The Study of Prejudice

The Study of Prejudice Larry Stern, Professor of Sociology Collin County Community College

What is Prejudice? The word prejudice is derived from the Latin noun praejudicium, which means a precedent, a judgment based on previous decisions and experiences. It then acquired the meaning of a judgment formed before due examination and consideration of the facts - a premature or hasty judgment. Finally, the term acquired an emotional component - the favorableness or unfavorableness that accompanies the prior and unsupported judgment. Thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant.

What is Prejudice? Thinking ill of others . . . . An aversion or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group. . . . without sufficient warrant - lacks basis in fact. Few if any human judgments are based on absolute certainty. The sufficient warranty of any judgment is always a matter of probabilities. Prejudices are often based on overcategorizations - overblown generalizations.

What is Prejudice? Not every overblown generalization is a prejudice. Some are simply misconceptions. Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge. If a person is capable of correcting his misconceptions and erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced. A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would challenge it.

What is Prejudice? Prejudice contains two essential ingredients: 1. there must be an attitude of favor or disfavor 2. it must be related to an overgeneralized - and therefore erroneous - belief. Although both attitudes and beliefs are intertwined, it is necessary to recognize the distinction between the two. Beliefs, to some extent, can be rationally attacked and altered; Attitudes are ordinarily far more resilient and resistant to change.

Stereotypes

Acting Out Prejudice Antilocutions - ethnophaulisms - i.e., verbal slurs Avoidance Discrimination Physical Attack Extermination - lynchings, pogroms, massacres, genocide

The Separation of Attitudes from Behavior Prejudiced? No Yes The Unprejudiced Non-Discriminator The Prejudiced Non-Discriminator No Discriminate? Yes The Unprejudiced Discriminator The Prejudiced Discriminator

Prejudice Antipathy between the races had long been explained by pointing to the natural differences between the races. Whites would “naturally” dislike close contact with an inferior race. Similarly, African-Americans would be uncomfortable with close contact with whites – with whom they could not possibly compete. Once scientists rejected the notion of essential racial differences, the question immediately arose: If the races were not naturally different and unequal, why were African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese so despised in American society? In the 1930s, a new explanation for racial antipathy emerged: what they began calling “race prejudice.”

Prejudice & Race Relations Thomas thought that prejudice was biological and instinctual in origin. In his view, prejudice, antipathy, and affection were found in groups which selectively noticed and remembered the characteristics of people close and familiar to them. Familiarity and similarity became associated with positive affection while hostility, antagonism, and dislike were connected to those who were unfamiliar and dissimilar. These feelings, then, became symbolically connected to physical appearance and social habits. W. I. Thomas 1863 - 1947 Nevertheless, Thomas argued that the prejudice process could be eliminated through contact and association, increased communication, similar systems of education, and equal access to opportunities. Moreover, Thomas claimed that there were no basic differences in the minds, intelligence, or capabilities of different “races” and that there was more variety within races then between them.

Prejudice is a Rational Response to a Changing World

Prejudice & Race Relations During the 1920s, the sociologist Robert Park developed a race-relations cycle to explain the dynamics of racial change. Race prejudice was seen as one part of this larger cycle of competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Robert Park 1864 - 1944 The cycle followed a natural progression and was immune to any attempts to modify it. As minority groups strove to increase their status within society, the majority group reacted against what they perceived as a threat to their higher status. One aspect of this reaction was race prejudice, which Park viewed as a relatively benign method to maintain the “social distance” between different groups in society.

Prejudice & Race Relations According to Park, race prejudice was a rational response to the social mobility of minority groups. It was a relatively benign way to keep the social distance between different groups in society. “Prejudice is on the whole not an aggressive but a conservative force; a sort of spontaneous conservation which tends to preserve the social order and the social distances upon which that order rests.” (“The Concept of Social Distance,” 1924)

The “Social Distance” Scale Emory Bogardus, like Park, saw race prejudice as a benign force that served to preserve the present social order. His interest was in measuring and quantifying racial antipathy and created a “social distance” scale. Respondents are asked how willing they would be to interact with various racial and ethnic groups in specified social situations with different degrees of social contact. People were asked whether they would be willing to admit members of other groups: To close kinship by marriage To my club as personal friends To my street as neighbors To employment in my occupation To citizenship in my country As only visitors to my country Or would exclude from my country Emory Bogardus

Prejudice is Acquired Through Conditioning

Goodwin Watson Goodwin Watson was one of the first psychologists to attempt to measure racial prejudice. He measured the extent to which respondents agreed with various stereotypes – i.e., “all Jews would cheat,”“all Roman Catholics are superstitious” – and how strongly they agreed with statements such as “Colored people should go to schools, hotels, theaters, etc., patronized exclusively by colored people, thus preventing some inter-racial contact.” Watson assumed that race prejudice arose out of some real-world experience: specifically, from unfriendly encounters with members of the race in question. He argued, “It has been rather clearly demonstrated by the testimony of a number of individuals that they acquired some of the race-prejudice in a single instance, or two, and afterwards reacted to all members of the race in terms of the [nb] conditioning of the single experience.” (The Measurement of Fair-Mindedness, NY: Columbia University, 1925, p.23)

