think that desegregating school would lead to a less prejudiced environment between children. Desegregation, however, is no integration. If you just ‘drop’ White and Black people at one place, they will not just improve their relationship with each other. You have to integrate these groups. If you really want to reduce prejudice the groups must have the same status at school, the children must get to know each other and the groups must work with each other. This brings a lot of positive intergroup effects and even an influence on the long-term effects. People who attended desegregated schools, had friends from other social groups later in life.

Cooperative learning are a number of educational techniques used to create group learning environments which implement the necessary contact conditions as part of the educational process day-to-day. 

How to use educational interventions?

Another way to help intergroup relations is education. Children should learn about the characteristics of other groups in society because ignorance is a major cause of prejudice. Anti-bias education is also used to educate children. This type of education teaches children things about bias and shows them how it affects people. Multicultural education is based on the idea that inaccurate information about other groups lead to intergroup anxiety and the use of stereotypes. Anti-bias education is often used to provide students with a heightened awareness of institutional racism and the skills to reduce it in their contacts. 

Discrimination is behaving differently towards people because of their group membership. Usually the term is used when someone acts in an unfair manner, but it can also refer to giving someone an advantage. Discrimination can be verbally or behaviourally. There are different forms of discrimination and luckily there is a system to classify them. The different forms will be discussed in the next text.

What is discrimination?

The system that is used to classify discrimination exists out of three forms of discrimination: blatant, subtle and covert. Blatant discrimination is harmful treatment that is intentional and easy visible. This can happen everywhere. It can occur at school, in the workplace and in a shop. Some forms of blatant discrimination against certain groups are illegal and condemned. An example of this is racial discrimination in school or at work. Discrimination against gay men, however, is legal in most parts of the worlds and is seen as legal.

What is subtle discrimination?

Subtle discrimination also exists out of harmful treatment, but this type is less visible than blatant discrimination. This form of discrimination is often unintentional and the person that treats the other in a harmful way does not always know that he or she is doing this. When a black child writes good essays one teacher might not see his actual talent, because he might think that black children are not good in academic things. The child will never be recognized as a talented writer.

Migroaggressions are small-scale, everyday verbal and nonverbal behaviors that demean other social groups or individual members of those groups. It can take on many forms, such as communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity to a person's identity. An example is accidently-on-purpose referring to a transgender person by his/her previous gender. 

What is covert discrimination?

Covert discrimination is a harmful treatment that is hidden, intended and maliciously motivated. An example of this is tokenism. That is hiring someone from a minority group just to show that the firm doesn’t discriminate. Another example is restricting members of a group to a limited number of job categories. This type of discrimination doesn’t only happen in the workplace. It can also happen in the housing market. One real estate agent may say to a family of a minority group that a certain house is of the market when it in fact isn’t. Also, landlords discriminate against prospective renters.

What is meant with interpersonal discrimination?

Interpersonal discrimination is a person-to-person discrimination. One person threats a person unfairly because his or her group membership. Usually people think that interpersonal discrimination is caused by prejudice. One would expect a high correlation between prejudice and discriminatory behaviour. Research, however, has found that that there is an average correlation between these two. There is, however, a higher correlation between prejudice and the intention to discriminate. People say that they will do something, but don’t always do it. Prejudice is related to discrimination, but this relationship is complex. There are some factors that influence this relationship. These factors will now be discussed.

What are personal stereotypes?

The first factor is personal stereotypes. Personal stereotypes are stereotypes of an individual about group characteristics. These stereotypes usually overlap with social stereotypes, but some things are different. Also, not everybody agrees with the social norms of a society. Prejudiced people will discriminate against people who fit their personal stereotype.

What is attitude-behaviour correspondence?

The second behaviour is attitude-behaviour correspondence. This refers to how well an attitude matches the behaviour it is supposed to be associated with. This can be found in uncontrollable attitudes. One can say that he/she isn’t prejudiced, but his/her automatic, nonverbal behaviour can show otherwise.

What is meant with perceived social support?

The third factor is perceived social support. This refers to the extent to which people believe that others share their attitudes and opinions. When prejudiced people find a high-perceived social support, they will be more likely to express discriminatory behaviour than when they find a low perceived social support.

