What is the link between individual differences and prejudice? - Chapter 6

What are personal values?

Values are certain beliefs people hold about goals they want to achieve in life and outcomes they should try to avoid. Things that are perceived as consistent with one’s values are judged to be good and things that are seen as inconsistent with one’s values are judged as bad. There are different theories about values and prejudice. There are two general categories of values that are related to prejudice. One of these is individualism and the other is egalitarianism. The first one related to values emphasizing the importance of self-reliance and the second one emphasizing the importance of all people being treated equally.

What is individualism?

A lot of Western countries place a lot of value on self-reliance and independence from others. Early in history individualism was seen as the route to success in life. Individualism and prejudice can be linked by group stereotypes. Groups that violated the principles of individualism are seen as negative. Usually people who hold these pro-individualism views, see African Americans and fat people as the ‘bad people’ because of their laziness. Also, a part of individualism is self-restraint. Therefore, gay men are sometimes seen as ‘wrong’. This is because self-restraint is avoiding pleasure seeking and gay men are often stereotyped as constant pleasure seekers.

What is egalitarianism?

Egalitarianism reflects an emphasis on the principles of equal opportunity and a concern for other’s well-being. Egalitarianism inhibits prejudice. White people who endorse egalitarian values can inhibit prejudice in two ways. The first way is feeling sympathy for Black people (this is the theory of ambivalent prejudice) or they try to avoid the threat to self-concept that can bring negative feelings towards them (the theory of aversive prejudice). Individualism affects prejudice only when the outgroup has certain values that are in contrast to the values of the ingroup. Egalitarianism, however, counteracts all forms of prejudice.

How can egalitarianism work? Stereotypes must be activated before they can have an effect on people’s thoughts. People that hold egalitarian values have a smaller chance to get the stereotypes activated than people who don’t hold egalitarian values. Egalitarianism inhibits prejudice by preventing the activation of negative stereotypes.

What are the perceive value differences?

Prejudice is partly based on the perception that the value system of the outgroup differs from the value system of an ingroup. These values guide judgments of good and bad and therefore prejudice can exist when one holds other values than others. This is called the value difference hypothesis. People like others that look like them and this also works for groups. In the next section research about the relation of perceived values and prejudice is discussed.

What is the attribution-value model?

The attribution-value model proposes that prejudice exists because minority group members have characteristics that are contrary to majority group values. Also, members of minority groups are seen as responsible for those characteristics. Because negative characteristics arouse negative emotions prejudice results when groups are perceived to be responsible for their negative characteristics. So, dislike of fat people stems from the belief that fat people are lazy. The attribution-value model does not apply to all forms of prejudice. This exists because of two things.

The first one is naturalness. This is the extent to which group membership is seen as biologically based. Women can’t change into men but Republicans can become Democrats. The second one is entitativity, the extent to which group members are seen as the same (can you recognize them as being part of that group). Gay men are seen as being high on entitativity and low on naturalness. Therefore, gays are seen as being responsible for their choice and people will hold more negative views about them.

What is the terror management theory?

The terror management theory is the hypothesis that prejudice exists because people want to promote and defend their beliefs and values. This is rested in two characteristics: self-preservation and the knowledge that death is inevitable. Because of this, people try to avoid the unavoidable death and this leads to terror. Humans have tried to deal with this and they found different ways to do this. One way is to develop worldviews that promise immortality. This can take two forms. It can be literal, like religions suggest. They believe that souls live on after death. It can also be symbolic. This means that people have social institutions, like family and that one can leave children and a good reputation after one’s death. Because culture can buffer the terror of death, people want to defend culture from groups with different worldviews. If people’s views get challenged, they want to reinforce their faith in their culture. One way to do this is to reject the people who challenge their worldviews. Also, if an outgroup member acts according to the ingroup’s stereotype of this person, the ingroup will act more favourably because their worldview (how the outgroup is) has not been challenged then. Being aware of one’s inevitable death can increase people’s feelings of identification with their own group. This can also lead to more prejudice and even accepting negative actions towards members from the outgroup which one would otherwise condemn.

What is the role of religion?

Religion is a vague concept to prejudice. This is because it’s sometimes linked with prejudice and sometimes it isn’t. Religions teach intergroup tolerance and people would expect that the ones who are more involved in religion, also would show less prejudice. Research, however, shows otherwise.

Religious leaders and psychologists did not expect these findings. They decided not to concentrate on the extent to which people are religious but on the way people are religious. Some people belong to a church because it’s safe and powerful and these people usually have an authoritarian character. Some people belong to a church because of their ideals.

These ideals evolved into two concepts. One of them is the intrinsic religious orientation and people with this orientation really believe in their religion’s teaching and live their lives according to them. These people are usually unprejudiced. The second orientation is the extrinsic religious orientation. This is used to achieve goals that are nonreligious. People with this orientation pay little attention to religious teachings and are more likely to express prejudice.