Prejudice is Inherently Irrational and Psychological

Daniel Katz Race prejudice as a fundamentally irrational attitude In 1933 Daniel Katz, based at Princeton University, had subjects match a list of adjectives to a list of ethnic minorities. After analyzing the results, Katz argued that race prejudice was a matter of stereotypes rather than a reasoned response to any real attribute shared by the members of a group. Prejudice was inherently irrational because no group’s members could possibly share all traits. People were prejudiced toward an entire group based merely on the cultural stereotypes of that group, rather than on any experiences of the prejudiced individual. Prejudice, according to this view, was, in essence, a psychological phenomenon – basically, a problem with people’s internal mental states.

Frustration-aggression hypothesis Scapegoat Theory Frustration generates aggression Aggression becomes displaced upon relatively defenseless ‘goats” This displaced hostility is rationalized and justified by blaming, projecting, and stereotyping the “others.” John Dollard 1900 - 1980 Prejudiced individuals believe that they are the victims. Rather than accepting guilt for some failure, responsibility is transferred to some vulnerable group.

Prejudical Individuals Are Aberrant Personality Types

American Jewish Committee Department of Scientific Research, 1945 Sponsored the five-volume Studies in Prejudice Series Two of the volumes were “social studies”: Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany and Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Gutterman, Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (employing the method of content analysis to explain the success of demagogues such as Gerald L.K. Smith and Father Coughlin). Three were “psychological”: Theodore W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, Brunno Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz, Dynamics of Prejudice and Nathan Ackerman and Marie Jahoda, Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder: A Psychoanalytical Interpretation.

The Authoritarian Personality, 1950 Theodore Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, & R. Nevitt Sanford Individuals with high levels of prejudice possessed a distinctive cluster of personality traits. They were found to be rigidly conventional, submissive, uncritical of and deferential toward authority, preoccupied with power and toughness, sexually inhibited, intolerant of ambiguity and intolerant of people who are members of out groups. Theodore Adorno Rational arguments cannot be expected to have deep or long-lasting effects because prejudice is essentially irrational and rigid. Else Frenkel-Brunswik While it focused on anti-Semitism, the research indicated that people who were prejudiced against one ethnic, racial, or religious group tended to be prejudiced against others.

Prejudice is Learned and is Psychologically Damaging

Psychological Harm The Doll Tests Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark

The Doll Tests Overall, 253 African American children - 134 in segregated southern schools and 119 in integrated northern schools - were presented with two black dolls and two white dolls that were otherwise identical. Using a “projective” test, the Clarks asked the children a series of eight questions concerning the dolls. The first four questions were designed to reveal racial preferences - “Give me the doll that you like best” of “Give me the nice doll.” The next three were designed to discover racial identification - “Give Me the doll that looks like a [white, colored, Negro] child” The final question revealed self-identification - “Give me the doll that looks like you”

Psychological Harm The Doll Tests The majority of these Negro children prefer the white doll and reject the colored doll. Two-thirds of the children consistently wanted to play with the white doll and claimed that it was the “nice” doll. Three-quarters of the children who identified a doll that would “act bad” chose the brown doll.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) The Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith (ADL) American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) During and after World war II Jewish agencies founded in-house research departments, formed partnerships with social scientists in universities, and commissioned major studies. These agencies collaborated closely with the NAACP, ACLU, National Council of Churches, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Catholic Interracial Councils, National Conference of Christians and Jews, the anti-communist unions of the Congress of Industrial organizations (CIO), and a host of other civic, professional, and educational groups.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) The Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith (ADL) American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) Beginning in the late 1930s all three built a professional staff trained in fields such as social work, social science, journalism, advertising, public relations, and the law. All three adopted the theory of the “unitary character of prejudice;” all forms of bigotry are inseparable parts of the same phenomenon. The fortunes of all American minority groups were interrelated. Strategies tended to fall into one of two general categories: (1) those aimed at modifying prejudiced attitudes and (2) those designed to eliminate discriminatory practices.

American Jewish Committee Jacob H. Schiff 1847-1920 Oscar S. Straus Cyrus Adler 1863-1940 Mayer Sulzberger 1843- The American Jewish Committee, the oldest existing Jewish defense agency in the U.S., was established in 1906 by a group of wealthy acculturated members of the German Jewish elite.

