Editing Prejudice (section)

==Contemporary theories and empirical findings==

The [[out-group homogeneity]] effect is the perception that members of an out-group are more similar (homogenous) than members of the in-group. Social psychologists Quattrone and Jones conducted a study demonstrating this with students from the rival schools [[Princeton University]] and [[Rutgers University]].<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.38.1.141 |title=The perception of variability within in-groups and out-groups: Implications for the law of small numbers |year=1980 |last1=Quattrone |first1=George A. |last2=Jones |first2=Edward E. |journal=[[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]] |volume=38 |pages=141–52}}</ref> Students at each school were shown videos of other students from each school choosing a type of music to listen to for an auditory perception study. Then the participants were asked to guess what percentage of the videotaped students' classmates would choose the same. Participants predicted a much greater similarity between out-group members (the rival school) than between members of their in-group.

The justification-suppression model of prejudice was created by Christian Crandall and Amy Eshleman.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.414 |title=A justification-suppression model of the expression and experience of prejudice |year=2003 |last1=Crandall |first1=Christian S. |last2=Eshleman |first2=Amy |journal=Psychological Bulletin |volume=129 |issue=3 |pages=414–46 |pmid=12784937|s2cid=15659505 }}</ref> This model explains that people face a conflict between the desire to express prejudice and the desire to maintain a positive [[self-concept]]. This conflict causes people to search for justification for disliking an out-group, and to use that justification to avoid negative feelings ([[cognitive dissonance]]) about themselves when they act on their dislike of the out-group.

The [[realistic conflict theory]] states that competition between limited [[resources]] leads to increased negative prejudices and discrimination. This can be seen even when the resource is insignificant. In the Robber's Cave experiment,<ref>{{cite book |first1=Muzafer |last1=Sherif |first2=O. J. |last2=Harvey |first3=B. Jack |last3=White |first4=William R. |last4=Hood |first5=Carolyn W. |last5=Sherif |year=1988 |title=The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation |location=Middletown, Connecticut |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |isbn=978-0-8195-6194-7}}{{page needed|date=November 2012}}</ref> negative prejudice and hostility was created between two summer camps after sports competitions for small prizes. The hostility was lessened after the two competing camps were forced to cooperate on tasks to achieve a common goal.

Another contemporary theory is the [[integrated threat theory]] (ITT), which was developed by Walter G Stephan.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb01022.x |title=Women's Attitudes Toward Men: an Integrated Threat Theory Approach |year=2000 |last1=Stephan |first1=Cookie White |last2=Stephan |first2=Walter C. |last3=Demitrakis |first3=Katherine M. |last4=Yamada |first4=Ann Marie |last5=Clason |first5=Dennis L. |journal=[[Psychology of Women Quarterly]] |volume=24 |pages=63–73|s2cid=143906177 }}</ref> It draws from and builds upon several other psychological explanations of prejudice and ingroup/outgroup behaviour, such as the realistic conflict theory and [[symbolic racism]].<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1207/s15327957pspr1004_4 |title=Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Review |year=2006 |last1=Riek |first1=Blake M. |last2=Mania |first2=Eric W. |last3=Gaertner |first3=Samuel L. |journal=[[Personality and Social Psychology Review]] |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=336–53 |pmid=17201592|s2cid=144762865 }}</ref> It also uses the [[social identity theory]] perspective as the basis for its validity; that is, it assumes that individuals operate in a group-based context where group memberships form a part of individual identity. ITT posits that outgroup prejudice and discrimination is caused when individuals perceive an outgroup to be threatening in some way. ITT defines four threats: 
* Realistic threats
* Symbolic threats
* Intergroup anxiety
* Negative stereotypes

Realistic threats are tangible, such as competition for a natural resource or a threat to income. Symbolic threats arise from a perceived difference in cultural values between groups or a perceived imbalance of power (for example, an ingroup perceiving an outgroup's religion as incompatible with theirs). Intergroup anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness experienced in the presence of an outgroup or outgroup member, which constitutes a threat because interactions with other groups cause negative feelings (e.g., a threat to comfortable interactions). Negative stereotypes are similarly threats, in that individuals anticipate negative behaviour from outgroup members in line with the perceived stereotype (for example, that the outgroup is violent). Often these stereotypes are associated with emotions such as fear and anger. ITT differs from other threat theories by including intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes as threat types.

Additionally, [[social dominance theory]] states that society can be viewed as group-based hierarchies. In competition for scarce resources such as housing or employment, dominant groups create prejudiced "legitimizing myths" to provide moral and intellectual justification for their dominant position over other groups and validate their claim over the limited resources.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.476 |title=Racism, conservatism, Affirmative Action, and intellectual sophistication: A matter of principled conservatism or group dominance? |year=1996 |last1=Sidanius |first1=Jim |last2=Pratto |first2=Felicia |last3=Bobo |first3=Lawrence |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |volume=70 |issue=3 |pages=476–90|citeseerx=10.1.1.474.1114 }}</ref> Legitimizing myths, such as discriminatory hiring practices or biased merit norms, work to maintain these prejudiced hierarchies.

Prejudice can be a central contributing factor to depression.<ref name="Cox et al. (2012)">{{cite journal |doi=10.1177/1745691612455204 |title=Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Depression: The Integrated Perspective |year=2012 |last1=Cox |first1=William T. L. |last2=Abramson |first2=Lyn Y. |last3=Devine |first3=Patricia G. |last4=Hollon |first4=Steven D. |journal=[[Perspectives on Psychological Science]] |volume=7 |issue=5 |pages=427–49 |pmid=26168502|s2cid=1512121 }}</ref> This can occur in someone who is a prejudice victim, being the target of someone else's prejudice, or when people have prejudice against themselves that causes their own depression.

