Causes of prejudice and intergroup conflict

Question 1

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

• Psychoanalytic – influenced by Freud –> they felt that prejudice must lie somewhere in the individual’s character and personality
• Stresses childhood and parents –> how the father figure handles authority is deemed to be particularly crucial. They argue that if the father figure is very authoritarian and imposes lots of rules and regulations, then the child will build a frustration as they become young adults.
• Frustration is displaced –
> the child builds anger throughout their childhood which they have to bottle up, as they become young adults, they look for ways to express and get rid of the frustration and it’s typically displaced onto vulnerable targets. Vulnerable people are often minoities.

Question 2

How do you measure the authoritarian personality?

Answer 2

It’s called the F-scale for fascism, they felt that people who have this kind of personality would be right-wing fascists in their political orientation. They were trying to explain what happened in Nazi Germany.

Participants have to agree or disagree with items. Depending on the extent to how much they agree with the authoritative items, the researchers argue that the individual would be prejudiced and show discrimination.

Question 3

What are the reliability/validity issues with the f scale?

Answer 3

The researchers would then interview participants after the questionnaire and they reported that when the participants scored highly, they did indeed tell the researchers that they had a harsh childhood with an authoritarian father. The researchers argued that this provided validity for their ideas, however the interviewers knew the hypotheses and expectations so we might not be able to trust the interviews.

Question 4

What is the new scale that was devised after the f scale?

Answer 4

Many studies show the correlation between the F scale and measures of prejudice, but the theory lying behind it seems rather suspect. However, the idea wasn’t completely thrown away and a new scale was devised…

The RWA scale by Altemeyer (1996).

Question 5

How is the RWA scale measure?

Answer 5

Altemeyer (1996)

Authoritarianism is represented as a kind of rigidity in thinking, people don’t like change and they respect authority. The researcher doesn’t make any assumptions about family background, instead he proposes that when people have these views, they tend to be unforgiving of people that deviate from them and so they tend to be prejudiced. He doesn’t propose the underlying reasons behind it but the measure does seem robust as it strongly correlates with different prejudices

Question 6

What does the RWA scale show and why is it not the full picture?

Answer 6

It shows that individual differences cannot be ignored. However, there are lots of people that are prejudiced but will never act on it, whereas some people pass the boundary and actively seek to hate crime certain groups. So, what distinguishes between the person that is quietly prejudiced and those that actively go out of their way to harm others in minority groups  while individual differences matter, they can’t tell us the whole story.

Question 7

What is the Social dominance orientation (SDO-6) questionnaire about?

Answer 7

Pratto et al., 1994 argue that most industrialised societies require some kind of hierarchy between groups –> these tend to be economic hierarchies (there’s people on the poverty line, those doing okay and then people that are doing really well. They argue that the hierarchies are almost inevitable, the way we vary is how we orient ourselves towards those hierarchies e.g., do we think that this is acceptable or do we have more anarchic beliefs that societies shouldn’t be like this.

Question 8

What type of questions are on the SDO-6 scale?

Answer 8

Pratto et al., 1994

• Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups.
• In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups.
• It’s OK if some groups have more of a chance in life than others.
• To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups.
• If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems.
• It’s probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups are at the bottom.

Question 9

Where do pratto et al., 1994 suggest an individual’s social dominance comes from?

Answer 9

They argue that your social dominance orientation comes from an interaction of your individual characteristics, upbringing, and the environment you find yourself in.
There’s good evidence that if you score high on SDO you are likely to hold a range of different prejudices as it correlates very highly with measures of prejudice.

Question 10

What is the problem with the SDO-6 scale?

Answer 10

• The problem with this approach is the fact that sometimes these prejudices develop and get expressed quite widely within a country or even across the world very rapidly.
• It’s very difficult to explain this using an individual differences approach. This approach is based on the idea that prejudice links to personality because it’s unlikely that whole swathes of a country’s citizens have suddenly shifted their personality.
  So when we see sudden shifts in prejudice, we really need to look elsewhere to explain the shifts.

E.g., US stereotypes of the Japanese went from ‘– Intelligent, Industrious, Progressive, Shrewd, Sly’ to ‘– Imitative, Sly, Extremely nationalistic, Treacherous’ after Japan bombed pearl harbour.

This is where group psychology approaches are more explanatory.