Why are people motivated to control prejudice?

Some people are motivated to avoid appearing prejudiced. This, however, requires a lot of mental work. You must be aware that prejudice is affecting your behaviour and you must change that behaviour consciously in a nonprejudiced response. This is a lot of work. People are in fact relieved when they’re allowed to express prejudices they have been controlling. So, even people who score low on prejudice can sometimes behave in a prejudiced manner. This is called regressive prejudice (or regressive racism). This occurs because controlling prejudiced responses requires mental resources. When this is not available, people don’t control prejudice anymore, but express it.

People might try to look unprejudiced and they may succeed by saying the good things. Their nonverbal behaviour, however, shows otherwise. Uncontrollable behaviour is usually the key for detecting prejudiced attitudes. Even if people are really motivated to control their behaviour certain factors can work against this process. Cognitive demands can reduce mental resources and therefore reduce control. Another factor has to do with social norms. Usually people try to look unprejudiced, because of social norms. If the effect of the social norms could be reduced so could the motivation to control prejudice. People comply with norms, because they want to avoid punishment (for acting prejudiced) or receive rewards (for acting not prejudiced). Because of this people who are anonymous will be less motivated to control their prejudice. Emotions also have impact on this process. People who are angry are less willing to control their prejudice. The last factor that can influence expressing prejudice is moral credentials. This means that if people know that they have behaved unprejudiced in the past and others have seen this, they will be less motivated to try restricting their prejudiced attitude. If someone tells them that they are prejudiced, they will disagree with this and tell the person about the time that they behaved unprejudiced.

How to react to having acted in a prejudiced manner?

What if you have reacted in a prejudiced manner and someone calls you out on it. What will you do? People who are low in prejudice would feel discomfort, because they see that they should not have responded that way. They also feel guilty. People, who are high in prejudice, also feel discomfort but they don’t feel guilty.

Also, the type of prejudice is important. People usually feel guiltier about racial prejudice than sexism. Also, people are more likely to dismiss the accusation of prejudice when the accusation is made by a member of the group the accusation was made to. This is because the prejudiced person doesn’t feel really threatened by the person from the group he discriminated.

Does discrimination in the workplace occur?

The first step of a job is the hiring process. Researchers have done a lot of studies to figure out to what extent and in which form discrimination can be found. They usually do this by the employment audit. They train two men, one white and one black, to behave the same way during a job interview. These two men also have the same qualifications and researchers give them even the same close to wear to the job interview. Both men will apply for the same job. Research found that when discrimination occurred the white person was more likely to be hired than the black person. The form in which discrimination occurs is the offering of interviews. Black and White people are equally accepted to apply for the job, but white applicants were more likely to be asked for an interview. Also, when more than one opening was available and the job was offered to both applicants, the black man usually started with a lower salary. Black people also were sent to a lower job than they applied for. According to employment agencies some bosses also ask them to not send black applicants. Some researchers think that the employment audits is not a good way of researching the hiring process. This is because both people are different. Even if they wear the same clothes and have the same qualifications, they do not have the same personality. They prefer to test the hiring process with mailed-in résumés. They send in résumés with typical white and typical black names and found out that people with white names were more likely to be invited for an interview than black people were. When it does occur that both the black and the white person are asked to come to an interview, it is more likely that the white person will be liked more.

Is gender linked with discrimination?

Less discrimination is found in the case of gender. Men are just slightly more likely to be hired for a job then women. Especially when this is a male-stereotyped job. Researchers studies reviews published in the ‘80s and found that gender discrimination was a big issue. So, gender discrimination has decreased over time. One part of gender discrimination, however, is still active. This is pregnancy. Pregnant women are less likely to be hired than women who are not pregnant. The applicants can be seen as equally qualified; still the pregnant women will usually not be hired. This is (of course) because people think that pregnant women are more likely to quit their job or take a lot of days of.

Once you have a job, you will be evaluated on your performance. Positive performance leads to promotions of course. Men and women are usually evaluated positively in the same way. Men slightly received higher evaluations for masculine-stereotyped items and women received higher evaluated for feminine-stereotyped items.

Does ethnicity affect job performances?

