Chapter 9: Prejudice: Disliking Others (2947.0K) - Bad Request

We sit not to determine whether Ms. Hopkins is nice, but to decide whether the partners
reacted negatively to her personality because she is a woman. . . . An employer
who objects to aggressiveness in women but whose positions require this trait places
women in an intolerable Catch 22: out of a job if they behave aggressively and out of a
job if they don’t.
SUMMING UP:
• Prejudice and stereotyping have important consequences,
especially when strongly held, when
judging unknown individuals, and when deciding
policies regarding whole groups.
• Once formed, stereotypes tend to perpetuate themselves
and resist change. They also create their own
realities through self-fulfilling prophecies.
POSTSCRIPT:
Can We Reduce Prejudice?
Prejudice Chapter 9 351
What Are the Consequences of Prejudice?
Social psychologists have been more successful in explaining prejudice than in
alleviating it. Because prejudice results from many interrelated factors, no simple
remedy exists. Nevertheless, we can now anticipate techniques for reducing prejudice
(discussed further in chapters to come): If unequal status breeds prejudice, we
can seek to create cooperative, equal-status relationships. If prejudice rationalizes
discriminatory behavior, we can mandate nondiscrimination. If social institutions
support prejudice, we can pull out those supports (for example, with media that
model interracial harmony). If outgroups seem more homogeneous than they really
are, we can make efforts to personalize their members. If automatic prejudices lead
us to engage in behaviors that make us feel guilty, we can use that guilt to motivate
ourselves to break the prejudice habit.
Since the end of World War II in 1945, a number of those antidotes have been
applied, and racial and gender prejudices have indeed diminished. Social-
psychological research also has helped break down discriminatory barriers. The
social psychologist Susan Fiske (1999), who testified on behalf of Ann Hopkins, the
Price Waterhouse executive denied promotion to partner, later wrote:
We risked a lot by testifying on Ann Hopkins’s behalf, no doubt about it . . . As far as
we knew, no one had ever introduced the social psychology of stereotyping in a gender
case before. . . . If we succeeded, we would get the latest stereotyping research out of
the dusty journals and into the muddy trenches of legal debate, where it might be useful.
If we failed, we might hurt the client, slander social psychology, and damage my
reputation as a scientist. At the time I had no idea that the testimony would eventually
make it successfully through the Supreme Court.
It now remains to be seen whether, during this century, progress will continue,
or whether, as could easily happen in a time of increasing population and diminishing
resources, antagonisms will again erupt into open hostility.
• Prejudice can also undermine people’s performance
through stereotype threat , by making
people apprehensive that others will view them
stereotypically.
• Stereotypes, especially when strong, can predispose
how we perceive people and interpret
events.