Social prejudice UNIBO

Crucial element for health as it is an essential dimension of the Self. Together with supporting our selfesteem, we also tend to support:
• The centrality
• The appreciation
• The efficacy
Of our social affiliations.

Because it is the basis for meaningful group life, social identity is central to both good and ill health

A person will generally experience the health-related benefits or costs of a given group membership only to the extent that they identify with that group

When and to what extent people define themselves in terms of a given social identity, their well-being will be affected by the state and circumstances of the group with which that identity is associated (e.g., group success tends to have positive consequences for well-being, whereas group stigma or failures tend to have negative consequences)

People will be motivated to restore positive identity when this is compromised by events that threaten or undermine their social identities (e.g., group failure, stigma, low status, loss of group membership)

When circumstances threaten, undermine or preclude positive social identity, if people perceive group boundaries to be permeable, they are likely to respond to the threat to positive identity through strategies of personal mobility

When circumstances threaten, undermine or preclude positive social identity, if people perceive group boundaries to be impermeable but group relations to be secure, they are likely to respond to the threat to positive identity through strategies of social creativity (e.g., change subject and trait to which they do well)

When circumstances threaten, undermine or preclude positive social identity, if people perceive group boundaries to be impermeable and group relations to be insecure, they are likely to respond to the threat to positive identity through strategies of social competition (e.g., collective action to support equalities)

1. The differences among ingroup members being perceived to be smaller than differences between ingroup members and outgroup members (comparative fit)
2. The patterns of category difference corresponding to prior expectations about what it means to belong to those categories (normative fit)

1. When and to the extent that people define themselves in terms of shared social identity, they will be more likely to influence each other
2. People will have more influence in defining the meaning of a given social identity to the extent that they are seen to be representative of that identity

providing they are compatible with each other, important to people and positive, the more social identity they have access to, the more psychological resources they can draw upon and the more beneficial this will be for their health

1. They will be more likely to perceive themselves as similar and connected and to be positively oriented towards (e.g., trusting) each other
2. That identity will focus their energies and imbue them with a sense of meaning, purpose and worth
3. They will expect to give each other support and actually give each other support and construe the support they receive more positively
4. They will develop a sense of efficacy, agency and power.

The tendency for people to report less discrimination against themselves than against the average member of their group

lead people to think to be treated fairly and equally, and this in itself can be an impediment to their ability to acknowledge instances of prejudice (i.e., equal gender pay)

cause individuals to display more bias, because they are less vigilant when anti-bias measures are in place

• The effects of discrimination on individual well-being systematically depend on factors that determine the concrete implications of discrimination for the (social) self
• When the self is more strongly implicated, when individuals consider broader group-level and social outcomes of discrimination, or when they do not have the opportunity to seek support from others, experiencing discrimination has quite negative effects on well-being

Positive stereotypes evoke in targets a sense that they are being depersonalized or seen in terms of their group membership rather than as unique individuals

People tend to perceive outgroup members as less human than ingroup members even in the absence of significant intergroup antagonism People tend to ascribe fewer human characteristics, as secondary emotions, language and intelligence, to outgroup members than to ingroup members

Animalistic dehumanization: denial of uniquely human traits (i.e., intelligence; association to animals)
Mechanistic dehumanization: denial of human nature traits (i.e., warmth; association to robots)

• “Agency” includes mental capabilities such as thinking, selfcontrol, and communication and distinguishes humans from nonhuman animals, and
• “Experience” includes attributes such as emotion, consciousness, and personality and distinguishes humans from robots and inanimate objects

Dehumanization motivates instrumental violence (a failure of self-control and restrained by moral inhibitions against people who deny humanity) but not moral violence (punishment driven by belief that victims morally deserve it, implies they are perceived as humans).

Prejudice and conflict against outgroup members is explained by the evaluation that outgroup members’ worldview represents a threat to one’s ingroup worldview involving the meaning and significance of one’s life, thus it enhances the fear of mortality and death of one’s ingroup ideas

Prejudice and conflict against outgroup members is explained by the reliance on stereotypes about dominant (agentic) and dominated groups (unintelligent, lazy) that serves the function to legitimizing the system in which these groups exist

Prejudice and conflict against outgroup members is explained by an intergroup zero-sum competition (one wins-one looses) not only about resources but also about values in a competitive jungle

• abnormal motivation
• normal cognition
• normal motivation
• normal motivation and normal cognition

prejudice as a function of authoritarian personalities.
prejudices run in packs: People who hate Jews also hate Blacks and homosexuals, and they aren’t too fond of uppity women. This suggests a personality syndrome.

Authoritarian parents thesis did not explain accumulated evidence that most of us (and not few bad apples) are perfectly capable of behaving badly in specific contexts

Allport (1954) started the inevitability of social categorization and the normality of prejudgment. In intergroup and interpersonal perception, people categorize others on the basis of salient cues (notably race, gender, age), recruit associated stereotypes, trigger emotional prejudices, and launch discriminatory behavior. Researchers identified knowledge of cultural stereotypes, along with their automatic effects, as effectively universal, although dissociated from more thoughtful, conscious endorsement of them

People demonstrably can choose (motivation/intent) the immediately gratifying impulse (stereotype and exclude the outgroup) or the harder, less pleasant, but more ethical alternative (decide on the objective merits).
To follow the hard choice of individuation, one chooses with more awareness (intent) and must attend to the details of the interpersonal information. The mechanism of resistance is to go beyond the initial, relatively automatic category and learn additional information about the person.

A variety of motivations can intervene at surprisingly early stages in the categorization process (as others). People are not cognitive misers but motivated tacticians.
people form impressions by a continuum of processes, moderated by information and motivation. The continuum starts with an automatic categorization, often in terms of sex, ethnicity, and age. If the person seems irrelevant, that superficial response (and associated stereotypes) may be—pragmatically—sufficient. If the person is motivationally relevant, people seek more information
5 Motivations (related to social beings): belonging, understanding, controlling, self enhancing, trusting!

• The effect sizes observed about the role of person- and social-based factors in predicting prejudice are relatively comparable, both averaging around r = .20
• Relative differences between individuals in generalised prejudice are remarkably stable over time

• Genetic influences
• Personality factors (Big Five, HEXACO)
• Ideological/intergroup constructs
• Cognitive constructs
• Emotional constructs
• Rationalisation constructs

desires for order, predictability, and quick and definite answers, plus discomfort with ambiguity and closed-mindedness -> those higher in NFC demonstrate higher levels of ethnic and racial prejudice but also sexism

Prejudice and conflict against outgroup members is explained by the evaluation that outgroup members’ worldview represents a threat to one’s ingroup worldview involving the meaning and significance of one’s life (e.g., Christian vs. Jewish people), thus it enhances the fear of mortality and death of one’s ingroup ideas

Prejudice and conflict against outgroup members is explained by the reliance on stereotypes about dominant (agentic) and dominated groups (unintelligent, lazy) that serves the function to legitimizing the system in which these groups exist