Myrdal (1944) described the "American dilemma" as the conflict between abstract national values ("liberty and justice for all") and more concrete, everyday prejudices. We leveraged construal-level ...theory to empirically test Myrdal's proposition that construal level (abstract vs. concrete) can influence prejudice. We measured individual differences in construal level (Study 1) and manipulated construal level (Studies 2 and 3); across these three studies, we found that adopting an abstract mind-set heightened conservatives' tolerance for groups that are perceived as deviating from Judeo-Christian values (gay men, lesbians, Muslims, and atheists). Among participants who adopted a concrete mind-set, conservatives were less tolerant of these nonnormative groups than liberals were, but political orientation did not have a reliable effect on tolerance among participants who adopted an abstract mind-set. Attitudes toward racial out-groups and dominant groups (e.g., Whites, Christians) were unaffected by construal level. In Study 3, we found that the effect of abstract thinking on prejudice was mediated by an increase in concerns about fairness.
Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of ...an essential hallmark of a vibrant democratic society, namely open and informal discussions among agents. Indeed, within a homogeneous social community with floaters, the dynamics lead gradually toward unanimity (zero entropy). Polarization can eventually appear as the juxtaposition of non-mixing social groups sharing different prejudices about the issue at stake. On the other hand, the inclusion of contrarian agents produces a polarization within a community that mixes when their proportion
is beyond a critical value xc=16≈0.167 for discussing groups of size three and four. Similarly, the presence of stubborn agents also produces a polarization of a community that mixes when the proportion of stubborn agents is greater than some critical value. For equal proportions of stubborn agents
along each opinion, ac=29≈0.22 for group size four against ac=14=0.25 for group size three. However, the evaluation of the proportion of individual opinion shifts at the attractor 12 and indicates that the polarization produced by contrarians is fluid with a good deal of agents who keep shifting between the two opposed blocks (high entropy). That favors a coexistence of opposite opinions in a divided community. In contrast, the polarization created by stubborn agents is found to be frozen with very few individuals shifting opinion between the two opinions (low entropy). That yields a basis for the emergence of hate between the frozen opposed blocks.
For most of the first half of the twentieth century, tuberculosis ranked among the top three causes of mortality among urban African Americans. Often afflicting an entire family or large segments of ...a neighborhood, the plague of TB was as mysterious as it was fatal. Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr. examines how individuals and institutions--black and white, public and private--responded to the challenges of tuberculosis in a segregated society.Reactionary white politicians and health officials promoted "racial hygiene" and sought to control TB through Jim Crow quarantines, Roberts explains. African Americans, in turn, protested the segregated, overcrowded housing that was the true root of the tuberculosis problem. Moderate white and black political leadership reconfigured definitions of health and citizenship, extending some rights while constraining others. Meanwhile, those who suffered with the disease--as its victims or as family and neighbors--made the daily adjustments required by the devastating effects of the "white plague."Exploring the politics of race, reform, and public health,Infectious Fearuses the tuberculosis crisis to illuminate the limits of racialized medicine and the roots of modern health disparities. Ultimately, it reveals a disturbing picture of the United States' health history while offering a vision of a more democratic future.
Positive intergroup contact has been a guiding framework for research on reducing intergroup tension and for interventions aimed at that goal. We propose that beyond improving attitudes toward the ...out-group, positive contact affects disadvantaged-group members' perceptions of intergroup inequality in ways that can undermine their support for social change toward equality. In Study 1, participants were assigned to either high- or low-power experimental groups and then brought together to discuss either commonalities between the groups or inter-group differences. Commonality-focused contact, relative to difference-focused contact, produced heightened expectations for fair (i.e., egalitarian) out-group behavior among members of disadvantaged groups. These expectations, however, proved unrealistic when compared against the actions of members of the advantaged groups. Participants in Study 2 were Israeli Arabs (a disadvantaged minority) who reported the amount of positive contact they experienced with Jews. More positive intergroup contact was associated with increased perceptions of Jews as fair, which in turn predicted decreased support for social change. Implications for social change are considered.
This award-winning book provides an analysis of the genetic/evolutionary, cultural/historical, and developmental aspects of prejudice and discrimination. It emphasizes how certain ...genetic/evolutionary mechanisms are utilized to both produce and prevent prejudice and discrimination from occurring or to modify these behaviors once established. The goals of the book are to help us understand the limitations of interventions and increase tolerance and acceptance of outsiders. Peer Prejudice and Discrimination, Second Edition is ideal for advanced-level courses on prejudice and/or discrimination taught in departments of psychology, education, and sociology, as well as a valuable addition to any serious scholars personal library.
