Regional differences in anti-Negro prejudice.

"Public opinion polling techniques were employed with 366 randomly selected respondents in eight roughly matched communities in the North and South to investigate anti-Negro prejudice… . in anti-Negro prejudice, externalizing personality findings are of equal importance in the North and South, and socio-cultural and social adjustment factors are considerably more important in the South and account for the sharp differences in the regions." 30 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The fakability of two measures of prejudice: The California F Scale and Gough's Pr Scale.

"Fifty-two elementary psychology students, who did not belong to minority groups and who were naive to the tests, were given the California F (authoritarian) scale and Gough's Pr (prejudice) scale. First they took the scales with the regular instructions. They repeated them, once faking prejudiced attitudes, and again faking unprejudiced attitudes. The Ss were clearly able to fake the prejudiced approach. However, they were able to change their scores significantly toward the unprejudiced direction only on the Pr scale… . It appears particularly easy to fake prejudice if the person is so inclined." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Race prejudice and intolerance of ambiguity in children.

On the basis of tests given to 154 fourth and fifth grade children selected from the public schools of a midwest town, there appears to be no demonstrable relationship between prejudice, as defined by the Horowitz Faces Test and 6 operational definitions of intolerance of ambiguity involving decision time and various analyses of sociometric and Guess Who data. "Since anti-Negro race prejudice, at least in the midwest, is considered to be an important component of the perhaps more general term, ethnocentrism, this study does not support notions of an invariable relationship between ethnocentrism and intolerance of ambiguity… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antisemitism, judgmental processes, and displacement of hostility.

"The present study was designed to test a theoretical argument used to explain the different results in various investigations of the scapegoat theory of prejudice… . it is suggested that the index of hostility displacement employed by Berkowitz… [see 34: 2746] was more affected by judgmental processes than the indices of fantasy aggression used by… other investigators, and that highly prejudiced people make different kinds of judgments under stress than do people lower in prejudice." 2 groups of high and low feelings of anti-Semitism were placed in stressful and non-stressful, non-ego-involving situations. The results tend to support the hypotheses. Difference in capacity for perceptual discrimination was seen as affecting results rather than conceptual rigidity. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GD10B. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some effects of shared threat and prejudice in racially mixed groups.

"The purpose of this experiment was to test the relationship between shared threat and the expression of prejudice hypothesized by Feshbach and Singer (1957). 48 Ss, varying with respect to anti-Negro prejudice, were placed under conditions of shared threat or nonthreat, in task oriented cooperative work groups. A Negro confederate was a member in each group. It was found, as hypothesized, that under conditions of shared threat a reduction in the expression of prejudice occurs in terms of direct evaluation of the Negro by other group members." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identifying Jewish names: Does prejudice increase accuracy?

Ss with strong prejudices were no more capable of identifying names as being more or less Jewish than Ss who were not so prejudiced. "The present negative results… are consistent with the fact that properly controlled photographic studies have been uniformly negative. It seems reasonable to conclude that the hypothesis that prejudice increases accuracy of identification of Jews may be safely put to rest." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antisemitism and the expression of fantasy aggression.

"In order to test a hypothesis derived from the scapegoat theory of prejudice [Dollard, et al, 1939], two groups… chosen on the basis of… high and… low scores on the Levinson Anti-Semitism Scale, [A-S] were subjected to an aggression arousing situation. Following aggression arousal a specially designed fantasy test was administered, which yielded measures of aggression expressed toward fantasy characters with Jewish or non-Jewish names. Control subjects, matched with Arousal group subjects on… A-S scores, took the fantasy test without prior aggression arousal. Aggression arousal produced significant differences in the fantasy aggression of High and Low A-S subjects… . [supporting] the hypothesis that persons high in anti-Semitism have a greater… tendency… to displace aggression selectively onto Jews." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GD54W. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Categorization and communication in the face of prejudice: When describing perceptions changes what is perceived.

In the face of prejudice against an ingroup, common ground for communication exists when people use similar social categories to understand the situation. Three studies tested the hypothesis that describing perceptions of prejudice can fundamentally change those perceptions because communicators account for the common ground in line with conversational norms. When women (Study 1), African Americans (Study 2), and Americans (Study 3) simply thought about suspected prejudice against their ingroup, categorization guided their perceptions: Participants assimilated their views of the prejudiced event toward the perceptions of ingroup members but contrasted away from the perceptions of outgroup members. Conversely, when participants described their perceptions, they contrasted away from the given category information and actually arrived at the opposite perceptions as those who merely thought about the prejudiced event. Study 3 identified an important qualification of these effects by showing that they were obtained only when participants could assume their audience was familiar with the common ground. Implications are discussed for understanding the role of communication in facilitating and inhibiting collective action about prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A two-dimensional model that employs explicit and implicit attitudes to characterize prejudice.

