How might prejudice develop and how might it be reduced?

Social Psychology:

Luke Allington

Prejudices both social and Individual are an unwanted yet unavoidable trait of modern day society, presenting itself in many different forms such as homophobia, sexism, racism, and even ageism. The word prejudice can be broken down into two parts to decipher its meaning; pre (Before), judice (judgement), and is quite literally that, the first feelings or thoughts about another individual, or group of people, based on the way that they look, and pre conceived ideas as to what that person or group of people will be like, or how they are likely to act. There are said to be three main elements of prejudice which are: Cognitive element – the way we think, Affective element – How we feel, Behavioural element – How we act, these are very basic explanations and an example is needed to explain it in more detail. If a person with very homophobic prejudices saw two same sex individuals showing affection towards one another in a public place the cognitive element explains what that person thinks about the situation which would probably be the inability to understand why they act in this way or perhaps even jealousy of these people because of their comfort with their sexuality. The affective element may cause the individual to experience negative feelings of anger, or disgust towards the couple, and the behavioural element determines the actions that the person might take due to the previous two elements, for example avoidance of the couple, or possibly verbal or even physical abuse.

These prejudices can originate and be reinforced through a number of different sources such as: Media, parents or other influential adults views, living in a religiously or racially homogenous community, peer pressure, lack of contact with others (ignorance), to name but a few. However it’s usually the conglomeration of two or three of these factors which produce the root of most prejudices.

Prejudice as a phenomenon has fascinated psychologists for years, and so far there are two main schools of thought in an attempt to explain it, the Social and the Individual approach, both of which have their own strengths and weaknesses which we will look at in more detail.

Social theories of prejudice include the theory of stereotyping, scapegoating, and intergroup conflict, which all explain the existence of prejudice in fairly similar ways, however possibly the most researched theory, minimal group theory says that the division of people into separate groups is enough to create prejudice. The social identity theory put forward by Tajfel and Turner (1979) links in with the minimal group theory, and is the idea that there are three cognitive processes involved in the creation and maintaining of social groups. Firstly individuals categorize themselves and other people into social groups, the ‘Us and Them’ phenomena, Tajfel and Turner identifies this as Social categorization. The next stage is social identification and is the idea that individuals within the group take on the identity of group itself, acting in the same way as other individuals in the group, and showing in-group favouritism (treating members of the group in a more positive way than people outside of the group). Tajfel and Turner said that people have an obvious desire to feel good about themselves, and maintain a good level of self esteem, and this is the final factor which is needed in order for prejudice to occur. Each individual has the need to feel that they are part of the best group to raise their own self esteem and ultimately feel good about themselves, and so will act on these desires by comparing their group with others, which will more than likely results in the discrimination of other groups which have been identified, which in turn will counter-react in the same way. This is described by Tajfel and Turner as social comparison. This theory has been tested in a number of different scenarios by many psychologists, including Poppe, E. and Linseen, H. (1999) in their study of ‘In-group favouritism and the reflection of realistic dimensions of difference between national states in Central and Eastern European nationality stereotypes’. This study showed how individuals who completed questionnaires about the rating of their own country against others, demonstrated high levels of favouritism as apposed to national stereotyping, supporting Tajfel and Turners theory of social identity. A good example of this theory in everyday life is the existence of football hooliganism. Extreme football fans that have allocated themselves to certain teams (social categorization), will act in the same way to all the other fans and assume the identity of the team (social identification). When the football team plays against another, the fans will taunt their rival fans when comparing how both teams are playing, in order to raise self esteem for themselves, and also the team (social comparison). However, the theory doesn’t explain how the taunts and manner in which the fans act is started. It explains that everyone acts in the same way by copying, although this suggests that one individual must have started the negative behaviour for everyone else to follow. This leads us to the question: Who starts the taunting, and does that person have a different type of personality as a leader/influential individual, than a person who is influenced/follower?