One of the ways in which therapists treat anxiety disorders is to expose patients to a fear-evoking stimulus within a safe environment before encouraging more positive stimulus-related thoughts. In ...the study reported here, we adapted these psychotherapeutic principles of exposure therapy to test the hypothesis that imagining a positive encounter with a member of a stigmatized group would be more likely to promote positive perceptions when it was preceded by an imagined negative encounter. The results of three experiments targeting a range of stigmatized groups (adults with schizophrenia, gay men, and British Muslims) supported this hypothesis. Compared with purely positive interventions, interventions in which a single negative encounter was imagined just prior to imagining a positive encounter resulted in significantly reduced prejudice. Furthermore, reduced anxiety uniquely derived from the mixed-valence imagery task statistically explain enhanced intentions to engage positively with the previously stigmatized group in the future.
Small towns throughout the rural upper Midwest have been experiencing dramatic economic restructuring and an unprecedented influx of new immigrants of color, triggering conflicts and tension between ...almost exclusively white residents and the new immigrants. Analyzing the roots and content of white residents' responses to their encounters with new immigrants in a small town in rural Minnesota, the concept of spaces of encounters draws attention to the relational quality of identities and attitudes and the active role of emotions and spatiality in processes of Othering and racialization, as well as the potential of the encounter to disrupt preconceived boundaries and racial stereotypes. White residents racialize immigrants and space, although the specific form taken by processes of racialization is inflected by individuals' social positionality and place identities and by longer term and broader scale racial stereotypes and dominant discourses about immigration, race, and nation in the United States. The racialization of immigrants defends white privilege and culture; recovers an imagined idealized place, past, and future; and establishes that belonging to the national and local community is conditional on immigrants conforming to white American values and norms-an assimilationist imaginary that runs up against the multicultural and multiracial reality of the town. Residents' reflections on their own racial prejudice and different forms of racism, as well as intimate social relations they forge with individual migrants, hold promise for social relations that transcend differences across racial and cultural divides.
We review theories of race discrimination in the labor market. Taste-based models can generate wage and unemployment duration differentials when combined with either random or directed search even ...when strong prejudice is not widespread, but no existing model explains the unemployment rate differential. Models of statistical discrimination based on differential observability of productivity across races can explain the pattern and magnitudes of wage differentials but do not address employment and unemployment. At their current state of development, models of statistical discrimination based on rational stereotypes have little empirical content. It is plausible that models combining elements of the search models with statistical discrimination could fit the data. We suggest possible avenues to be pursued and comment briefly on the implication of existing theory for public policy.
Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city, and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. At the heart of this story is a thirty-four-hour ...period in September 2008. During that day and half, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabeg resident of Manitoba's capital city, arrived in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's major downtown hospital, was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection. His death reflects a particular structure of indifference born of and maintained by colonialism.McCallum and Perry present the ways in which Sinclair, once erased and ignored, came to represent diffuse, yet singular and largely dehumanized ideas about Indigenous people, modernity, and decline in cities. This story tells us about ordinary indigeneity in the City of Winnipeg through Sinclair's experience and restores the complex humanity denied him in his interactions with Canadian health and legal systems, both before and afterhis death.Structures of Indifference completes the story left untold by the inquiry into Sinclair's death, the 2014 report of which omitted any consideration of underlying factors, including racism and systemic discrimination.
This paper explores the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on gender biases in a STEM Faculty in an Irish University. For the purposes of this research, gender bias was understood as gender-based ...inclinations or prejudices which affect researchers' personal and professional opportunities as described by fifteen interviewees (nine women, six men). We used thematic interviews to explore participants' perspectives. Analyzing interviews with an inductive approach showed that gender biases experienced before COVID-19 restrictions were different from biases during restrictions. In discussing gender biases prior to the pandemic, interviewees mentioned institutional disparities, discrimination, implicit biases, stereotypes and gender roles. When discussing gender issues during COVID restrictions, interviewees mentioned disparities at home, challenges involved in parenting, support from colleagues and the University, as well as negative and positive impacts of restrictions on existing gender issues. Our results show that while COVID-19 restrictions and the associated consequences constrained all gender groups, they most negatively affected women researchers with caring responsibilities. Moving forward, reducing gender disparities requires promoting a horizontal organizational structure, and adjusting policies and work arrangements to cater for vulnerable cohorts such as parents, and international and early-career researchers. Offering a hybrid working model that grants more flexibility to those with caring responsibilities and which accommodates personal circumstances would help improve the working conditions for all researchers and nurture an organizational culture of care for the employees; thereby also fostering gender equity and tolerance.
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