This orientation is linked to prejudice and the intrinsic orientation is not. This does not mean that people with the intrinsic view don’t hold prejudiced beliefs; they just don’t show it on questionnaires (socially desirable answers). Some research, however, has found that although intrinsic orientation people want to give social desirable answers, they also are unprejudiced.

There is also a third type of religious orientation. It’s called quest orientation. This is a view of religion as a quest for answers to life questions. This orientation reflects open-mindedness and willingness to change. This type is negatively correlated with prejudice.

Most religions teach tolerance towards outgroups. Some outgroups, however, are more tolerated than others. Usually religions are against racism, but they can be for another form of prejudice, like discriminating gay men or lesbians. Researchers think that intrinsic religiosity is negatively correlated with proscribed prejudice and positively correlated with permitted prejudice. So it’s negatively correlated with racism and positively related to discrimination against gays. Quest orientation is negatively correlated to both forms of prejudice. Quest people are tolerant of attitudes that differ from their own, but they’re not tolerant of religions that differ from their own (like fundamentalism).

What are social ideologies?

Ideologies are beliefs that make people view the world in a certain way and to respond in a way consistent to these views. Ideologies are important to satisfy one’s psychological needs. Also, they give people goals to strive for.

Religious fundamentalism is the view that there’s one clear religion with fundamental, essential truth and opposed evil forces that must be fought. These people live religion in everyday life. They are usually prejudiced.

What is authoritarianism?

There are some characteristics that are associated with prejudice. Two of these are authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. These two are seen as personality traits, but actually are ideologies. Ideologies are sets and beliefs that make people view the world in a certain way and behave according to this viewpoint.

A couple of psychologists wondered how fascism could have reached so much followers in the 1930s and they developed the concept of the authoritarian personality. This personality is susceptible to obey authority figures. This personality has nine characteristics and six of these are related to prejudice:

• Conventionalism, this type of personality adheres to conventional values.
• Authoritarian submission
• Authoritarian aggression: Looking for and punishing people that violate conventional values.
• Stereotype
• Projectivity
• Believing that wild and dangerous things happen in this world.

With these six characteristics one can see that this could lead to prejudice.

What is the right-wing authoritarianism?

In the 1980s the concept of the authoritarian personality had been replaced with that of the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). RWA is in contrary to the authoritarian personality not a personality type but a set of attitudes. RWA is described in three clusters of attitudes and these look a lot like three of the characteristics of the authoritarian personality. These are authoritarian submission (a high degree of submission to the authorities), authoritarian aggression (aggression towards certain people) and conventionalism. People high in RWA tend to be prejudiced against a wide variety of groups. Some of these include feminists, gays, Muslims, immigrants and fat people.

There are several personal characteristics of people high in RWA that may predispose them to prejudice. The first one is that people high in RWA tend to be mentally inflexible. Also, they see the world in simple terms, have a high need for closure and want definite answers. Inflexibility is associated with stereotyping and inflexible people are not interested in experiencing new things and therefore are not likely to be exposed to views that differ from their own. They also see the world as a dangerous place and therefore place a high value on security. They try to find this security by submitting to authority and confirming to group norms. People high in RWA organize their worldviews in terms of prejudice. By seeing themselves as an ingroup and others as the outgroup, they exaggerate the differences between the groups and this way prejudice is promoted. People high in RWA also see themselves as self-righteous and they see themselves therefore as more moral than others. They think that they therefore are justified in looking down on the people authority figures define as less moral than themselves. People high in RWA only hold prejudiced believes against groups authority figures condemn. So if authority figures say that being gay is wrong, people high in RWA will hold prejudiced beliefs about gay people.

What is the social dominance orientation?

Usually people think that conservatives are prejudiced. Research has supported this view. Why does this relationship exist? One explanation is that the social dominance orientation (SDO) is responsible for prejudice. It’s not conservatism that produced prejudice, but some concepts of SDO. Conservatism holds some dimensions of SDO, like legitimizing myths. Another explanation is that conservative people see people more as responsible for their own life outcomes, like poverty, than other political orientation do. Liberalism sees this differently. Liberals see the poverty of Black people not as their own fault, but rather blame it on bad economic situation. Are liberals not prejudiced then? Yes, they are prejudiced, but this is a different form of prejudice than conservatism has. Conservatives exhibit modern-symbolic prejudice, whereas liberals exhibit aversive prejudice.

What is the link between emotions and prejudice?

Emotions are aroused automatically and because of this one might not know why he or she feels this emotion. If you feel discomfort when you interact with a member from the outgroup, this may be because you have (unconscious) negative stereotypes about them. Emotions also motivate behaviour. People that are afraid flee from the fearful situation and anger motivates people to attack the person they are angry at.

People can experience different emotions in response to the same person. This is of course because different people develop different beliefs. One might hold negative stereotypes about another person and the other does not. Also, one might evaluate a certain belief positively and the other might evaluate it negatively. Of course the degree of intensity with which people experience emotions may also differ.

What are intergroup emotions?

