In spite of the efforts by schools to teach the history of anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia (dislike or fear of foreigners) and homophobia, prejudice, discrimination and conflict between groups continue to plague society. These behaviours can be considered the result of a complex interaction of biological, cognitive and sociocultural factors.

Stereotyping is a cognitive process whereby people categorize themselves and others based on membership in a group. A stereotype is a simplified mental representation of a person, group of people or institution that is shared by a larger number of people.  Once a set of characteristics is used to describe a group of people, those characteristics are often attributed to all members of the group.

Prejudice, that is -  a favourable or unfavourable predisposition toward any member of the category in question -  is an attitude. An attitude can be defined as the combination of emotion and cognition. Not only does a person judge an individual based on a set of characteristics that is attributed to her because of the group to which she belongs, but contact results in an emotional response.  

Discrimination is a behaviour. Discrimination is when a person treats someone differently based on his or her membership of a group, rather than on individual merit. This type of behaviour can range from denying the person a job (e.g. because they are overweight, old or suffer from a physical disability), to segregation, to violent hate crimes.

Cognitive explanations of prejudice

Arguing that stereotypes alone cause prejudice is not sufficient. Allport (1954) argued that hostility is a key emotional component of prejudice. If this is so, how does it become connected to the stereotypes that develop in a culture?

One important factor in the development of prejudice is the way people make decisions. Shortcuts or tricks to making easy decisions, called heuristics, may influence how people interpret the behaviour of others. Tversky and Kahnemann (1982) argue that people make many judgments based on the availability heuristic—that is, they base decisions on the information that is most readily available.

Seen from the cognitive approach a person's knowledge is stored in cognitive schemas.  This means that information processing is to a large extent automatic, based on those schemas and often not conscious. In the Czech Republic, if the discussions in the media and in social settings focus on the stereotypical poverty and crime rate among the Roma (gypsy) population, even without any personal experience, one might develop a fear that the Roma will rob them.  This would be an example of prejudice. Based on this schema, a businessperson may decide that a Roma would not be right for a job at their company. This would be an example of discrimination.

In order to overcome prejudice, one has to be able to decategorize, but this is no easy task because stereotypes are resistant to change — partly due to the phenomenon called “confirmation bias”, that is, people tend to look for information that confirms their stereotypes or prejudices — not the opposite. In order to challenge stereotypes and maybe change them, members of the group who do not fit the stereotype need to be presented to those who hold the stereotype. However, just presenting one member of a minority group who does not match the prevalent stereotypes is not enough to change stereotypes. For example, if you have a stereotype that people from a certain country are all rude, but then meet someone from the country that is really kind and has a good sense of humour, you may simply say that this person is “an exception to the rule.” Rothbart and John (1985) argue that whereas unfavourable traits need only a few examples to confirm and strengthen stereotypes, more examples are needed to disconfirm them.

The Theory of threatened egotism argues that intergroup discrimination occurs when our own perception of self is threatened. By acting out against an out-group, we are able to feel better ourselves, boosting or restoring self-esteem. Evidence for this was found in a study by Fein & Spencer (1997).  In this study, 61 male undergraduates were given false feedback on an intelligence test. The participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: being told that they were in the top 10% of the university or that they had scored below average.  The participants were then asked to read a description of a young man’s struggles to begin an acting career in New York City. If the description implied that the young man was gay, the participants who were told that they had done poorly on the intelligence test tended to rate the actor in highly negative and stereotypical terms. If the actor was described as heterosexual, then there was no difference in the quality of feedback from the two groups. It appears that lowering of one’s self-esteem makes one more likely to discriminate.

Sociocultural explanations of prejudice

Research like the study by Rogers and Frantz is problematic because it is a cross-sectional study. In other words, it is a “snap-shot” in time – it does not follow the behaviour of the participants over a period of time.  It is difficult, therefore, to rule out individual differences as a factor, even though such studies often compare different ages, genders and socioeconomic status. It also did not measure the participants’ level of prejudice prior to arriving in Zimbabwe.  It could be possible that an individual’s level of prejudice decreased in the first years that he was in the country.

Social norms play a key role in a society’s prejudices. It was not so long ago that Western society had a strong prejudice against gays and lesbians.  This prejudice was seen as normal and justified.  But social norms can change – and we have seen a major shift toward tolerance in Western society.  As social norms change, the members of a group conform to the new norms over time.

Stephan et al (1998) proposed the integrated threat theory.  This theory argues that prejudice is the result of three types of threats.  First, there is stereotyping which create expectations about out-groups which often lead to prejudice.  Second, there are realistic threats. This refers to competition for economic resources – for example, jobs.  Finally, there are symbolic threats. These are perceived threats to one’s culture as a result of the integration of members of an out-group with morals, social norms and values that are distinctly different from those of the in-group. A study carried out in 17 European countries by McLaren (2003) found that beliefs that immigrants challenge or undermine national values were a stronger predictor of negative attitudes towards immigrants than perceptions of realistic threat.

It is clear that no one factor completely explains the origin of prejudice. The origins of prejudice are multi-factorial. In order to understand prejudice, we need to consider the interaction of the three approaches rather than looking at any one factor in isolation. Society and culture may teach certain stereotypes and prejudices, which influence the way people perceive or think about minorities or “outsiders”. These learned perceptions may induce physiological arousal that may lead to hostile emotions against the out-group. Reducing prejudice, then, means looking at the complexities of the origins of prejudice at all levels, and attempting to affect change on each of these levels.

 Teacher only box

Search for recent news articles that report on or discuss refugees.  What do you think is the overall attitude toward refugees?

The responses will depend on what the situation is in your home community.  If you are in an international school, you may want to have students do some research on attitudes in their home countries.

