The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?

Allport (1954) recognized that attachment to one's ingroups does not necessarily require hostility toward outgroups. Yet the prevailing approach to the study of ethnocentrism, ingroup bias, and prejudice presumes that ingroup love and outgroup hate are reciprocally related. Findings from both cross-cultural research and laboratory experiments support the alternative view that ingroup identification is independent of negative attitudes toward outgroups and that much ingroup bias and intergroup discrimination is motivated by preferential treatment of ingroup members rather than direct hostility toward outgroup members. Thus to understand the roots of prejudice and discrimination requires first of all a better understanding of the functions that ingroup formation and identification serve for human beings. This article reviews research and theory on the motivations for maintenance of ingroup boundaries and the implications of ingroup boundary protection for intergroup relations, conflict, and conflict prevention.     

Young Children's Evaluations of the Ingroup and of Outgroups: A Multi-National Study

In investigating intergroup attitudes, previous research in developmental psychology has frequently confounded ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation. The present study, using unconfounded measures, examines the possibility that ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation are distinct phenomena. Six‐year‐old children (n=594) from five, culturally diverse nations were asked to make various evaluations of the national ingroup and of four national outgroups. The data indicate that although there is overwhelming evidence that young children favour the ingroup over other groups, outgroup derogation is limited in extent and appears to reproduce attitudes held by adult members of the particular nations investigated.     

The Evolution of Caring and Nonaggressive Persons and Societies

This article explores ways to shape individual personalities, societies, and the relations among them, with the ultimate aim of diminishing inter group hostility and war. The evolution described in the article requires committed individuals and groups to work for change. Certain human proclivities, such as us-them differentiation, the devaluation of outgroups, and stereotyping are sources of intergroup hostility. Socialization practices by parents and schools that promote positive connection to and caring about people are described, as well as ways to bring about their use. Parent training and family system diagnoses can impart awareness and skills and influence parental attitudes. On a societal level, institutions and culture can be shaped by creating systems of positive reciprocity among groups, by cross-cutting relations among members of different groups, and by other steps along the continuum of benevolence.     

The evolution of human warfare

Here we propose a new theory for the origins and evolution of human warfare as a complex social phenomenon involving several behavioral traits, including aggression, risk taking, male bonding, ingroup altruism, outgroup xenophobia, dominance and subordination, and territoriality, all of which are encoded in the human genome. Among the family of great apes only chimpanzees and humans engage in war; consequently, warfare emerged in their immediate common ancestor that lived in patrilocal groups who fought one another for females. The reasons for warfare changed when the common ancestor females began to immigrate into the groups of their choice, and again, during the agricultural revolution.     

(Dis)respecting versus (Dis)liking: Status and Interdependence Predict Ambivalent Stereotypes of Competence and Warmth

As Allport (1954) implied, the content of stereotypes may be systematic, and specifically, ambivalent. We hypothesize two clusters of outgroups, one perceived as incompetent but warm (resulting in paternalistic prejudice) and one perceived as competent but not warm (resulting in envious prejudice). Perceived group status predicts perceived competence, and perceived competition predicts perceived (lack of) warmth. Two preliminary surveys support these hypotheses for 17 outgroups. In-depth analyses of prejudice toward particular outgroups support ambivalent prejudice: Paternalistic prejudice toward traditional women, as well as envious prejudice toward career women, results in ambivalent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996). Envious prejudice toward Asians results in perceived competence but perceived lack of social skills. Ambivalent content reflects systematic principles.     

The Social Psychology of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

The 2004 U.S. presidential election was determined not by simple demographics and the power of incumbency, but by emotions such as fear and shame, aspects of the self-concept such as moralism and religiosity, and other psychological phenomena ranging from the self-deception of voters to the linguistic styles of the candidates. In introducing the papers in this special issue of ASAP on the social psychology of the election, I examine the effect sizes for psychological constructs such as religiosity, moralism, and terror. I suggest that pride and shame are likely determinants of the widely reported exit poll discrepancies, and argue that outgroup homogeneity was critical in determining the outcome of the election.     

Cognitive Mechanisms of Ingroup/Outgroup Distinction

People use social categories to perceive and interact with the social world. Different categorizations often share similar cognitive, affective and behavioral features. This leads to a hypothesis of the common representational forms of social categorization. Studies in social categorization often use the terms “ingroup” and “outgroup” without clear conceptualization of the terms. I argue that the ingroup/outgroup distinction should be treated as an elementary relational ego‐centric form of social categorization based on specific cognitive mechanisms. Such an abstract relational form should produce specific effects irrespective of the nature of a particular social category. The article discusses theoretical grounds for this hypothesis as well as empirical evidence from behavioral and brain research. It is argued that what is commonly termed as “ingroup” and “outgroup” can be produced by distinct cognitive operations based on similarity assessment and coalitional computation.     

