Prejudice

What is prejudice?
I think that essays along the lines of 'Explain the nature of prejudice' are among the most difficult to answer in the Higher Psychology exam. That doesn't mean that you should do badly in them - just that a bit more planning may be necessary.
The reason they are hard, is that psychological concepts - in this case prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination etc - can be difficult to define, and even experts in the field don't often agree. It should be easier to describe and evaluate a theory.
On a positive note, the Higher exam now provides some guidance to help you structure an answer. This could read as follows (source - the 2010 question paper):

• A definition of prejudice, with examples
• Cogntive, affective and behavioural aspects of prejudice
• Evaluation of research evidence on the nature of prejudice.

These are things that you are told that you "may include" suggesting that there are other equally good ways of answering the question. That might be true in principle, but you can be sure of two things:

Nearly everyone will use the structure suggested in the exam paper

and

The marking instructions will link strongly to these bullet points.

It's therefore by far the safest option to stick to the suggested headings, thinking of your essay as having three sub-sections. Here are some things to include.

• You should have a definition of prejudice ready from your revision (make sure you can define all key concepts in the Higher!) In this section, also define and explain stereotyping and discrimination, and try to make clear the difference between these three processes. Any examples can be used, but ones from your coursework which are linked in to a research or historical context are more likely to gain valuable A&E marks.
• Here you work through the three aspects of prejudice as an attitude - cognitive (thoughts), affective (feelings) and behavioural (actions). Make sure that they are fully explained, and you are making clear the differences between the three. You can use examples again, but keep them brief. Mentioning supporting research should pick up extra marks.
• Here, you should describe and evaluate your key research evidence. I suggest a detailed dicsussion of one study, plus mentioning 2-3 others more briefly. Avoid studies which very clearly link to the other two aspects of the prejudice topic (e.g. Adorno, 1950). A good choice for this question would be the Cohen (1981) study of stereotypes, or LaPiere's (1934) study of attitudes v's actions. Sherif et al (1954) could also be used.

Overall, make sure your essay is long and detailed enough to pick up the 20 marks, and ensure that you have encluded enough evaluation points, especially in that third bullet point. Supporting research studies and/or examples in the first two can also pick up A&E marks.

The exam 2010

Well I just saw the exam paper and there were a couple of tough ones...

On the positive side, Memory, research methods and atypical behaviour were pretty predictable. I'd even go as far as to say the questions on memory were good!
I think the one on prejudice is one of the harder Qs to answer on this topic, but it was one of your homework questions so hopefully not any great shock to you! Looking at the other social psychology topics, they were tough too.
The worst in my opionion was stress - I wouldn't have expected the 2 questions to be only on fight/flight and transactional model - both smallish areas of the topic. Hope you managed to give a good account of yourselves!

Good luck with the rest of your exams, or if you are finished - congratulations!

Contact Hypothesis

It may seem like you have less to say on the Contact Hypothesis than on the other two theories of prejudice reduction (Education and Superordinate Goals).
So what about this mnemonic to help you remember the key factors which according to Allport (1954) are necessary for contact to work - 'SIDE':

- Superordinate goals - groups must have shared aims, goals, targets. If their aim is to harm each other then contact won't reduce prejudice.
- Institutions - institutions and laws in society must support integration. In Nazi Germany, the law supported prejudice against Jews.
- Differences - differences must be valued. You can't expect other groups to look or act the same as you, or adopt your customs.
- Equal status - groups must have equal status in society. So a high level of contact between slaves and slave owners did not lead to reduced prejudice.

(More morbidly, the mnemonic could also spell 'dies')

SIT and Americans

An article from 'The Onion'

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-whos-116th-irish-proud-of-his-irish-heritage,103/

I think this shows that with social identity, it's not so much what you are, but groups you choose to identify with.

Jane Elliot etc

We recently viewed the Jane Elliot 'A Class Divided' documentary, and discussed the ethics of simulating prejudice and discrimination with young children.

Interestingly a similar idea was recently done in a Scottish primary school, prompting a highly negative reaction:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8562798.stm

Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory states that a person’s sense of who they are base on their group membership(s). It originates from the research of Henri Tajfel. There are four main processes involved:

• People have a natural tendency to divide into conflicting groups.
• Our sense of who we are is based on membership of groups e.g. your job, what team you support, and this affects self-esteem.
• We make comparisons, and these are biased towards in-groups, and against out-groups.
• We like our groups to be distinctive from and superior to other groups.

So we divide the world up into ‘them and us’, we bind up our own identity with that of our group, and we make biased judgements in favour of that group. If we perceive that our own group is not different enough or superior enough we try to change that, either by helping our own group, or acting against the outgroup.

Tajfel believed that stereotyping is a normal cognitive process – we tend to group things together. In doing so, we tend to exaggerate the similarities of things within the group, and exaggerate the differences between groups. When applied to people, it leads to a group mentality. Prejudice comes about because for self-esteem to be maintained, our group needs to compare favourably with other groups. Once two groups identify themselves as rivals they are forced to compete in order for the members to maintain their self-esteem.

Tajfel’s work has made him the most influential social psychologist of the present day. The idea that our sense of self is in large part based on group membership has been fully adopted by mainstream social psychology.

However, SIT’s view of self-esteem as based on group membership seems simplistic, given the importance of other factors such as our skills, appearance and abilities. Rubin & Hewstone (1998) failed to find experimental support for the idea that intergroup discrimination elevates self-esteem or that low self-esteem motivates discrimination.

Authoritarian Personality Theory

Authoritarian Personality Theory

The idea of the Authoritarian Personality (AP) was formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, as Adorno and colleagues (1950) tried to explain the attraction of Fascism to certain types of people. Strongly influenced by Psychoanalysis as well as by the character and childhood histories of Hitler and other prominent Fascists and Nazis, the AP theory suggests that a harsh upbringing can lead to a warped personality that values authority very highly. This means not just that they will try to dominate others, but that they value the authorities e.g. government, church and despise anyone who is non-conventional.

The AP theory explains prejudice in that these character traits predict one's potential for fascist and antidemocratic leanings and behaviour. Therefore is explains prejudice mainly as an individual trait rather than as a force in society.

Adorno et al devised a personality scale called the F-Scale which measured attitudes towards authority, work, honour, sexuality and even the occult, asking for opinions on statements like, "People can be divided into two distinct classes: the weak and the strong". People who scored highly were said to have several key attributes, including:

• Conventionalism: rigid adherence to conventional values.
• Authoritarian Submission: submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities.
• Authoritarian Aggression: tendency to condemn & reject outgroups.
• Power and "Toughness": preoccupation with the dominance-submission, leader-follower dimension.
• Destructiveness and Cynicism: generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
• Sex: exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."

Later research by Altemeyer et al (1981) found that only the first three of these traits reliably correlate.

The theory become highly popular and well known, but soon began to be rejected by the scientific community (Scott, 1992). The F-Scale was shown to be unreliable, suffering from an ‘acquiescence response set’ – where people are more likely to agree than disagree with questionnaire questions. As all questions were phrased in such a way that an ‘agree’ answer was associated with a higher F-score, it may be that some participants just agreed to most or all without much thought.

The theory itself provided a description of a supposed personality type with out any clear explanation of how people become this way. It was complex, and has been largely superseded by the simpler ‘RWA’ (Right-wing authoritarian) model of Altemeyer. In focusing on personality, it also neglects the social aspects of prejudice.