In the authors' 2-dimensional model of prejudice, explicit and implicit attitudes are used to create 4 profiles: truly low prejudiced (TLP: double lows), aversive racists (AR: low explicit modern racism/high implicit prejudice), principled conservatives (PC: high explicit modern racism/low implicit prejudice), and modern racists (MR: double highs). Students completed an Asian Modern Racism Scale and an Asian/White Implicit Association Test. The authors compared the 4 groups' prejudice-related ideologies (i.e., egalitarianism/humanism and social conservatism) and economic/political conservatism (Study 1, N=132). The authors also tested whether MR but not PC (Study 2, N=65) and AR but not TLP (Study 3, N=143) are more likely to negatively evaluate an Asian target when attributional ambiguity is high (vs. low). In support of the model, TLP did not hold prejudice-related ideologies and did not discriminate; AR were low in conservatism and demonstrated the attributional-ambiguity effect; PC did not strongly endorse prejudice-related ideologies and did not discriminate; MR strongly endorsed prejudice-related ideologies, were conservative, and demonstrated the attributional-ambiguity effect. The authors discuss implications for operationalizing and understanding the nature of prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anti-Semitism, distraction and physical aggression.

Examined the aggressive responses of persons who varied in level of anti-Semitism and who were either distracted or not distracted from an insulter. 34 male undergraduates, chosen as Ss through a questionnaire which included the 10-item Anti-Semitism Scale and the 28-item California F Scale, participated in a paired associate learning task in which their performance was demeaned by a tape recorded series of disparaging remarks presumably given by their peer. Following this, critical Ss either relaxed under conditions where voice and movement cues from their insulter were heard, or Ss observed a film designed to distract them from their insulter. The critical Ss were then requested to teach their peer a paired associate list under conditions in which they administered shock to their partner. Results of the 3 * 2 * 3 repeated measures analysis of variance with 3 levels of anti-Semitism, 2 distraction conditions, and 3 trials indicate that distraction reduced the intensity of shock delivered to the peer. Ss tended to rate themselves as less annoyed and less anxious under distraction conditions. Ss varying in anti-Semitism did not differ in the amount of shock delivered to their partner. The situational demands may have been powerful enough to override the effects of personality differences. 2 interpretations are offered for the finding that the highly prejudiced Ss perceived the shock delivered to their peer as more painful than the less prejudiced Ss: (a) the possibility that this difference reflected the highly prejudiced Ss' lower guilt level for aggressing; and (b) the possibility that the highly prejudiced Ss used different mechanisms to reduce the discomfort engendered by harming another person than those used by their less prejudiced peers. (French summary) (25 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of intent and harm in judgments of prejudice and discrimination.

Four experiments examined how an actor's intent and the harm experienced by a target influence judgments of prejudice and discrimination. The presence of intent increased the likelihood that participants judged an actor as prejudiced and the actor's behavior as discriminatory. When intent was uncertain, harm influenced judgments of the behavior, which in turn influenced judgments of the actor, and participants were more cautious in their judgments about an actor than an actor's behavior. Harm also played a stronger role in targets' than observers' judgments. Understanding the role of intent and harm on perceptions of prejudice can help explain variations in targets' versus observers', and possibly targets' versus actors', judgments of discrimination and prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual-motor compatibility and homonegativity: Approaching and avoiding words associated with homosexuality.

Two studies explored conceptual-motor compatibility effects underlying attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women. In Study 1, we tested if attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women would influence whether or not participants chose to engage in, and how quickly they engaged in, approach or avoidance motor movements. Participants responded to homosexual and heterosexual words on a computer screen by choosing to push (avoidance movement) or pull (approach movement) a computer mouse. Findings indicated that participants who were high in prejudice chose to make more prejudice-compatible motor responses than did participants who were low in prejudice. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to a prejudice-compatible or prejudice-incompatible motor movements condition. Results indicated that highly prejudiced participants were faster to complete prejudice-compatible motor movements than were low prejudice participants. Implications for implicit attitudes and measuring prejudice toward gay men and lesbian women are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vicarious moral licensing: The influence of others' past moral actions on moral behavior.

This article investigates the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced behavior on an individual's subsequent behavior. Five studies supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express prejudiced attitudes when their group members' past behavior has established nonprejudiced credentials. Study 1a showed that participants who were told that their group was more moral than similar other groups were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for African Americans. In Study 1b, when given information on group members' prior nondiscriminatory behavior (selecting a Hispanic applicant in a prior task), participants subsequently gave more discriminatory ratings to the Hispanic applicant for a position stereotypically suited for majority members (Whites). In Study 2, moral self-concept mediated the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced actions on a participant's subsequent prejudiced behavior such that others' past nonprejudiced actions enhanced the participant's moral self-concept, and this inflated moral self-concept subsequently drove the participant's prejudiced ratings of a Hispanic applicant. In Study 3, the moderating role of identification with the credentialing group was tested. Results showed that participants expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward a Hispanic applicant when they highly identified with the group members behaving in nonprejudiced manner. In Study 4, the credentialing task was dissociated from the participants' own judgmental task, and, in addition, identification with the credentialing group was manipulated rather than measured. Consistent with prior studies, the results showed that participants who first had the opportunity to view an in-group member's nonprejudiced hiring decision were more likely to reject an African American man for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. These studies suggest a vicarious moral licensing effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of personal liking, perceived ability, and value of prize on choice of partners for a competition.

