Us and Them

Hey everyone!

This week’s all about stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. In the world of social psychology, these have come to have much more specific definitions than in regular use. The authors of the textbook for my course, Kassin, Fein, and Markus (2011), define them as follows. Stereotypes consist of thoughts or beliefs about a specific group as a whole. Prejudice means negative feelings about a person resulting from his or her group connections. Discrimination occurs when individuals act negatively toward people of a specific group. Each of these captures a nuanced aspect of the overall concept.

Because of the nature of the topic, I had my pick of songs this week, but one in particular seemed perfect. “Witch Hunt (Part III of Fear)” by Rush. (Maybe one day I’ll run out of Rush songs.) It’s about a mob gathering and preparing to “beat and burn and kill” based on “fear and lies” and “ignorance and prejudice.” Oh, and since they’re a prog band, it starts out pretty weird. Enjoy.

Moving on! I took a couple of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) in preparation for this blog post. These tests, developed by Greenwald et al. (1998), attempt to assess unconscious associations the participant has regarding various groups. For example, the Race IAT determines how strongly you associate either white or black faces with either good or bad words.

The Race IAT operates by calculating how quickly you can press keys to categorize words or faces into the correct category, with the catch being that each key has two conditions attached to it. Pressing the letter E could signify that the presented face is white or the word is bad; the letter I would thus signify a black face or a good word.

After a period of time with this configuration, one pair is switched: now E means both white and good, instead of white and bad, and I is the opposite. If in this second configuration you assign words and faces more quickly than in the first one, it means you have greater association between “white–good” and “black–bad.” If you are faster in the first configuration, then you have stronger associations with the opposite kind: “black–good” and “white–bad.” Essentially, it is easier to sort the stimuli when the quality of the faces and words assigned to the keys “match” your internal stereotypes.

However, even the authors of the test admit that it is not a perfectly valid and reliable assessment of a person’s implicit biases. Making errors in categorizing the stimuli can completely throw off the delicate timing needed for assessment. Because you have to go as quickly as possible, you will make mistakes. Additionally, they recognize that receiving a score that implies prejudice does not mean it is actually there. Stereotypes can be automatic; even if we actively choose not to behave in discriminatory ways and not to entertain prejudiced feelings, we will still be affected by stereotypes on some level (Devine, 1989).

I bring up the reliability of the test because my results were very interesting to me. I took both the Race IAT and the Religion IAT twice each. The Race IAT informed me once that I had “strong preference toward whites” and also “little/no preference toward whites.” The Religion IAT informed me once that I preferred Muslims slightly more than Christians, Jews, and Hindus, who were all equal. But it also told me that I have a much higher preference for Muslims and Jews, no preference for Christians, and an extreme dis-preference for Hindus.

Aside from the consistently high rating of Muslims, the two sets of results differed severely.

According to the site, I should average the two pairs, giving me a slight/moderate preference toward whites and Muslims and a moderate dis-preference for Hindus.

These results directly correlate with my education with each group, or lack thereof. I was raised Christian, studied the history of white men as taught in public high school, and in college took a course on Islam. In contrast, I have met very few practicing Hindus or studied them. I believe the IAT results reflect my implicit associations, and that these associations may relate to how educated or familiar I am with each group. (Despite being unable to find a source for this, I am confident that someone has already made this connection and tested it in some sort of longitudinal study comparing IAT scores before and after taking a course like Introduction to Islam or African History.)

However, these results do not reflect my conscious beliefs or behavior. I hardly encounter any Hindus against whom I would potentially discriminate, but I do not feel any prejudice toward them. Similarly, I don’t find myself consciously judging black people more harshly than white people. But I had never thought about the ability of education to potentially lessen unconscious stereotypes until taking the IAT and thinking about my own experiences.

That means I never thought about the last line of today’s song, either: “Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.”

Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual diff erences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464–1480.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., and Markus, H.R. (2011). Social Psychology, 8^th edition. California: Cengage.

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