Anti-Defamation League In 1913 the B’nai B’rith founded its Anti-Defamation League, which was dedicated exclusively to the battle against domestic anti-Semitism. Under the leadership of Sigmund Livingston, ADL members conceived of anti-Semitism largely as a problem of public relations. Sigmund Livingston -ADL

AJC & ADL In the same way that they had envisioned anti-Semitism as an outgrowth of unfamiliarity with Jews and Judaism, leaders of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League initially understood prejudice as the product of ignorance. According to this view, prejudiced individuals accepted derogatory stereotypes of Jews and other minorities because they lacked reliable information about, or first-hand experience with, members of those groups. Thus, they concluded that they could help to eliminate prejudice by teaching members of the “majority” about the various racial, ethnic, and religious groups in the U.S.

AJC & ADL They spread their anti-prejudice message through radio film television, pamphlets posters billboards, comic books cartoons print advertising and other media of mass communication. The main objectives of this propaganda crusade were to combat negative stereotypes of minority groups, to demonstrate the harmful consequences of prejudice, and to emphasize the importance of intergroup harmony to the advancement of American interests at home and abroad.

AJC & ADL EDUCATION With the aid of the AJC and ADL the Bureau of Intercultural Education worked with public school teachers to ensure that children were taught to respect cultural differences. Curricular materials, including teaching plans, were developed and distributed. Summer workshops, seminars and institutes were sponsored. RADIO Lest We Forget, comprised of fifteen-minute episodes celebrating the contributions made by members of minority groups, aired on radio stations. By 1950 it aired on approximately one thousand stations with an audience in the tens of millions.

AJC & ADL TELEVISION CARTOONS The AJC produced and provided cartoons free of charge to all television stations in the U.S. for broadcast. Snigglegrass, produced in cooperation with the Advertising Council and shown on nearly every television station in the country during 1950, conveyed the message that America’s way of life is rooted in the contributions of its immigrants. Here’s Looking At You, which stressed the uniqueness of each human being and the importance of respecting differences, was a collaborative effort of the AJC and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Baseball explained that “only when people of all races and religions team up can the USA roll up a winning score.” Sweet ‘n Sour compared positive intergroup relations to harmonious music.

The Movie Industry Shortly after World War II a number of commercial motion pictures dealing with prejudice appeared. The determination by Hollywood filmmakers to address these issues added fuel to the debate among Jewish intergroup relations workers and their advisors over the impact of the mass media on prejudice. In the Oscar winning film Gentleman’s Agreement a reporter, played by Gregory Peck, pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti- Semitism, and personally discovers the true depths of bigotry and hatred.

Crossfire, RKO Studios,1947 One of the first major Hollywood films to explore the subject of American anti-Semitism. In the film the Jewish victim is murdered by a demobilized soldier whose only motive is his acute anti- Semitism. This character was described as “the kind of person who fell victim to the Hitlers in the modern world and became an instrument in bringing about the recent holocaust. In the course of Investigating the murder the police detective - played by Robert Young - gives voice to the film’s anti-prejudice moral and emphasizes the connection between anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance, including anti-Catholicism and nativism.

Crossfire, RKO Studios,1947 One month before the film’s premiere a group of nearly forty social scientists met for a preview and critical discussion of the film Most expressed serious doubts as to whether the film could actually diminish anti-Semitism; a single-shot could not be reasonably assumed to change such deeply seated attitudes. Some were concerned that the film might have unintended negative effects - that it would “boomerang.” The anti-Semitic character might be seen by some as a “hero-victim,” while the Jewish murder victim, who appeared as a civilian and a “wise guy” with an “obviously Gentile” girlfriend, might be found objectionable.

Crossfire, RKO Studios,1947 The chief concern was that well-intentioned films, thrown hastily together by Hollywood filmmakers without the benefit of scientific research, could easily catalyze the powerful anti-Semitism that was latent everywhere in the country. Supporting these criticisms was new research that questioned the effectiveness of mass mediated programs aimed at changing attitudes.

American Jewish Committee Department of Scientific Research, 1945 By the late 1940s researchers began to seriously question the effectiveness of anti-prejudice messages to change people’s attitudes. According to a number of studies conducted in collaboration with Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research, Anti-prejudice messages reached a self-selected audience that tended to be more educated and tolerant than average (“preaching to the choir”) Marie Jahoda 2. Bigots, if exposed to the messages, generally evaded them through the process of selective perception or simply misconstrued the point of the message. Anti-prejudice messages often have a “boomerang” effect on intolerant individuals. Paul Lazarsfeld

The Effects of Mass Communication

The Communication Process WHO says Attributes of the “source,” ie. credibility The content of the message: levels of meaning; Differential & selective perception WHAT The target audience to WHOM Formal; mass media Informal; interpersonal through which CHANNEL in what WAY Rhetorical Strategy: Logic, Emotion Reinforcement; Conversion with what EFFECT? “The Popeye Effect”

The “Popeye Effect” Messages “sent” are not necessarily the same as messages “received.” WHY??? Messages are often misperceived or have a “boomerang effect” because the source of the information is not believed to be credible. Messages often contain multiple levels of information and meaning. Through the operation of “selective perception,” the particular aspect of the message one “plugs into” or is most attentive to - and the interpretation one gives to a message, often depends upon the social background - the social status - of the receiver.