Understanding the September 11 Terrorist Attack on America: The Role of Intergroup Theories of Normative Influence

The present article analyzes the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in terms of current theories of normative influence in intergroup conflict. The (conflicting) implications of various social psychological models of decision making for Western and American attempts to reduce the likelihood of further attacks are delineated. We examine the implications of social identity models and models of outgroup normative influence, as well as dynamic models of intergroup behavior that focus on the polarizing effects of outgroup hostility. The influence of Western responses is distinguished for various target audiences, including not only the terrorists, but also pro-Western Muslims in North America and Europe, unaligned Muslims, and Muslims with anti-American feelings who do not endorse terrorism.     

Contextual Variability in Young Children's Gender Ingroup Stereotype

Self-categorization theorists (Oakes, Haslam & Turner, 1994) have shown that stereotypes are not rigid and fixed, and that they vary to reflect variations in the comparative context within which they are formed. In this paper we investigate stereotype variability in a sample of 6/7-year-old children. Participants describe a specific outgroup, and then describe the ingroup (that is 'boys' or 'girls', depending on the sex of the participant). There are two conditions: in condition one the outgroup is represented by adult 'men', if participants are boys, or by adult 'women', if participants are girls. In condition two the outgroup is represented by 'girls', if participants are boys, or by 'boys', if participants are girls. Results show that stereotypical traits attributed to the ingroup change significantly with changes in the frame of reference.     

The Role of Empathy in Improving Intergroup Relations

This article analyzes the role that empathy can play in improving intergroup relations. Three types of empathy are defined: cognitive empathy and twotypes of emotional empathy, reactive and parallel. Research indicating that empathy causes prosocial behavior is reviewed, along with studies indicating that training can be used to increase levels of empathic skills. Intergroup relations programs that employ empathy are also reviewed. Studies of the effects of empathizing with outgroup members on prejudice are discussed, andseveral processes by which empathy may mediate changes in prejudice are presented (e.g., reducing perceived dissimilarity and anxiety concerning the outgroup) and cognitive dissonance. The ways in which empathy can be introduced into intergroup relations programs are discussed, along with a series of recommendations for its implementation.     

Construction and Deconstruction of Essence in Representating Social Groups: Identity Projects, Stereotyping, and Racism

Projecting essence onto a social category means to think, talk, and act as if the category were a discrete natural kind and as if its members were all endowed with the same immutable attributes determined by the category's essence. Essentializing may happen implicitly or on purpose in representing ingroups and outgroups. We argue that essentializing is a versatile representational tool (a) that is used to create identity in groups with chosen membership in order to make the group appear as a unitary entity, (b) that outsiders often draw on a group's essentialist self-construal in their judgements about the groups, (c) that judgements about members of forced social categories are often informed by essentialist thinking that easily switches to discrimination and racism, and (d) that under certain historical and political conditions members of social categories and groups may contest their essentialized identity, such as parts of the feminist movement, or that they may attempt to reconstruct an essentialized identity, such as parts of the homosexual movement or the largely defunct European nobility. Besides explicit political and power interests, we see communication processes and language use as a tacit force driving essentialization of social categories.     

Collective Rituals, Emotional Climate and Intergroup Perception: Participation in "Gacaca" Tribunals and Assimilation of the Rwandan Genocide

Fifty survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and 50 prisoners accused of being responsible of genocidal acts completed four scales 45 days before and 45 days after their participation to a gacaca trial. The scales assessed (1) negative emotions presently felt with regard to the genocide, (2) perceived emotional climate, (3) negative stereotypes of the outgroup, and (4) perceived similarity among outgroup members. Building upon Durkheim's (1912) theory of collective rituals, we predicted that participation to the gacaca would involve a reactivation of negative emotions in both groups and would also impact negatively on perceived emotional climate. In contrast, we expected positive consequences for intergroup perception under the form of a reduction of (1) the prejudicial reactions of survivors and prisoners toward each other and (2) the perceived homogeneity of outgroup members. The collected data supported all four predictions.     

Imagining contact reduces prejudice in preschool children

We examined the effectiveness of an imagery‐based strategy designed to reduce prejudice in preschoolers in Italy. Three studies involving different target groups (disabled children, Black children) were conducted within Italian preschools. Children (4–6 years) were asked to imagine and draw meeting an outgroup member (Studies 1 and 2) or to imagine writing a letter to an outgroup member (Study 3). Results revealed that preschoolers in the experimental condition, relative to a control group, reported less intergroup bias in the form of contact intentions and resource allocation as well as greater behavioral inclusiveness; effects were mediated by improved intergroup attitudes. Our findings are important in understanding ways that promote positive intergroup relations in ways that align with the interests of young children.     