Ethnicity does affect job performance evaluations. White employees receive higher evaluations than black employees, but there was no difference in the evaluations of white and Hispanic people. Some researchers argue that there is no real racial prejudice in this, but that it reflects real racial differences. Black people had lower average scores on objective measures of work performance. This lower level, however, can be caused by discrimination. Because of discrimination, black people might have a different work experience than white people. This may affect their work performance.

There are a couple of workplace characteristics that could aversively affect minority group members’ job performance. One of these is the lost opportunities effect. Because minority and majority group members are treated differently they may have different job opportunities. Minority group members have less favourable opportunities and because of this lower performance for these minority members may result. Also, black managers had sometimes problems with prejudice. Black managers feel less accepted than their white peers by their supervisors. Also, white people showed more absence when the number of minority group members increased at their job.

Although women and men receive equal performance ratings their supervisors see women as having less promotion potential than men. Women have to wait longer for a promotion and they receive fewer promotions the higher they move in the organizational structure. Even there where women receive higher job evaluations, they are not promoted faster than men. Also, men are more likely to be promoted in female-dominant occupations than women. This is called the glass escalator effect. Men, however, experience more negative stereotypes in these occupations. They are usually seen as feminine.

Black workers are less likely to be promoted than white workers, even if they receive the same job evaluations. Also, white employees are paid more than black employees in the same occupation. Even if black workers receive first-level managerial positions, they are more likely to supervise black workers than white workers. Because most black workers are in low-level positions, this means that black managers are found in low-level positions of authority. This is called the sticky floor effect. Also, black workers are more likely to be taken from their career-path and put in another job, because according to the stereotype, they fit better there. One’s mentor can also have influence on salaries and promotions. When someone has a white mentor, he has more chance to earn more money than when he has a non-white mentor or female mentor. Unfortunately, it is usually white people who have white managers.

What about individuals in organizations?

Organisations do not discriminate, people in organizations discriminate. Individuals enforce discriminatory policies, make discriminatory hiring decisions and give discriminatory job evaluations. This section discusses how individual-level psychological processes influence discriminatory outcomes in organizations.

What is the stereotype fit hypothesis?

According to the stereotype fit hypothesis women hold fewer executive positions, because the characteristics associated with effective managers are similar to the cultural stereotypes of men and different from the cultural stereotypes of women. Therefore men are seen as better suited for an executive job. When someone sees a job as more masculine, he or she will recommend a man for the job because a man has more masculine features than a woman. The stereotype fit hypothesis also works for ethnicity. People think that certain jobs fit better with the characteristic of white people than that of black people. This also works for low-level jobs. People see black and Hispanic workers as unskilled, unmotivated illiterate and therefore they would not recommend them. Finally, stereotypes can also result in advantage for a group. The Asian stereotype includes being talented in maths and computers. Because of this, they will be more likely to be hired in these kinds of jobs than white people.

Some researchers think that it’s not the decision maker’s group stereotypes that affect discriminatory decisions, but that it’s his or her respect towards the group he or she is making a decision about. People hold different degrees of respect for various groups based on the amount of power the groups have in society. Men have more power than women in society and because more men occupy higher positions than women, men are respected more as a group than women. Greater respect leads to higher hiring recommendations and that masculine stereotypic traits also lead to a higher hiring recommendation.

What does shifting standards mean?

Another factor that affects promotion is the shifting standard. As said before, women and men receive equal performance evaluations and promotions are based on performance. Why do men then get promoted more than women? This is because of the shifting standards model. Negative stereotypes lead people to hold lower performance expectations for women and member of minority groups. So when somebody rates a women, he or she will probably do this to the expectation he or she has for the performance of a woman. So when a woman is given a 4 out of 5 on job evaluation and a man also got 4 out of 5, it will not mean the same. The 4 of the woman is based on her evaluation in comparison to other women. The 4 of the woman translates to a 4 on the objective scale, whereas the 4 of the man translates to a 7 on the objective scale.

What is contemporary prejudice?

In the employment context, people may show contemporary prejudice. They will say that they didn’t choose for a black man, because certain characteristics and that the decision is not really based on race, while it in fact actually is. A prejudiced employee will focus more on negative characteristics and use this to not hire a black person. He or she might also say that he has to hire white people, because his cliental is mostly white and they would not want to be served/helped by black people. Another reason why people don’t hire black people, is because of company norms. Some companies don’t want minority groups and that’s the reason why an employer doesn’t higher a black employee.