Paul Bloom argues that while prejudice can be irrational and have terrible consequences, it is natural and often quite rational. This is because prejudices are based on the human tendency to categorise objects and people based on prior experience. This means people make predictions about things in a category based on prior experience with that category, with the resulting predictions usually being accurate (though not always). Bloom argues that this process of categorisation and prediction is necessary for survival and normal interaction, quoting William Hazlitt, who stated "Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way my across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life".<ref>Bloom, Paul [https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bloom_can_prejudice_ever_be_a_good_thing/transcript "Can prejudice ever be a good thing"] January 2014, accessed 02/12/17</ref>

In recent years, researchers have argued that the study of prejudice has been traditionally too narrow. It is argued that since prejudice is defined as a negative affect towards members of a group, there are many groups against whom prejudice is acceptable (such as rapists, men who abandon their families, pedophiles, neo-Nazis, drink-drivers, queue jumpers, murderers etc.), yet such prejudices are not studied. It has been suggested that researchers have focused too much on an evaluative approach to prejudice, rather than a descriptive approach, which looks at the actual psychological mechanisms behind prejudiced attitudes. It is argued that this limits research to targets of prejudice to groups deemed to be receiving unjust treatment, while groups researchers deem treated justly or deservedly of prejudice are overlooked. As a result, the scope of prejudice has begun to expand in research, allowing a more accurate analysis of the relationship between psychological traits and prejudice.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Crandell |first1= Christian S. |last2=Ferguson |first2=Mark A. |last3=Bahns |first3=Angela J.|editor-last1=Stangor |editor-first1=Charles |editor-last2=Crendeall |editor-first2=Christian S. |title=Stereotyping and Prejudice |publisher=Psychology Press |date=2013 |chapter=Chapter 3: When We See Prejudice |isbn=978-1848726444}}
* Crawford, Jarret, and Mark J. Brandt. 2018. “Big Five Traits and Inclusive Generalized Prejudice.” PsyArXiv. June 30. {{doi|10.31234/osf.io/6vqwk}}.
* Brandt, Mark, and J. T. Crawford. "Studying a heterogeneous array of target groups can help us understand prejudice." Current Directions in Psychological Science (2019).
* Ferguson, Mark A., Nyla R. Branscombe, and Katherine J. Reynolds. "Social psychological research on prejudice as collective action supporting emergent ingroup members." British Journal of Social Psychology (2019).
* Brandt, Mark J., and Jarret T. Crawford. "Worldview conflict and prejudice." In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 61, pp. 1-66. Academic Press, 2020.
* Crawford, Jarret T., and Mark J. Brandt. "Who is prejudiced, and toward whom? The big five traits and generalized prejudice." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 45, no. 10 (2019): 1455-1467.</ref> {{Excessive citations inline|date=October 2021}}

Some researchers had advocated looking into understanding prejudice from the perspective of collective values than just as biased psychological mechanism and different conceptions of prejudice, including what lay people think constitutes prejudice.<ref>Platow, Michael J., Dirk Van Rooy, Martha Augoustinos, Russell Spears, Daniel Bar-Tal, and Diana M. Grace.[https://web.archive.org/web/20190507160819/https://www.psychology.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/NZJP-Vol-48-No-1-DRAFT-v2-1.pdf "Prejudice is about Collective Values, not a Biased Psychological System."] Editor’s Introduction 48, no. 1 (2019): 15.</ref><ref>Billig, Michael. "The notion of “prejudice”: Some rhetorical and ideological aspects." Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality, and social change (2012): 139-157.</ref> This is due to concerns that the way prejudice has been operationalised does not fit its psychological definition and that it is often used to indicate a belief is faulty or unjustified without actually proving this to be the case.<ref>Brown, Rupert. Prejudice: Its social psychology. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.</ref><ref>Crawford, Jarret T., and Lee Jussim, eds. Politics of Social Psychology. Psychology Press, 2017.</ref>

Some research has connected [[dark triad]] personality traits ([[Machiavellianism (psychology)|Machiavellianism]], grandiose [[narcissism]], and [[psychopathy]]) with being more likely to hold racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic views.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kay |first1=Cameron S. |last2=Dimakis |first2=Sarah |title=Moral Foundations Partially Explain the Associations of Machiavellianism, Grandiose Narcissism, and Psychopathy With Homonegativity and Transnegativity |journal=Journal of Homosexuality |date=2022 |volume=71 |issue=3 |pages=775–802 |doi=10.1080/00918369.2022.2132576|pmid=36282082 |s2cid=253108410 }}</ref>

=== Evolutionary psychology ===
{{excerpt|Prejudice from an evolutionary perspective}}

===Problems with psychological models===
One problem with the notion that prejudice evolved because of a necessity to simplify social classifications because of limited brain capacity and at the same time can be mitigated through education is that the two contradict each other, the combination amounting to saying that the problem is a shortage of hardware and at the same time can be mitigated by stuffing even more software into the hardware one just said was overloaded with too much software.<ref>Rolf Pfeifer, Josh Bongard (2006). How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence</ref> The distinction between men's hostility to outgroup men being based on dominance and aggression and women's hostility to outgroup men being based on fear of sexual coercion is criticized with reference to the historical example that Hitler and other male Nazis believed that intergroup sex was worse than murder and would destroy them permanently which they did not believe that war itself would, i.e. a view of outgroup male threat that evolutionary psychology considers to be a female view and not a male view.<ref>David Buller (2005). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature</ref>{{Better source needed|date=February 2022}}