Prejudice and Discrimination are Situational and Dependent on Groups

The American Jewish Congress The American Jewish Congress was initially convened at the end of 1918. Whereas the AJC was conservative and elitist, AJCongress advocates – spearheaded by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Zionist leader Louis D. Brandeis – called for an inclusive, democratically elected body to represent all American Jewry. The original Congress was dissolved in 1920, then re- established under the leadership of Wise. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise Unlike the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) who focused on attitude change as the means to reduce prejudice and then discrimination, the AJCongress believed that attacking discrimination through legal means was the key to reducing prejudice. Louis Brandeis

American Jewish Congress Commission on Community Interrelations The AJCongress had earmarked $1 million for the creation of a research center for the study of intergroup relations. In 1945 AJCongress president Rabbi Stephen Wise announced that the AJCongress would fund the CCI under the direction of Kurt Lewin for five years and that its purpose was to investigate scientifically the causes and cures of anti-Semitism and race prejudice. Lewin and his staff of social scientists devised two lines of research to investigate prejudice and discrimination: 1. research conducted on the separation of attitudes from behavior and 2. research on the effects of interracial contact. Kurt Lewin

The Separation of Attitudes from Behavior CCI researchers built on the work of Richard T. Lapiere who, in the 1930s, traveled through the U.S. with a Chinese couple, staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. Except in one hotel, they were served without incident. Six months after returning, Lapiere sent a questionnaire to these establishments asking if they served members of the Chinese race. Over 90 percent of those responding indicated that they would not, despite the fact that they had done so six months earlier. Bernard Kutner successfully duplicated Lapiere’s research when he sent two white women into New York restaurants. They were later joined by an African American woman, who was seated without incident. When Kutner inquired as to the policies of the restaurants he was informed that they did not serve African Americans.

The Separation of Attitudes from Behavior Prejudice No Yes The Unprejudiced Non-Discriminator The Prejudiced Non-Discriminator The person of prejudice who does not actively discriminate in practice due to the fear of sanctions. The most effective tactic is the institution of legal controls administered with effectiveness No Discriminate Yes The Prejudiced Discriminator The Unprejudiced Discriminator Supports discriminatory practices when it is the easier or more profitable course; The liberal who hesitates to speak up against discrimination for fear he might lose esteem or be otherwise penalized by his prejudiced associates and/or friends. He is as much a conformist as is the unprejudiced non-discriminator. He is merely conforming to a different cultural and institutional pattern that is centered, not on the creed, but on a doctrine of essential inequality of status ascribed to those of diverse ethnic and racial origins. The local mores, the local institutions, and the local power structure support his private attitudes and practices.

Interracial Contact CCI social scientists envisioned a vicious circle of discrimination and prejudice: because discrimination seemed to teach people that minority groups were inferior, it led to prejudicial attitudes; these attitudes, in turn, led to the erection of more discriminatory barriers preventing minorities from fully entering society. CCI saw interracial contact as the point at which the cycle could be broken. What CCI and other researchers on interracial contact attempted to discover were the specific conditions under which interracial contact would decrease prejudice. The abolition of segregation was a necessary rather than a sufficient step toward bettering race relations. Social scientists were arguing NOT that all that was required to reduce prejudice was to eliminate legal segregation but, rather, that nothing could be done to reduce prejudice until legal segregation was eliminated.

Interracial Contact • the “contact hypothesis” CCI researchers concentrated on interracial public housing and employment. In one of the first studies of interracial housing two CCI staffers – Morton Deutsch and Mary Evans Collins – conducted interviews with families living in two desegregated and two segregated housing projects. The researchers found that white prejudice was much higher in the segregated projects. They posited that the contact possible in integrated neighborhoods gave individuals the opportunity to realize that their prejudices had no basis in reality. A parallel set of studies explored the effects of interracial workplaces. John Harding and Russell Hogrefe polled the white workers on a newly integrated sales floor and found that while basic attitudes of whites toward their black co-workers may not have changed significantly, they could nonetheless work peacefully side by side.

The Nature of Prejudice The Contact Hypothesis “Prejudice (unless deeply rooted in the character of the individual) may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom or local atmosphere), and provided it is of a sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups.” Gordan Allport 1897-1967 Equal-status in the situation Common goals Supported by local authority and milieu Common interests - no inter-group competition

The Study of Prejudice