What are hate crimes?

Hate crimes are the most severe form of discrimination. These are criminal offences of which the victims were chosen because of their race, religion, disability or sexual orientation. Hate crimes have not motivation other than attacking a member of a particular group. Most hate crimes are based on the victim’s race or ethnicity. Note that hate crimes can also be against white victims.

Who are hate crime offenders?

So who offends these hate crimes? In the reports of hate crimes, most perpetrators are male. Two thirds of suspects were known by the victim (neighbour, school mate or colleague). This shows that hate crimes are generally not committed by members of hate groups, but tend to be opportunistic crimes.

What are motivations for hate crimes?

There are four motivations for hate crimes:

1. Thrill seeking
2. Defending one’s territory from outsiders
3. Retaliation for a perceived offence committed by an outgroup member
4. A commitment to a certain ideology
5. Some researchers think that there is also a fifth factor, peer group dynamics

Why thrill seeking?

Thrill seeking as a motivation for a hate crime is committing a crime because one wants to feel excitement and doesn’t want to feel boredom anymore. This is usually triggered by an immature desire to display power. The only benefit from the effect is usually a sense of one’s own importance and bragging rights. Thrill seekers usually express little animosity toward the group whose members they have attacked. Thrill seekers usually choose as targets people they think will be easy targets. Also, they choose people who are unwilling or unable to report the crime, like Amish people. Thrill seekers usually justify their actions by minimizing the crime’s impact on victims and as harmless fun.

Why use ingroup defense?

Defensive hate crimes are done because the perpetrators see themselves as protecting their territory from invaders. They don’t want to let outsiders in (their neighbourhood). Usually all-White neighbourhoods portray hate crimes when they don’t want a minority group member to join the neighbourhood.

Retaliatory hate crimes are done, because the offenders seek revenge for a real or rumoured attack on a member of their ingroup. Although they seek revenge, they don’t seek out the person who they believed committed the offence against their ingroup member.

Mission-motivated hate crimes are carried out because of certain commitments to one’s ideology. Some offenders are members of hate groups, but they sometimes act without knowledge of the group’s leader. Leaders of hate groups usually oppose violence publicly, because they see it as a threat to their recruitment efforts.

What is the role of peer group dynamics?

Many hate crimes are committed by groups of offenders usually young men who know each other. Peer group dynamics can play an important part in motivating participation in these crimes. Groups sometimes commit this because they will feel stronger and they will feel closer to one another. Peer-motivated hate crimes exhibit little animosity toward their victim’s groups, but they also don’t respect them. They tend to minimize their personal responsibility and say that they did not have a choice. If they did not do it, they would lose the approval of their friends.

What is the role of normalization?

One factor that facilitates hate crimes is the acceptance of such behaviour by the community. If the community sees hate crimes as normal and doesn’t condemn it, one is more likely to do it. Some factors that inhibit hate crimes are lack of opportunity. Some people avoid homosexuals and therefore don’t have the opportunity to do this. Other factors are fear of negative consequences. Also, moral beliefs and religion are factors that inhibit hate crimes.

Which effect do hate crimes have on victims?

Hate crime victims experience a lot of psychological distress and feel like they don’t have full control over their lives. They know that hate crime victims are chosen at random and therefore think that they can’t do anything to take control over their lives. Also, some victims don’t believe that the attack on them was not a hate crime, even if the police said so. Another consequence of a hate crime is secondary victimization. This means that the psychological effects are not only seem by the victim of the hate crime, but also on member’s of his or her group. Hate crimes can victimize entire social groups.

What are gender-based stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination?

All cultures have sets of beliefs about traits of men and women and which roles they should have. This is called the gender belief system. This system describes which roles someone has, which attitudes people should have about the roles of men and women and what people should think about those that violate gender-based information. This system influences one’s self-concept and his/her perception of others. The information of the belief system is passed on throughout media, parents and peers. Learning the content of a belief system begins at an early age and continues until an old age.

What are gender stereotypes?

