Prejudice - Contemporary Theories and Empirical Findings

Contemporary Theories and Empirical Findings

Social psychologist Henri Tajfel and colleagues found that ingroup favouritism can occur even in groups with no prior social meaning. In the minimal group experiments it was found that when voluntary study participants were assigned into groups based on something trivial such as a coin toss those participants exhibited in-group favouritism, giving preferential treatment to in-group members.

The out-group homogeneity effect is the perception that members of an out-group are more similar (homogenous) than members of the in-group. Social psychologists Quattrone and Jones conducted a study demonstrating this with students from the rival schools Princeton and Rutgers. Students at each school were shown videos of other students from each school choosing a type of music to listen to for an auditory perception study. Then the participants were asked to guess what percentage of the videotaped students’ classmates would choose the same. Participants predicted a much greater similarity between out-group members (the rival school) than between members of their in-group

The justification-suppression model of prejudice was created by Christian Crandall and Amy Eshleman. This model explains that people face a conflict between the desire to express prejudice and the desire to maintain a positive self-concept. This conflict causes people to search for justification for disliking an out-group, and to use that justification to avoid negative feelings (cognitive dissonance) about themselves when they act on their dislike of the out-group.

The realistic conflict theory states that competition between limited resources leads to increased negative prejudices and discrimination. This can be seen even when the resource is insignificant. In the Robber’s Cave experiment, negative prejudice and hostility was created between two summer camps after sports competitions for small prizes. The hostility was lessened after the two competing camps were forced to cooperate on tasks to achieve a common goal.

Another contemporary theory is Integrated Threat Theory (ITT) developed by Walter G Stephan. It draws from and builds upon several other psychological explanations of prejudice and ingroup/outgroup behaviour, such as Realistic Group Conflict Threat and symbolic racism. It also uses the Social Identity Theory perspective as the basis for its validity, that is, it assumes that individuals operate in a group-based context where group memberships form a part of individual identity. ITT posits that outgroup prejudice and discrimination is caused when individuals perceive an outgroup to be threatening in some way. ITT defines four threats:

• Realistic threats
• Symbolic threats
• Intergroup anxiety
• Negative stereotypes

Realistic threats are tangible, such as competition for a natural resource or a threat to income. Symbolic threats arise from a perceived difference in cultural values between groups or a perceived imbalance of power—for example, an ingroup perceiving an outgroup’s religion as incompatible with theirs. Intergroup anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness experienced in the presence of an outgroup or outgroup member, which constitutes a threat because interactions with other groups cause negative feelings (e.g., a threat to comfortable interactions). Negative stereotypes are similarly threats, in that individuals anticipate negative behaviour from outgroup members in line with the perceived stereotype, for example, that the outgroup is violent. Often these stereotypes are associated with emotions such as fear and anger. ITT differs from other threat theories by including intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes as threat types.

Additionally, Social Dominance Theory states that society can be viewed as group-based hierarchies. In competition for scarce resources such as housing or employment, dominant groups create prejudiced "legitimizing myths" to provide moral and intellectual justification for their dominant position over other groups and validate their claim over the limited resources. Legitimizing myths, such as discriminatory hiring practices or biased merit norms, work to maintain these prejudiced hierarchies.

Prejudice can be a central contributing factor to depression. This can occur in someone who is a prejudice victim, being the target of someone's else's prejudice, or when people have prejudice against themselves that causes their own depression.