Aversive Prejudice

It can be people who genuinely hold egalitarian beliefs, however when interacting with minority members they experience negative emotions such as discomfort but not anger or hatred. Thus they may consciously or unconsciously try to avoid contact with them.

Any questions?

Works Cited

http://www.yale.edu/intergroup/PearsonDovidioGaertner.pdf

Kite, Mary E., and Bernard E. Whitley, JR. "Chapter 6: Old-Fashioned and Contemporary Forms of Prejudice." The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination. 2nd ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2010. 205-14. Print.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/29/geraldo-rivera-baltimore-fight-protesters-freddie-gray_n_7173282.html

Psychological Basis

There are Three Psychological Underpinnings for aversive prejudice

Behavioral categories

2) Motivational-

• People have a need to control their environment to ensure positive outcome for themselves and their groups.
• Dovidio and Gaertner said "In a world of limited resources, one of the ways that people maintain their control or power is by resisting the progress of competing groups"

1) Human predisposition-

• Leads to people to categorize others into discrete social groups and to contrast the groups to which they belong with other groups. ( People tend to believe that their own groups are better than other groups)
• E.x. Inter group favoritism, where you prefer those who are more similar to you.

1. Avoidance of Inter-group Contact

-Avoiding contact with members of minorities. Mostly occurs during close/personal contact.

Ex. Vast majority of a university said they will have a black roommate but only 10% said they would create a relationship with them.

2. Overly Positive Inter-group Behavior.

-People who try to appear unprejudiced will overdo their efforts to be seen as unprejudiced which would show awkward positive mood towards their interaction with the minority.

Ex. There were two essays by two different writers, which basically told the reviews they would see the feedback. They read the exact same essay which would become the same feedback; unbiased. Yet, the black writer received more positive feedback. The evaluators then overcompensated for their aversive prejudice for trying to evaluate fairly.

Situational Factors

The characteristics of the situation determines which behavior aversive prejudice will produce.

• For example, a person will not discriminate in situations in which they recognize that discrimination would be obvious to others and themselves.

When presented with a situation in which a right or wrong answer is clearly defined, aversive racists will not discriminate.

• Otherwise when the situation is not obvious discrimination will occur.

Under these circumstances aversive racists may discriminate, but in way that insulates them from ever having to believe that their behavior was motivated by race.

3) Socialization of two sets of incompatible values -

• The theory holds, every white person has been socialized to some extent in the racist traditions that have characterized American history
• this socialization results in implicit prejudice in the form of negative stereotypes and emotions being associated with minority groups.
• On the other hand though, people who experience aversive prejudice have also been socialized to genuinely believe in the American ideals of racial fairness, justice, and equality.
• Sometimes people experiencing aversive prejudice will discriminate (reflect implicit negative feelings), sometimes not ( reflect egalitarian beliefs).
• Similar to Ambivalent Prejudice, where a persons conflicting personal values leads to contradictory behaviors/ideals.

3. Pro-White Bias

-People experience aversive prejudice try to be unprejudiced when the situation presents a clearly unprejudiced response to chose, the theory also holds that they will show a pro-White bias in ambiguous situations, when the unprejudiced response is clearly defined.

4. Anti-Minority Discrimination

-People who experience Aversive Prejudice will discriminate against members of of other groups when the behavior can be justified as unprejudiced.

Ex. Researchers discovered that white and black people received help at the same rate when needed help. Yet, when it comes to the helper not wanting to help, they would give having less time as an excuse for not being able to help a minority member.

5. Derogation of Higher Status Minority Group Members.

-The final implication of the theory Aversive Prejudice is that because one of the implicit attitudes that white people acquire through socialization, which is a belief in white superiority, the discomfort associated with aversive prejudice should be greater when black people are in a higher status position.

Ex. People were evaluated in a work environment. There was one black man and one white man. There was a black supervisor and a white supervisor as well was a white subordinate and a black subordinate. They were evaluated on their work ethic. The participant would “accidentally” drop some pencils.The black superior was helped less (helped 58% of the time) than the black subordinate was (helped 83% of the time). When it came to the higher status white person, he was helped more than (helped 52% of the time) the White subordinate (helped 41% of the time).

Through the research from Davidio and Gaetner, they came to the conclusion that whites may accept black people are intelligent or can be. However they wouldn't accept, or would have a harder time accepting, the fact that a black person might be higher or equal in intelligence to themselves.

Characteristics & Background Information

What is Aversive Prejudice?

• In the U.S there exists a historical precedent of discrimination and prejudice, thus it became normalized and a common part of American culture.
• However, various movements that have led to significant change have come about, such as the Civil Rights Movement or the Feminist movement, and there has been a noticeable reduction in prejudice as a whole.
• Today, it is no longer socially acceptable to be prejudiced and in most parts of the U.S it is highly frowned upon.
• However, it is explicit prejudice that is frowned upon, implicit prejudice, for example aversive, often goes unnoticed.

Why is does Aversive Prejudice continue to go unnoticed?

Aversive prejudice is the attitude of a person who tries to avoid contact with minority members, but does not show signs of explicit prejudice when interacting with them.

• It is taught by parents to their children through their actions, even if the parent himself does notice how their behavior is affecting their child's perception.
• Thus at a very early age, it becomes a taught "norm."
• Is often not internalized, therefore not much can be done to change something you do not notice

Relation to daily life interactions

Testing for Aversive Prejudice

• Most theories of prejudice attempt to identify a person high in prejudice by measuring their prejudice as a trait and studying it through correlation scores.
• Compare their prejudice score with scores on presumed causes.
• E.g. the level of how prejudiced a person is with how it may actually relate to aversive prejudice.
• Thus they may test to see how much a person avoids contact with minority members or the emotions associated with such interactions.

• Testing for aversive prejudice focuses on the role of situational factors that has led researchers who study aversive prejudice to take an approach to research different from that used by researchers working with other theories of prejudice
• Since it is often subconscious and implicit, it is harder to test for than explicit prejudice or other contemporary forms of prejudice.
• There are many factors that may affect the result of a person's response such as social desirability.

An example of an experiment used to test for Aversive Prejudice is the Implicit Association Test.

Aversive Prejudice

Project by Nimsi Garcia, Erik Amaya, Julio Castro, and Bryan Garcia