Stereotypes about men’s traits conclude characteristics such as strong and independent. This cluster is labelled agentic or instrumental. Stereotypes about women’s traits conclude characteristics such as warm and kind. This cluster is called communal or expressive. Traits are not only positive. There are also some negative characteristics associated with the sexes. Women are seen as jealous and moody, whereas men are seen as arrogant and insensitive. The physical characteristics are also part of the belief systems, as well as emotions. People’s beliefs reflect gender polarization, this is the assumption that gender-associated characteristics are bipolar. When one is masculine on a dimension, people expect him also to be dominant on another dimension. People don’t expect that a woman with physical feminine traits has masculine personality traits. Judgments of power and status are associated with gender stereotypes. High-status individuals are believed to have stereotypically male traits and low- status individuals are believed to have stereotypical female traits.

Stereotypes seem to reflect female and male characteristics quit well. Stereotypic beliefs mirror the characteristics women and men use to describe their own traits. Stereotypes seem to be accurate at the group level. This comes with a cost, however. Because people think that stereotypes are accurate, they may use them in the wrong way. They might think that every woman is kinder than every man. They can also be prescriptive. That means that they lead to assumptions about what every woman or man should be like. This can lead to prejudice if a male or female doesn’t fit these assumptions.

There has not been a lot of change over time about stereotypical beliefs. Women have always been seen as communal and that believe will probably stay that way. Male stereotypes have also been stable. One thing that has changed is that women are now seen as more agentic than before. There will probably be more change in the future. As gender roles change, women in competitive, male-associated roles will be more accepted.

What is the difference between attitudes towards men and women?

People think that because men are perceived as having a higher status, they are more liked than women. The opposite is actually true. Women are more liked than men. This is called the ‘women are wonderful’ effect. Women are viewed more positive than men on traditional evaluate measures.

This is also found in measures of implicit attitudes towards women and men. Women were more associated with happy/positive words like good and paradise. But being liked doesn’t mean being treated fairly. Women are still being discriminated against when it comes to work. They are paid less than men in the same function and they also have to wait longer to get promoted.

What are subtypes of women and men?

Men and women interact in everyday life. To handle information about the world, we use stereotypes. If you want to handle effectively with somebody, you can create subtypes. These subtypes are grouped into occupations, family roles, ideologies, physical features and sexuality-related subtypes. Judgments about these also made between liking and respect. Housewives are usually liked, but not really respected. Businesswomen are respected, but not liked. So whether a man or women is liked depends on the roles they occupy. Usually traditional roles are preferred to modern roles. Women in non-traditional roles are disliked most.

There are two types of modern sexism: hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs. Sexist beliefs propose that women demand special privileges and want to control men through marriage and sex. Benevolent sexist beliefs are more positive beliefs and they propose that women are nurturing and should be taken care of. It sounds weird, but one person can hold both beliefs at the same time. This will, of course cause ambivalent behaviour. Benevolent beliefs result in the ‘women are wonderful effect’. This, however, only works for women in traditional roles. Benevolent sexists believe women should be ‘shielded’ from high-status roles, because it could stress them out. But because of this, women are excluded from certain roles. Hostile sexists view women who occupy non-traditional rules as a threat to male status and power and they do not like these women because of this.

What is the role of women in the workplace?

Women have come a long way in jobs. They are still over represented as elementary school teachers and secretaries, but there are more women in high-status (male) jobs than before. Why can’t women occupy more high-status roles? The role congruity theory proposes that people believe that women are less likely than men to be successful in a leadership role. This can prevent women from being hired in these kinds of jobs. If women get a leadership role the second part of the discrimination comes to play. These women will get lower evaluations than do men in the same roles. This is because it violates the expectation of what leaders should be like. It also violates the expectation of what women should be like. Even women in faculty roles get bad evaluations if they teach male-dominated fields, like chemistry.

Women are discouraged from taking up certain jobs, because they think they would not feel welcome in them. Also, because of the stereotype that women are not good in maths women will think that they are simply not good enough for a certain job and won’t even try to pursue a career in this.

So what does improve a woman’s chance of getting a male-dominate job? One thing is giving them female role models. If you can show that there are successful women in that field they will feel more secure about themselves. Also, if women look at certain characteristics of leader roles, like cooperation and affiliation, they will feel more secure because they posses these characteristics.