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As the social identity theory doesn’t fully explain why individuals can have prejudice views without being part of a group, or why some individuals are more prone to prejudiced behaviour than others we must look another theory which goes some way to give explanation as to the reason why some people act differently to others. The Authoritarian personality theory proposed by Adorno et al (1950) is widely regarded as the most influential theory to explain individual differences. Adorno started his research because of his fascination with Nazi behaviour, and wanted to explore the notion that some people are more likely to become prejudiced because of the way that they believe others should behave. Adorno et al created a way to test individuals in order to determine whether or not they had an authoritarian personality, by creating a type of survey which would indicate whether or not the individual who took the test showed signs of four different types of views, and whether they correlated with one another or not. The four types of characteristics that the test was designed to measure were: Ethnocentrism (looking at ones own racial group in a better light than another), totalitarianism (the view that all people should abide by the rules which they are set, and the intolerance of those who do not conform), anti-Semitism (anti-Jewish prejudice), and political conservatism. Adorno labelled this the fascism scale (F-scale), and although it has been outdated in it’s relevance for example the anti-Semitism factor, the principals of the test still apply. When people were tested by Adorno and his colleagues, the results concluded that, as expected, the same individuals who scored highly in one area, i.e. totalitarianism, also scored highly in the other three, showing that the characteristics went hand in hand with one another, and therefore these individuals could be regarded as having an authoritarian personality. By deducing who had the authoritarian personalities and who didn’t, Adorno and his colleagues were then able to study the authoritarians more closely in an attempt to discover what creates authoritarianism. The results of their study showed that each of the authoritarians had a similar type of upbringing and that their parents shared similar if not the same views. They were all subjected to relatively harsh parenting, insistent on high levels of achievement, and if they did not achieve and satisfied their parents then affection was reduced or taken away. The children repressed their anger as a way to cope with the parenting style; however as they progress into adulthood, the feelings of pent-up anger and aggression would need to be released on a convenient group, which would almost always lead to prejudiced opinions or even action.

These two theories offer a reasonable explanation into why prejudiced views develop, however we must now look at ways in which they can be reduced.

The first way that we will look at is Education. By teaching people at a very young age about the causes and effects of prejudice it has been proven that these messages have been kept with the individuals involved throughout their life and into their adulthood. A teacher called Jane Elliot used to teach her pupils about the causes and effects of prejudice by conducting an experiment with them based on the colour of their eyes. When the children who participated in the test were interviewed in later life, it was clear that discriminatory views had been greatly reduced. Education therefore proves itself to be a desirable method of reduction, however as stated by Aronson (1992):

‘If adults are compelled to listen to information uncongenial to their deep-seated attitudes, they will reject it, distort it, or ignore it’ – Direct quote from (Hill, 2001, p. 31)

Equal Status Contact is the next method we will look at. This is the idea that when individuals from opposite groups are put together in a situation in which they have the same social status, or are on the same level as it were, then their discriminatory views will be reduced as more time goes by. A study carried out by Star et al (1949) showed that white soldiers who were fighting alongside black troops in the second world war, described themselves as getting along ‘very well’ with each other, however in this particular study other factors must be taken into account, and this information may have been subjected to demand characteristics in the survey (soldiers giving the answers to comply with what they think the answer should be, rather than with how they actually feel). It was also considered that the results may have been true, but also influenced by another method of reduction: Super-Ordinate Goals, and that the combination of the two reduced prejudice significantly. The super-ordinate goals method is basically the suggestion that by putting two different groups of people together into a certain situation, but then making them interact with each other more positively by giving them a common goal in which they must work well together in order to achieve, the individuals will lose some of their inhibitions, thus a reduction in prejudice will occur. This is what is said to have happened during the war, however it could also be said that the joining of these two groups of people to fight against another group is simply the formation of another prejudice towards the opposition, and can be linked in with the Social Identity theory, and the idea that this was merely the merging of two conflicting groups to create a bigger ‘in-group’, however other studies have proved that this method does work in different types of scenario.

As you can see there are a number of different proven methods that can be used in the reduction of prejudice however no single method is a definitive solution to the problem and so to really have an impact they must all be used in conjunction with one another in order to see any positive affects.