Ethnophaulisms for Ethnic Immigrant Groups

Ethnophaulisms (Roback, 1944) are the words used as slurs to refer to ethnic immigrant outgroups. This article explores the effects of attributes of ethnic immigrant groups on the cognitive representations of these groups in ethnophaulisms and the effects of these cognitive representations on behavior toward these immigrant groups. The results of these analyses, based on archival data spanning a 150-year period of American history, provide a sobering picture of the cognitive representation of immigrants: a century and a half of thinking about smaller, less familiar, and more foreign ethnic immigrant groups in a simplistic and negative manner and a resultant tendency to exclude those immigrant groups from the receiving society. The implications of these results for theoretical approaches to intergroup perception and for immigration policy are considered.     

Ingroup and outgroup preference and rejection among young children of different ethnic groups in the Netherlands

The current study investigated the ethnic hierarchy in ingroup and outgroup preference and rejection among 6- to 10-year-old children of the dominant White Dutch group (n = 145), and the underrepresented Turkish-Dutch (n = 78), and Afro-Dutch (n = 57) groups (55% girls, M = 7.49, SD = .98) in the Netherlands. Results from a social preference task indicated that White Dutch children showed clearly more preference for their own ethnic group (ingroup preference) compared to the two outgroup preferences (Middle Eastern and Black), while Turkish- and Afro-Dutch children showed limited ingroup preference. Both White and Turkish-Dutch children showed less preference for and more rejection of the Black outgroup compared to Afro-Dutch children. Younger children showed more Black rejection compared to older children. This study provides much-needed evidence for the generalizability of prejudice patterns in children beyond the United States, and suggests that interventions aimed at improving interethnic relations are already relevant at primary school age.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Egalitarianism and Affective Bias: Avenues to Reducing Prejudice Among Adolescents

In an era during which affirmative action in education is in jeopardy, it is important to understand how the ideologies of high-status ethnic group members maintain (or reduce) social inequality. We examine the extent to which the relationship between egalitarianism and prejudice among European American and Asian American adolescents can be explained by outgroup orientation (i.e., how much one values interacting with members of other ethnic groups) and strength of identification with one's ethnic group. Using structural equation modeling, we tested whether these two variables mediate the relationship between egalitarianism and intergroup prejudice. Results revealed that outgroup orientation was a mediator, but ethnic identity was not. Implications for mutual acculturation theory, prejudice-reduction programs, and affirmative action in education are discussed.     

Relative Importance of Contact Conditions in Explaining Prejudice Reduction in a Classroom Context: Separate and Equal?

Research on contact theory has typically presented four major situational conditions of intergroup contact as separate and equally important in creating an environment that leads to lower levels of racial/ethnic prejudice. We empirically test this "separate and equal" assumption with a variety of student samples and outcome variables. Using data from three cohorts of high school students, as well as one middle school sample, we demonstrate that acquaintance potential and interdependence are the most consistent and robust predictors of prejudice reduction, outgroup orientation, and perceptions of a common ingroup identity. Findings concerning differences in the relative importance of these situational conditions for different racial/ethnic groups are also reported. Implications for implementing optimal contact conditions for prejudice reduction among various ethnic groups are drawn.     

Hatred of "Others" Among Jewish, Arab, and Palestinian Students in Israel

This study analyzes hatred against diverse sociopolitical groups and compares the social and political attitudes of three distinct and highly differentiated groups: Jewish, Arab, and Palestinian high school students in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It examines their perceptions of the political context and aims to find the factors that influence the extremity of their hatred. Analysis of the data shows that the proposed model is more applicable to Jewish students than it is to Arabs and Palestinians, and shows that hatred toward outgroups is influenced by religiosity, the salience of national and civic identity, national security issues, and political ideology.     

Valuing Diversity and Interest in Intergroup Contact

The present research examines ways in which valuing diversity relates to interest in intergroup contact among members of minority and majority status groups. Using open-ended responses, Study 1 reveals that ethnic minority group members are less likely to perceive that diversity is valued than ethnic majority group members, yet those who perceive that diversity is valued tend to express greater interest in intergroup contact. Surveys of Black and White respondents (Study 2) and ethnic minority and majority respondents (Study 3) indicate similar trends. Moreover, these studies consistently show that valuing diversity uniquely predicts interest in intergroup contact among majority group members, whereas perceiving that outgroup members value diversity predicts interest in intergroup contact among minority group members. Implications of these findings for understanding the role of diversity in intergroup relations, and reformulating aspects of intergroup contact theory, are discussed.