What is the male gender role?

Boys and men are discouraged from exhibiting feminine characteristics and they are expected to show toughness and violence. They also are expected to show power and strength. Benevolent sexist attitudes toward men reflect the belief that men must be protected and nurtured and hostile sexist attitudes toward men reflect a resentment of their higher status and power. The worst role violation for men is appearing feminine and weak. Boys learn these things at a young age. The roles of men have changed. Men help out more with the children and they also help with the laundry and cleaning up the house. Not to the extent that women do, though.

What is heterosexism and sexual prejudice?

Lesbians and gay men don’t have the same rights heterosexuals do in most countries. They are not always allowed to marry. The stigma against the group ‘gays’ is called sexual stigma and the stigma against an individual gay person is called sexual prejudice.

What are stereotypes of lesbians and gay men?

People have stereotype beliefs about gay men and lesbians. Stereotypes of gay men are that they are feminine and wear certain clothes. Lesbians are described as masculine, shorthaired and wear masculine clothing. Gay men are rated as more similar to heterosexual females and lesbians are rated as more similar to heterosexual males. People also think that a gay couple and a lesbian couple exist out of one person fulfilling the male roles and one person fulfilling the female roles. The sexual orientation hypothesis predicts that people are more likely to believe feminine men are gay than to believe that masculine women are lesbian. Researchers focus more on gay men than lesbians, because gay men’s sexuality is viewed as more serious than lesbian’s sexuality. Also, lesbian sexuality has been invisible in Western societies for a long time.

What are attitudes toward lesbians and gay men?

Attitudes towards gay men and lesbians are changing. It used to be a taboo to be gay or lesbian. Nowadays, Western countries are much more accepting of homosexuality. Younger people are more accepting of gays and lesbians than older people. People who are high on right-wing authoritarianism and who hold fundamentalist religious beliefs have the most negative attitudes towards homosexuality. Heterosexism stems from conformity to authority. People, who know gay men and lesbians personally, are more positive towards homosexuals.

Heterosexual men are more negative towards homosexuals than heterosexual women are. Especially when a gay men is rated, not a lesbian. This is because of the gender roles people are expected to have. Men are not supposed to show their feminine side and gay men usually do. Heterosexuals are supposed to reject femininity and supposed to reject other’s femininity as well. Why don’t men reject lesbians the same way they reject gay men? This is because of the higher status of males. Women are more flexible in their roles.

What are attitudes toward bisexual men and women?

There is not much research about bisexuality. The research that has been conducted, shows that gay men, lesbians and heterosexuals all have negative attitudes about bisexuals. They think that bisexuals are promiscuous. Heterosexuals also believe that bisexuals are more likely to give their sexual partner a disease.

Is there heterosexism in the workplace?

Discrimination based on sexual orientation is legal in the United States. A lot of people get discriminated because of their sexuality in the workplace. This discrimination can be formal or informal. Gay people might not get hired because of their sexuality. They can also be joked about and harassed. A number of factors make a workplace less heterosexist. If there are more gay people in the workplace, one is more willing to come out. Also, if the organisation has gay-friendly policies the workplace is much better for homosexuals. Also, when a workplace doesn’t allow discrimination against homosexuals, gay people will be more accepted at that place.

What about coming out?

Homosexuals don’t always feel freely to discuss their love life with others. They are afraid to put pictures up of their lovers and don’t discuss relationships. Gay people have no luxury of discussing their lives with others, a luxury heterosexuals do have. If gay people can’t come out, they will keep their information for them. Because of this, they can fail in conversation. They don’t want to talk to their friends about their love life and this can create distrust. Sometimes, when people do come out, family members might get upset. Not because somebody is gay or a lesbian, but because they are mad that this person didn’t tell them this before.

Is there prejudice againt transgender people?

This part is about prejudice against people who have a transgender identity. These individuals believe they are assigned an incomplete or incorrect gender at birth that doesn't describe their true selves. Cisgender means that people are gender-conforming and do not identify as transgender. The individual difference variables that predict the attitudes toward homosexuality also predict transphobia, or negative attitudes toward transgender people. Research also shows that personal contact with a transgender person leads to less negative attitudes and more positive attitudes toward that group. 

