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)     

Generalization of dissonance reduction: Decreasing prejudice through induced compliance.

Three studies involving a total of 318 White college students demonstrated that induced compliance can change socially significant attitudes and that the change generalizes to broader beliefs. Ss wrote an essay endorsing a pro-Black policy that was costly to Whites. In Exps 1 and 2, attitudes and general beliefs about Blacks became more favorable in both high- and low-choice conditions, provided publicity of the essay was high. Overall, choice and publicity had additive effects on attitude change. Some high-choice Ss wrote only semipositive (semicompliant) essays and did not change their essay attitudes. Yet their beliefs about Blacks still became more favorable. In Exp 3, racial ambivalence, but not prior attitude, predicted essay compliance. Ambivalent Ss were more likely to comply than were less ambivalent Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scaling norm conflicts in the area of prejudice and discrimination.

This study presents the development of a scale measuring militantly antidiscriminatory tendencies in particular social situations which require distinctive resolutions of norm conflicts. The Ss came from the high school population of a New England city who filled out a questionnaire requiring that they choose 1 of 4 courses of action for resolving Negro-white conflict situations. An 8-item Guttman scale resulted with a coefficient of reproducibility of .91. (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)     

Photoperiodic control of antler cycles in deer. III. Decreasing versus increasing day lengths

Deer were exposed for three years to photoperiods which increased or decreased two hours every four months, starting at 4L/20D or 20L/4D, respectively. Under both sets of conditions, antlers were repeatedly shed and replaced, usually in synchrony with every other time the day lengths were changed. On decreasing days, antler cycles were omitted as the photoperiod passed the equinox (12L/12D). On increasing days, the equinoctial photoperiod induced prolonged episodes of antler growth. The tendency for the antler replacement cycle to lock onto alternate changes in artificial photoperiods is consistent with the seasonal growth of antlers every other time the day lengths change in the natural environment. It is suggested that antler replacement is triggered neither by shortening nor lengthening days, but by the alternation of such changes irrespective of the direction of the shift in the photoperiod.     

Sensitization and prejudice.

Slides were shown to two groups of Ss, selected previously for high and low ethnocentrism. Half of the Ss in each group were shown a critical slide picturing a Negro attacking a white man with a knife, the other half were shown a similar slide picturing a white man attacking a Negro with a knife. Recall measures of picture content were then taken. An analysis of the results revealed that the superior recall of the critical pictures attributed to those high in prejudice, when congruous material is presented, was attributed to sensitization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extrinsic religious values and prejudice.

Religiosity and anti-Semitism highly related. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the nature of prejudice.

Argues that, in addition to stereotypic beliefs, prejudice is based on symbolic beliefs as well as on emotions and past experiences that are associated with the out-group. 71 Canadian psychology students completed a questionnaire designed to assess prejudice, stereotypes, affects, symbolic beliefs, and authoritarianism regarding 4 out-groups and 1 in-group. Results show that stereotypes, symbolic beliefs, emotions, and past experiences were far from redundant, and each factor was an important predictor of prejudicial attitudes. Thus, there would appear to be more to prejudicial attitudes than stereotypic beliefs. The relatively more negative attitudes held by individuals high in authoritarianism were predicted best by symbolic beliefs. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

降低供电系统线损提高电能利用率

本文通过对线损的概念、产生原因、如何计算进行阐述,从技术降损和管理线损两个方面提出了降低线损的措施,使线损率长期保持在4%以下,提高了电能利用率。     

Rotational object discrimination by pigeons.

Four experiments examined the discrimination of directional object motion by pigeons. Four pigeons were tested in a go/no-go procedure with video stimuli of geons rotating right or left around their central y-axis. This directional discrimination was learned in 7 to 12 sessions and was not affected by changes in object starting orientation, but did require the coherent ordering of the videos’ successive frames. Subsequent experiments found no or little transfer of this motion discrimination to novel objects. Experiments varying the speed of rotation and degrees of apparent motion per frame revealed that both factors strongly affected the discrimination. Finally, tests with partial occlusion of different portions of a rotating object suggested that the majority of the object was likely involved in determining rotational direction. These experiments indicate that pigeons can exclusively use motion cues to judge relative object motion. They also suggest the pigeons may have used a specific representation of the motion sequences of each object to make the discrimination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antireligious prejudice: Response to Gartner.

Questions the experimental design employed and use of some terms in the work of J. D. Gartner (see record 1987-05379-001), but concludes that Gartner's findings that clinical psychology graduate programs are reluctant to admit religious applicants are timely and relevant in the controversy associated with the attempted rapprochement between psychology and religion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit components of prejudice.