Question 11

What are the group psychology approaches to prejudice and discrimination?

Answer 11

The alternative to individual differences is group psychology – this is especially relevant when we see prejudice that seems to be widespread.

• Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT)
• Social Identity Theory (SIT)

Question 12

Explain the empirical evidence behind realistic conflict theory (RCT)?

Answer 12

Campbell (1967) suggested that if you are in competition with another group because you want the same thing, it can lead individuals to the path of prejudice and discrimination.

Sherif et al., 1953 explored this concept of competition over a scarce resource leads to group members working towards attaining the resource, and thus brings the competing groups into conflict with a series of summer camp studies.

Question 13

Explain what happened during the summer camp studies?

Answer 13

Sherif et al., 1953

• 3 field experiments over 5 year period

• White 12 year old boys in U.S.A., ‘well-adjusted’
o They were pre-selected based on personality tests, juvenile criminal records and school reports of personality and disciplinary records
o If anyone was known to be violent or aggressive, they were not allowed to participate

• For the first few days, they are allowed to make friends and engage in various fun activities.
• Split into two groups randomly and a competition for scarce resources introduced

• Led to prejudice, violence, in-group preference, physically dominant leaders, ‘us versus them’ mentality
o As each day unfolded, a deep entrenched intergroup conflict became apparent, the children suddenly decided that they only wanted friends from their own group
o The groups decided to elect leaders, they were always the most aggressive boys within that group
o Sherif would take subtle measures such as asking children to evaluate how well they did in comparison to the other group –> there was a consistent bias to overestimate their own groups performance and underestimate the other groups performance.
o They didn’t just hold stereotypes, they were also violently aggressive e.g., food fights, they picked stones and raided the other groups tents.

Question 14

Why is personality not an adequate explanation of the summer camp studies?

Answer 14

They were chosen because they were well adjusted and within a few days they displayed prejudice and discrimination taken to extreme physical violence. Sherif reported that if any outsider saw what the kids were doing, they would have thought that he recruited a bunch of criminal thugs.

Question 15

What sparked the competition in the summer camp studies?

Answer 15

After dividing them into two groups he said that they would participate in a series of competitive sports and the winning team would receive a new penknife (swiss army knife thing). Both teams really wanted to get the prize.

Sherif mirrored what he felt was going on in wider society, he created an imbalance and conflict over a scarce resource.

Question 16

Is the use of children in Sherif’s study a valid criticism?

Answer 16

• Blake & Mouton (1962): trainee managers split into small groups and given a group task, manifested in-group preference
o They found that creating this kind of negative interdependence was enough to create a clear in-group preference so that when they asked people to evaluate the presentation of different groups, they consistently evaluated their own groups presentation more positively than those given by other groups.
o Some people criticised the Sherif study because they were only children, however this is an important study that shows you can also create in group preference with adults

Question 17

Why is it difficult to prove that negative interdependence is the main cause of prejudice and group conflict in the summer camp studies?

Answer 17

o Often the boys in Sherif’s experiment would engage in competition before the scarce resources or penknives were introduced. So, the conflict is difficult to explain using negative interdependence because there seemed to be an element of it before the experimenters introduced any negative interdependence.

Question 18

Are groups always destined to engage in competition?

Answer 18

It is argued that the reason groups encourage conflicts is because it strengthens group identity.

(Julian et al., 1966)
Competitive environments enhance group cohesion.when comparing combat units that have seen active combat with those that have never fought in real conflict settings, you find that combat units tend to have a stronger sense of identity.

There is something about conflicts that can strengthen and solidify a group, some organisations know this and take their department paintballing as a team-building activity.

Question 19

What experiment is social identity theory based on?

Answer 19

Tafjel & Wilkes (1968)

If you have a group of people that see the lines with and without the labels, you get statistically significant differences in the line length judgements between these two groups.

People overestimated the similarity of lines that were given the same label. They overestimate the difference of lines that were given different labels.

So, you can change perception by doing nothing more than putting a label against a line. This is a critical finding in the journey of understanding social identity theory  our brain isn’t an objective computer that just processes data in a neutral way. Everything we process goes through a filter of our psychology.

Once we label a person as in our group and another person in a different group, we perceive them differently. This lies at the heart of social identity theory –> the idea that we accentuate the similarity within a category and the difference between categories.

Question 20

Tell me about the minimal group studies?