What are individual-level processes?

One way for dealing with unwanted stereotypic thoughts is by suppression. This can work sometimes, but a suppressed stereotype can also come back in greater strength. This is called the rebound effect. People who have suppressed stereotypes later show better memory for traits that are stereotypic. They also have a decreased memory for individuating information. Some researchers think that by suppressing thoughts you prime them. This makes them readily available for use when suppression is lifted. Because you think ‘I must not think about someone’s skin colour’ you will be on the lookout for cues that can indicate skin colour. By doing this the suppressed thought is unconsciously active.

What is stereotype rebound?

Sometimes stereotype rebound may not occur. One factor that can control for this is low prejudice. Low prejudiced people are less likely to experience stereotype activation. Without activation, there are no stereotypes to be suppressed. Also, when stereotypical thoughts are experienced, these people are highly motivated to suppress them. Research shows that when a thought is being suppressed this processes primes suppressed thoughts such as stereotypes, making them more readily available to use when suppression is lifted. 

What is self-regulation?

According to the self-regulation model people who see themselves as unprejudiced become sensitized to environmental cues that warn them when they might respond in a prejudiced manner. These people suppress their prejudiced responses and replace them with appropriate responses. When somebody has acted in a prejudiced manner he or she will learn from it. This person will remember the cues and the next time he or she encounters the cues, he or she will try to control the prejudice. When people have cues to warn them they search in their minds for information to make an appropriate nonprejudiced response. When somebody does this a lot the self-regulation of prejudice becomes automatic over time.

What is intergroup contact theory?

The intergroup contact theory says that groups that interact with each other will hold more positive beliefs about each other. This does not always result in the positive effects. Sometimes groups will only show hostility towards each other.

What are conditions for success?

There are some conditions that improve intergroup attitudes while having intergroup contact:

1. Members of each group must have equal status in the situations.
2. The groups must work together to achieve common goals.
3. Participants must get to know each other.
4. The intergroup effort must have to support of authorities.

Research has found that contact had a moderate effect on reducing prejudice. Intergroup contact can make people engage in new behaviours and this can lead to attitude change. Intergroup contact reduced prejudice in some people. One factor that influences this is the pre-existing intergroup attitudes. People who are low in prejudice have already positive intergroup attitudes and their attitudes towards the other group will probably change in a positive way. People who are high in prejudice are more likely to avoid intergroup contact.

Another factor is intergroup anxiety. People who have anxiety to intergroup contact avoid contact with others and therefore will not come to know how these people really are. The final factor that influences reducing prejudice is the normative climate. If someone’s friends had positive attitudes towards a group, one will also be more likely to have contact with this group.

How do you go from personalization to common social identity?

There are a couple of models that explain how contact reduced prejudice.

The personalization model proposes that intergroup contact reduces prejudice by leading people to see members of the outgroup as individuals and not as members of social groups. When groups work together they will see the characteristics of the individual group members. They will notice that these people have multiple social identities and that they are complex human beings. One shortcoming of this study is that an increase in liking for the outgroup members doesn’t increase the liking for the outgroup in general.

The salient categorization model proposes that generalization occurs if group members are seen as typical of their group. The outgroup has to be seen in nonstereotypic terms and group membership must remain salient during intergroup contact.

The common ingroup identity proposes that one must induce ingroup and outgroup members into a single group with a common identity. Because they form one group they will see each other in a more favourable light. They share beliefs and attitudes and this may lead to liking. There is much support for this model.

There are, however, two conditions that will not lead to positive outcomes. The first one is when the ingroup thinks that the outgroup will take on their values and beliefs, instead of creating a common identity. This can increase bias. The second factor is that creating a common group can create a new outgroup.

Pettigrew’s combined model shows that all three models are correct. The three models don't seem to contradict each other. The personalization model concentrates on decategorization, the salient categorization model focuses on maintaining group categories and the common identity model focuses on recategorization. The Pettigrew’s combined model thinks that all these models are correct and represent a different stage of the prejudice reduction process.

What are workplace interventions?