"Ss who were told… that they had high ability at… [a] task were strongly inclined to choose partners who also had high skill, even though such choices meant abandoning their original personal preferences and working with their originally less preferred classmates." Monetary remuneration was seen to affect choice by these Ss. "Ss who were told they themselves had low skill scores continued to choose partners according to their original liking preferences, even though the monetary payoff increased." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GE98W. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biased allocation of faces to social categories.

Three studies show that social categorization is biased at the level of category allocation. In all studies, participants categorized faces. In Studies 1 and 2, participants overallocated faces with criminal features—a stereotypical negative trait—to the stigmatized Moroccan category, especially if they were prejudiced. On the contrary, the stereotype-irrelevant negative trait stupid did not lead to overallocation to the Moroccan category. In Study 3, using the stigmatized category homosexual, the previously used negative trait criminal—irrelevant to the homosexual stereotype—did not lead to overallocation, but the stereotype-relevant positive trait femininity did. These results demonstrate that normative fit is higher for faces with stereotype-relevant features regardless of valence. Moreover, individual differences in implicit prejudice predicted the extent to which stereotype-relevant traits elicited overallocation: Whereas more negatively prejudiced people showed greater overallocation of faces associated with negative stereotype-relevant traits, they showed less overallocation of faces associated with positive stereotype-relevant traits. These results support our normative fit hypothesis: In general, normative fit is better for faces with stereotypical features. Moreover, normative fit is enhanced for prejudiced individuals when these features are evaluatively congruent. Social categorization thus may be biased in itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social psychology of perceived prejudice and discrimination.

Most research on prejudice has followed a unidirectional orientation of investigating why or when majority- or dominant-group members become prejudiced toward members of minority or subordinate groups without considering the effects of prejudice and discrimination upon its victims. By contrast, my research program over the past quarter century deals with the "phenomenology" of prejudice and discrimination from the perspective of the victim and has sought to answer questions such as the following: What is it like to be discriminated against on the basis of an arbitrary characteristic such as ethnicity, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc.? What are the social-psychological and affective correlates and consequences to individuals who confront prejudice and discrimination by virtue of membership in a minority or subordinate group? This paper presents a sampling of my research on the "phenomenology" of prejudice and discrimination, along with several theoretical perspectives that I have used and developed to help to understand this issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural investigation of the relationship between ethnic prejudice, authoritarian ideology, and personality.

The studies done re the validation of the relationship between prejudice and authoritarianism on American Ss confounded ethnic prejudice and political attitude by the nature of the sample. An effort was made to investigate ethnic prejudice (as measured by the F Scale) independent of political (radical-conservatism) commitment by using Ss (Israeli students) demonstrating differential attitudes towards Arabs, but unanimity of feeling against Jewish immigrants from North Africa. The results provided a cross-cultural validation of the relationship between prejudice and authoritarianism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

(Why) do I think what you think? Epistemic social tuning and implicit prejudice.

This research examines whether people who experience epistemic motivation (i.e., a desire to acquire knowledge) came to have implicit attitudes consistent with the apparent beliefs of another person. People had lower implicit prejudice when they experienced epistemic motivation and interacted with a person who ostensibly held egalitarian beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2). Implicit prejudice was not affected when people did not experience epistemic motivation. Further evidence shows that this tuning of implicit attitudes occurs when beliefs are endorsed by another person, but not when they are brought to mind via means that do not imply that person's endorsement (Experiment 3). Results suggest that implicit attitudes of epistemically motivated people tune to the apparent beliefs of others to achieve shared reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing intergroup prejudice and conflict using the media: A field experiment in Rwanda.

Can the media reduce intergroup prejudice and conflict? Despite the high stakes of this question, understanding of the mass media's role in shaping prejudiced beliefs, norms, and behavior is limited. A yearlong field experiment in Rwanda tested the impact of a radio soap opera featuring messages about reducing intergroup prejudice, violence, and trauma in 2 fictional Rwandan communities. Compared with a control group who listened to a health radio soap opera, listeners' perceptions of social norms and their behaviors changed with respect to intermarriage, open dissent, trust, empathy, cooperation, and trauma healing. However, the radio program did little to change listeners' personal beliefs. Group discussion and emotion were implicated in the process of media influence. Taken together, the results point to an integrated model of behavioral prejudice and conflict reduction that prioritizes the communication of social norms over changes in personal beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on Rokeach's theory of prejudice.

"Rokeach's hypothesis that prejudice can be accounted for by differences in the belief systems between two persons, or between a person and members of a racial or religious group, was tested and rejected. Rokeach's own experimental confirmation of his hypothesis is due to an artifact of his method of measuring prejudice. His position is re-evaluated in the light of the present findings." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3GD84T. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)