Answer 20

Tafjel et al., 1971

The series of studies is known as the ‘minimal group studies’. He set out to design the minimal conditions for in-group bias.

He assigned groups on minimal criteria such as the toss of a coin or whether they prefer a specific image and asks whether this is enough to see in group bias.

He found that these groups showed what he referred to ‘in-group favouritism’, when allocating rewards to both groups they wouldn’t always go for the maximum reward for themselves. On several point allocation matrices, the boys would go got the option that created the biggest difference in points between their group and the other group, even if it meant they got fewer rewards ultimately.

Question 21

What are the limitations of the minimal group studies?

Answer 21

It may not explain hostility (Mummendey et al, 1992, on allocating punishments instead of rewards) –> it emerged that while minimal groups may show in-group bias, they don’t necessarily show hostility.

Question 22

What are the basic assumptions os social identity theory?

Answer 22

• Interpersonal vs. intergroup behaviour –> he argues that something happens to us when we are thinking about ourselves as group members.
• Categorisation affects social perception, is meaningful, and unavoidable –> instead of seeing every person as a unique individual, people tend to quickly categorise them by looking for cues in their appearance, from what we choose to wear, their accent or nationality (e.g., holding onto stereotypes).

• Social identity is a valued part of the self-concept, supplying self-esteem and reducing uncertainty (Hogg, 2000). Evolutionary benefits? –> social identities are about the groups we belong to, this becomes a valued part of an individual’s sense of self. This could be because groups can supply us with self-esteem. Perhaps the reason we end up getting into conflict with outgroups is because they challenge our in-groups and that then becomes a direct challenge to our sense of self-esteem.
o Evolutionary psychologists suggest we have a tendency to band together into groups, this had survival value originally, because as an individual your life expectancy was going to be a lot lower if you remained on your own than if you banded together with other people and you shared the task of hunting etc.
o Humans are not the only species that does this, it can be seen in great apes as well.

• We desire positive distinctiveness (e.g. Brown’s 1978 study of factory workers) and create it via stereotypes –> we construct these in a way that makes our group superior

Question 23

When does prejudice and conflict occur according to social identity theory?

Answer 23

– when people in groups strive to be positively distinct from others and perceive collective injustice
– when social identity is perceived to be threatened by out groups; defensive reactions can spark prejudice and discrimination

Question 24

What are the different biases in social information-processing?

Answer 24

Stereotype biases
Memory distortions
Ultimate attribution error

Question 25

Explain the evidence for stereotype biases in social information-processing.

Answer 25

o Linville (1982) complexity can drive prejudice and discrimination because it eventually leads to what Quattrone (1986) refers to as the homogeneity effect

o Quattrone (1986) out-group homogeneity effect (e.g. other race effect) –> this is where individuals perceive more variation within their group than in other groups. They think that outgroups are kind of all the same and there’s less difference in outgroups than there is within the in-group

e. g., The race effect is where you are able to discriminate faces of your own race better than faces of another race, you are more likely to see similarity in the faces of another race
e. g., You tend to hear “people from (blank) are all the same” from prejudiced people

Question 26

Explain the evidence for memory distortions in social information-processing.

Answer 26

o Confirmatory biases (Duncan, 1976) –> ppts saw a violent altercation and then he asked them to describe what they witnessed. He found consistent biases, white Americans would use more violent language if it was a black person pushing someone compared to if it was a white person doing the pushing.
Your memory goes through the filter of your stereotypes and your social identities in your mind and you’re not aware of this happening. Essentially you see confirmatory biases where a memory is skewed in such a way that it twists how we recall something, so it fits with our stereotypical biases.

Howard & Rothbart (1980)– recall fewer negative statements about the ingroup than about outgroups –> we recall information in a way that supports our prejudiced beliefs and makes them quite difficult to change e.g., you may meet someone that disconfirms your stereotype, but conveniently your memory system does not remember them so people can maintain prejudice.

Question 27

Explain the ultimate attribution error

Answer 27

Attribution refers to how we explain things, we don’t do this is a neutral way. This serves to maintain prejudice.

Hewstoneetal., 1982 – private vs. state schools

In the private vs state schools example, children from private school were taken and asked why someone at their school may have done badly on a test. They tend to explain it situationally whereas if they were asked about someone from a state school doing badly on a test, they explain it more in terms of the characteristics of the individual.