To reduce workplace-discrimination couple of things can be done. The first one is affirmative action. These are voluntary actions taken by the company to reduce discrimination and to be more equal towards different groups. This action is not necessarily to reduce prejudice, but to create a divorce workforce consisting out of majority group members, minority group members and women. Affirmative action can also have economic benefits for companies. Sometimes affirmative action programs can lead to more prejudice against a group. One person might feel angry, because someone else has indeed benefited from affirmative action.

What are diversity programs?

Another way to reduce prejudice in the workplace is carrying out diversity programs. This means that employees learn how to work more effectively with colleagues of different backgrounds. Research is divided about the results of diversity programs. Some research shows that they are effective while others show that they are not. This might be because some diversity programs are poorly conducted while others are not.

Another important thing to do is managing diversity. This is changing organizational policies to make them more responsive to the needs of women and minority group members.

What is racial color-blindness and its alternatives?

The color-blind perspective holds that people act as if racial and ethnic groups don’t exist when acting with others. Acknowledging racial membership leads to discrimination, whether against somebody or in the favour of somebody else. Some people, however, don’t like this view, because people think that by pretending something doesn’t exist, all is solved. It’s a case of misrepresenting the reality. You are ignoring other people and their experiences of life.

What is the assimilationist perspective?

Another perspective one could take is the assimilationist perspective. This perspective holds that minority groups should take on the behaviours, language and values of the majority group and give up their own culture. People think that by sharing the same culture, there will be no intergroup differences and no conflicts.

What is the multicultural perspective?

The multicultural perspective beliefs that different ethnic identities should not be eclipsed together, but stay preserved and coexist harmoniously. Some people think that this bad, because it encourages separation. Psychologists, however, say there are two important components of multicultural perspective. The first one is that it encourages salient categorization, which can undermine group stereotypes. The second one is that it encourages people to view themselves simultaneously in terms of their ethnic identities and national identities. People should be proud of their ethnic background, as well as their national one. Their common identity is important.

What is the polycultural perspective?

The polycultural perspective emphasizes that there is no such thing as a 'pure culture'. Culture is not determined by one's race or nationality and, within countries, there can be many cultural and subcultural groups. Thus, people of all cultures are interconnected by their history of mutual interaction and influence. 

Polyculturalism recognizes and celebrates al individual cultures, but emphasizes the links among cultures rather than the differences between them. 

Which perspective is best, the colour-blind perspective or the multicultural perspective? Research has found that higher rates on a measure for colour-blind racial attitudes go together with higher rates on racial prejudice. These people are also less likely to support affirmative action. The multicultural perspective values both the majority groups and minority groups and because of that people feel more secure about their identity and feel less animosity toward other groups. Polyculturalism has the strongest association with nonprejudice, but is still a relative new concept and should be investigated further. Research encourages people to adopt a multicultural rather than a colour-blind perspective.

What can you do to reduce prejudice?

We can do a lot to change our own attitudes, but such change is not an easy process, because attitudes are resistant to change. As a starting point you need to engage in self-awareness and introspection about our own biases and prejudices and how they affect intergroup relations. 

How to reflect on thoughts and behavior?

1. Understand your own social identities: race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status.
2. Acknowlegde that you have prejudices, and that is doesn't make you a bad person.
3. Think about the nature of your prejudices, especially the beliefs and emotions they are based on.
4. For every negative belief about a group, search for an example to contradict that thought.
5. Pay attention to your behavior.
6. If someone suggests that you've acted in a biased way, ask them why your behavior gave them that impression.
7. If you find yourself thinking why that member is 'acting just like a typical X', think about other factors that might influence the behavior of that person.
8. Resist the tendency, to judge an entire group by the actions of one of its members.
9. Think about intergroup issues in intergroup terms, such as, 'our issues, to which we all contribute'.

How to put the intergroup contact theory into practice?

1. Seek out contact with members from other groups.
2. Intergroup contact may arouse anxiety at first.
3. When interacting, personalize them.
4. Invite members of other social groups to your social events.
5. Be persistent.
6. Learn more about other groups.

How to influence other people's attitudes?

1. Help people become aware of their attitudes and behavior
2. Encourage intergroup contact.
3. Help others become better informed.
4. Be a role model for your children and younger siblings.