11.3 Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

As discussed earlier, the social groups we belong to help form our identities (Tajfel, 1974), and people are often biased against others outside of their social group (out-groups), showing prejudice (emotional bias), stereotypes (cognitive bias), and discrimination (behavioral bias). These three aspects of bias are related, but each can occur separately from the others (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010; Fiske, 1998).

A stereotype is a specific belief or assumption (thoughts) about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes can be positive or negative and, when overgeneralized, are applied to all group members. For example, the model minority stereotype of Asian Americans as highly intelligent, diligent, and good at math can be damaging professionally and academically (Trytten et al., 2012). These beliefs are overgeneralized to all group members, even though many of the individual group members may be struggling academically and professionally.

Stereotypes [The Truth Behind Cultural Cliches] (YouTube)

Another example of a well-known stereotype involves beliefs about racial differences among athletes. As Hodge, Burden, Robinson, and Bennett (2008) point out, people often believe that black male athletes are more athletic, yet less intelligent, than their white male counterparts. These beliefs persist despite many high-profile examples to the contrary. Sadly, such beliefs often influence how others treat these athletes and how they view themselves and their capabilities.

Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group (Allport, 1954; Brown, 2010). Prejudice is common against people who are members of an unfamiliar cultural group. An example of prejudice is having a negative attitude toward people who are not born in the United States. Although people holding this prejudiced attitude do not know all people who were not born in the United States, they dislike them due to their status as foreigners.

Explicit prejudice, negative feelings about an out-group that are openly admitted, is very difficult to measure because this is generally not socially acceptable. Because people wish to hide their prejudice, tests and instruments measuring prejudice may be susceptible to socially desirable responding.

To address this research bias, psychologists have developed several ways to measure implicit prejudice: the relatively automatic and unconscious in-group preference. The most famous instrument used is the Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Greenwald et al., 2002; Greenwald et al., 1998). The IAT is done on the computer and measures how quickly you can sort words or pictures into different categories. People may explicitly deny prejudice, but when given this computer task to categorize people from these out-groups, that automatic or unconscious hesitation (a result of having mixed evaluations about the out-group) will show up in the test. Numerous studies have revealed that people tend to be faster at pairing their group with good categories than pairing other groups. This finding generally holds regardless of whether one’s group is measured according to race, age, religion, nationality, or even temporary, insignificant memberships. Society’s stereotypes often drive automatic associations and unconscious responses and can result in discrimination, such as allocating fewer resources to disliked out-groups (Rudman & Ashmore, 2007).

Housing Segregation and Redlining in America: A Short History | Code Switch | NPR (YouTube)

Discrimination means acting on prejudiced attitudes toward a group of people. Discrimination is an adverse action toward an individual due to membership in a particular group (Allport, 1954; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004). As a result of holding negative beliefs (stereotypes) and negative attitudes (prejudice) about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly. Discrimination can extend to institutions or social and political systems. Institutional discrimination refers to practices (at the social level) that reinforce social norms for preference, privilege, and limited access to services and resources. In the United States, African Americans have a lower life expectancy, experience higher risk for cardiac events, and higher rates of anxiety and depression than other racial and ethnic groups in the United States (Williams, 1999; Williams & Mohammed, 2009). Native American populations experience higher rates of injury than other ethnic and racial groups (Williams, 1999). These disparities are not simply the result of lifestyle choices but represent systemic practices in healthcare that treat racial and ethnic minorities differently, as well as the effect of chronic prejudice and racism (Gee & Ford, 2011; Williams, 1999; Williams & Mohammed, 2009). Suicide rates among the LGBT community are substantially higher than rates for the general population, and it has been argued that this is in part due to the adverse outcomes of prejudice, including negative attitudes and social isolation (Halpert, 2002). Stigmatized individuals who report experiencing more exposure to discrimination or other forms of unfair treatment also report more depression, anger, and anxiety and lower levels of life satisfaction and happiness (Swim et al., 2001). Exposure to chronic and persistent discrimination is harmful to our health.

Those who enter into interracial relationships may face hardships or unique challenges. They are described in the following video by people who have experience with the subject matter and are in interracial relationships.

Couples Share the Happiness and Heartache of Interracial Marriage | National Geographic (YouTube)

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