With regard to the articles that you find, do you see examples of more realistic threats or more symbolic threats?

Realistic threats may include that they may displace local workers, carry disease, be members of extremist groups, put a strain on the medical or mental health facilities, or cost taxpayers money in costs of subsidized housing, education, etc.

Symbolic threats may include not wanting to speak the local language, increasing a certain political faction in the country, increasing a certain religion in the country, fear that they will not respect the local culture, etc.

Biological explanations of prejudice

Recently, psychologists have looked more closely at the biological factors that may be involved in prejudice. Research suggests that the amygdala plays a key role in social cognition.  In a study using fMRI, Hart et al. (2000) investigated amygdala responses when participants were presented with faces of either a member of their racial in-group or out-group. The faces had neutral expressions.  The eight white and black participants of both sexes were shown pictures of male and female faces of individuals from both racial groups and asked to decide whether the face was male or female by pressing one of two buttons on a keypad provided to them in the scanner. The participants saw 10 different faces three times each, so they saw 30 out-group and thirty in-group faces during the scan.  After the scanning participants were asked to describe the pictures seen and any subjective feelings they had to them. The fMRI showed more activity in the amygdala when the participants looked at out-group pictures compared to in-group pictures. The participants, however, reported having no noticeable difference in their emotional reaction to the out-group pictures during the study. The researchers argue that the amygdala response may be a natural reaction to out-groups.  But does that mean that prejudice is a natural reaction?

An fMRI study by Phelps et al. (2000) used a sample of only White American participants. The researchers studied neural correlates of unconscious evaluation of Black and White faces, both unfamiliar and familiar. The participants saw faces of Black and White males while in a scanner and then they participated in a standardized test for ethnic prejudice (the Implicit Association Test). The results showed a correlation between those individuals whose amygdala was most strongly activated after being exposed to Black unfamiliar faces and scores on a standardized test for ethnic prejudice. The research also showed that the amygdala did not respond in the same way when the White participants looked at Black faces that were familiar and positively regarded. The researchers conclude that this study shows that looking at faces from members of Black and White social groups can activate the amygdala differently and that this activity is related to unconscious social evaluation. 

 Teacher only box

Do you think that your score is a fair representation of how you think you feel about the out-group?

This is a personal reflection on whether the score they received actually reflects their personal attitudes. If you choose to have this discussion, you may want to consider asking if it is really possible in a debriefing to obtain this information from participants - especially if the results show that they have a strong preference for their in-group over the out-group.

Note that the IAT does not say that you are "against" the out-group, it simply says that you have a preference for a specific group.

How would you explain the theory on which this test is based?

Implicit biases are thought to be formed as a result of sociocultural factors - e.g. black characters on television, reports of certain minority groups as high crime, direct tuition in schools about different political groups. These biases may not be explicit - that is, you don't talk about them in a negative way - but you are still influenced by exposure to these environmental cues.

Cognitive psychologists talk about System 1 thinking - and the application of this strategy when there is limited time to make a decision. 

Some argue that there is a biological explanation of the IAT.  For more information on this, see this article.

Do a bit of research.  What are the criticisms of this test?

You may want to have students read the following article on the controversies surrounding the IAT. For example, "the test is too noisy to usefully and accurately gauge people’s likelihood of engaging in discrimination — a finding supported by a series of meta-analyses showing unimpressive correlations between IAT scores and behavioral outcomes." 

Noise is defined as "anything that interferes with, obscures, reduces, or otherwise adversely affects the clarity or precision of an ongoing process." (APA)

Perhaps the most intriguing study, however, was carried out by Harris and Fiske (2006). In her study, participants were placed into an fMRI scanner and then shown a series of photos. These photos included people with disabilities, rich businessmen, older people, US Olympic athletes, and homeless people. Fiske was surprised at what happened when participants viewed the photo of the homeless person: their brains set off a series of reactions associated with disgust. An area in the brain called the insula was activated, which is usually a response to non-human objects such as garbage and human waste. Perhaps even more surprising, the part of the brain that is activated when we think about other people or ourselves - the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex—was not activated. In other words, in the case of the homeless, the participants’ brains did not react to them as people.

Evolution-based arguments would explain this reaction to out-groups as a means of protecting the gene pool of a community and increasing the chance that genes will be handed down within a group. Being able to detect a potential threat from strangers could have an evolutionary advantage. Such a reaction may be useful in evolutionary terms because it helps to distinguish friends from enemies, but what about today?

Evaluation of biological research

It is very tempting to attribute prejudice to automatic brain functions, but one has to be cautious. First, since prejudice has an emotional component, it means that cognitive factors play a strong role in determining whether one actually acts in accordance with these immediate brain responses. Cunningham (2004) did a study using brain scans and showed that when participants have longer exposure to images, it is not simply the amygdala, but also the frontal lobe that is activated. It is clear that although out-groups may trigger an immediate response from the amygdala, cognitive control of emotional reactions is exerted by the frontal lobe.

Another concern is the use of correlational research. Remember that correlational studies do not demonstrate causality and can lead to bidirectional ambiguity. In Phelps’s research, it is unknown if some participants were more prejudiced as a result of a more active amygdala, or if their prejudices had led to a stronger response from the amygdala. Since the research has been carried out on adults who would have been highly influenced by the values and attitudes of the cultures in which they grew up, one cannot easily determine the level to which their responses are innate or learned.

Finally, remember that we have to be careful with over-interpreting data obtained through brain imaging. For example, a heightened amygdala response to a different ethnic group does not necessarily equate to racism. It could just mean, “Clearly this person does not look like me.” Although there is evidently a biological component to prejudice, this approach alone is not enough to explain the origin of prejudice.

Checking for understanding

Discrimination and conflict