Intergroup emotions are the feelings that people get when they think about members of a social group or when they interact with these member. There are different models of how intergroup emotions arise and affect behaviour.

The first model is called the stereotype content model. This model classifies group stereotypes along two broad dimensions. The first one is warmth. Groups can be seen as warm (and friendly) or as cold (and unfriendly). The outgroup is seen as warm because they might be willing to cooperate and benefit the ingroup. The outgroup is seen as cold because they can harm the ingroup and prevent them from reaching their goals. The second dimension is competence. Groups can be competent and successful in dealing with the world and can help or frustrate the accomplishments of the ingroup’s goals. Groups can also be incompetent and unsuccessful in dealing with the world and can’t help or frustrate the ingroup in their goal accomplishment. The combinations of stereotypic warmth and competence lead to different emotions. White people from the middle class are seen as warm and competent and admiration is the emotion that is evoked. Disabled and retarded people are seen as warm and not competent and evoke pity. People with low warmth and high competence evoke envy and anger.

Another model looks at the specific beliefs about subgroups. These beliefs are about how an outgroup might threaten the welfare of the ingroup. Groups that can pose economic threats, evoke anger and fear and the behaviour towards these groups will be aggressive. Groups that pose a value threat evoke feelings of disgust and the ingroup wants to avoid them. Groups that pose a danger on safety evoke feelings of fear and the behaviour will be escaping. Groups that are unsuccessful evoke feelings of pity and the behaviour towards these groups is help.

Behaviours that are directed at groups can be described in terms of two dimensions. The first is the degree of helpfulness/harm to a group. The other is the degree of activeness. With those two things you can get four categories:

• Active facilitation is doing things that help groups get ahead in society.
• Passive facilitation is not hindering a group from getting ahead in society.
• Action harm means doing harmful things to a group.
• Passive harm means not doing anything that would be helpful to a group or not acting politely towards a group.

Although these behaviours seem to be very little and don’t seem to have a huge impact, they actually do. They can create huge feelings of psychological harm/hurt in the people who experience them.

When people’s environments change they experience emotions. This can happen when you interact with a member from another group. The emotion you then have will motivate the behaviour associated with this emotion. If the behaviour is successful in restoring the environment, the emotion will be reduced. If behaviour is produced that’s ineffective, the emotion will be increased and the likelihood of a stronger response in the future will also be increased.

What happens when emotions combine? Ordinary emotions can combine and result in strong and potentially destructive emotions of hate. Hate is composed of high levels of the next three emotions:

• Disgust. Feelings of disgust motivate people to avoid certain groups. This can be done by limiting the occupations the outgroup can follow or by placing them in a certain area where they have to live (ghettos). It can also be more extreme. Sometimes you distance yourself psychologically from a group and you come to see those people as less than human (like the Jews were portrayed).
• Fear and anger. When you see the outgroup as a threat to your own group, you may fear them or have anger towards them.
• Contempt. These feelings motivate people to look down on the outgroup. Usually people see the outgroup members as less than human, because they think they don’t posses all traits, like intelligence and self-control. Because some people are seen as less than human, they fall outside the protection of the rules that normally lead behaviour in society.

When you combine two or even all of these components of hate, you get various types and degrees of hate. The most dangerous form of hate is a combination of all three components and it’s called burning hate. There are some stories about the outgroup that the ingroup tells to maintain the hate. The two main stories are that outgroups are barbarians and evil victimizers. The outgroup members want to destroy the culture of the ingroup and replace it with their own culture. They also want to torture, murder and rape members from the ingroup. These are the things ingroup members tell. Of course, people differ in the experience of emotions. People who are more sensitive to disgust, are more negative towards the outgroup.

What is intergroup anxiety?

When people feel discomfort when they interact with outgroup members, this is called intergroup anxiety. This discomfort comes from the expectation that interactions with outgroup members will have negative consequences. One could believe that an outgroup member is dangerous, that he/she will ridicule the person or perceive the person as being prejudiced. One might also feel discomfort because he/she thinks that the ingroup will reject or ridicule him for having interactions with the outgroup.

These expectations exist because someone did not have a lot of contact with the outrgroup or did only have negative contact with them. Because of this, people expect that future contact will also have negative consequences. Intergroup anxiety is related to prejudice. This relation is self-reinforcing. Because people are anxious, they don’t want to interact with other groups. But because they avoid other groups, they can’t have positive contacts with them and thus negative expectations and stereotypes won’t be undermined.

What is empathy?

If someone is in need and you feel sympathy and compassion, then you’re being empathic. Empathy is an individual difference variable. Some people are more capable of feeling empathy than others. Empathy consists of two components. Perspective taking means you can place yourself in other’s shoes. Empathic concern is experiencing compassion for unfortunate others. Personal distress is experiencing distress when others are really distressed. Fantasy means you can place yourself into fictional situations.

Empathic people exhibit less prejudice. This is because people adopt the perspective of members of stigmatized groups when they’re empathic. Empathic feelings increase valuing of the individual’s welfare and the group as a whole will be viewed in a more positive light.