Research on implicit and explicit prejudice has treated implicit prejudices as a unitary construct characterized by automatic access to negative concepts. The present article makes the case that tasks purported to measure implicit prejudice actually assess 2 different processes. Some assess the extent to which prejudice is activated automatically on the perception of a member of the target group. Other implicit tasks assess the extent to which prejudice is automatically applied in judgment. In the reported study, participants completed 4 implicit and 2 explicit measures of prejudice against women. Factor analysis yielded a 3-factor solution. The solution provides support for the distinction between explicit prejudice and 2 types of implicit prejudice corresponding to automatic activation and automatic application of prejudice. Prejudice appears to be a multifaceted construct, different aspects of which are measured by different tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deconstructing prejudice: A Levinasian alternative.

Presents an alternative to the traditional explanations of prejudice. Prejudice, according to E. Levinas (1969), becomes a possibility of pre-judgment, but only after one takes account of the moral obligation one has to others with whom one shares the world. Consistent with Levinas, it is proposed that the traditional problems of prejudice occur only when a person or group of people refuse to find definition of their humanity in the face of others with whom they share the world. Thus, to build a conceptual framework, psychologists need to elucidate those ways in which people define and articulate their own humanity by responding to others in light of the moral obligation they have to others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generalized auditory same-different discrimination by pigeons.

Three pigeons were trained in a successive same/different (S/D) procedure using compound auditory stimuli (pitch/timbre combinations). Using a go/no-go procedure, pigeons successfully learned to discriminate between sequences of either all same (AAAA...or BBBB...) or all different (ABCD...) sequences consisting of 12 sounds. Both pitch and timbre were subsequently established as controlling dimensions. Transfer tests with novel stimuli revealed a generalized basis for the discrimination (novel pitch/timbre combinations, novel pitches, novel instruments, and complex natural & man-made sounds). These results indicate for the first time that pigeons can learn generalized same/different discriminations in a nondominant modality. When combined with earlier visual results, they support a qualitative similarity among birds and primates in their capacity to judge this type of fundamental stimulus relation across different modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Classroom structure and prejudice in desegregated schools.

Two experiments investigated the effect of the classroom structure and the classroom climate of desegregated schools on the prejudices of White intermediate school students in a large, southwestern school district. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses indicated that (a) the higher the percentage of minorities in a class, the more minority friends the White students had; (b) the more the minorities in a class displayed hostility toward Whites, the more negative were the Whites' attitudes toward minorities in general; (c) the more equal the social class and achievement levels of the Whites and minorities in a class, the more minority friends the White students had; and (d) the higher the self-esteem of the Whites in a class, the more positive their ethnic attitudes. Implications for the design of desegregation plans are also discussed. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fanning the flames of prejudice: The influence of specific incidental emotions on implicit prejudice.

Three experiments examined the impact of incidental emotions on implicit intergroup evaluations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that for unknown social groups, two negative emotions that are broadly applicable to intergroup conflict (anger and disgust) both created implicit bias where none had existed before. However, for known groups about which perceivers had prior knowledge, emotions increased implicit prejudice only if the induced emotion was applicable to the outgroup stereotype. Disgust increased bias against disgust-relevant groups (e.g., homosexuals) but anger did not (Experiment 2); anger increased bias against anger-relevant groups (e.g., Arabs) but disgust did not (Experiment 3). Consistent with functional theories of emotion, these findings suggest that negative intergroup emotions signal specific types of threat. If the emotion-specific threat is applicable to prior expectations of a group, the emotion ratchets up implicit prejudice toward that group. However, if the emotion-specific threat is not applicable to the target group, evaluations remain unchanged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parade and prejudice

Nurses at Craigavon hospital near Drumcree braved bomb threats and violence during the Orange parades weekend to carry on with their work. Adrian O'Dowd was invited to join them.     

Social influence effects on automatic racial prejudice.

Although most research on the control of automatic prejudice has focused on the efficacy of deliberate attempts to suppress or correct for stereotyping, the reported experiments tested the hypothesis that automatic racial prejudice is subject to common social influence. In experiments involving actual interethnic contact, both tacit and expressed social influence reduced the expression of automatic prejudice, as assessed by two different measures of automatic attitudes. Moreover, the automatic social tuning effect depended on participant ethnicity. European Americans (but not Asian Americans) exhibited less automatic prejudice in the presence of a Black experimenter than a White experimenter (Experiments 2 and 4), although both groups exhibited reduced automatic prejudice when instructed to avoid prejudice (Experiment 3). Results are consistent with shared reality theory, which postulates that social regulation is central to social cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)