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How Can Prejudice & Discrimination Be Reduced
Word Count = 1573
Introduction
Prejudice is characterised by a negative attitude toward an individual or group based on their membership in a particular group (e.g., race, Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). This prejudice against a particular group often leads to discrimination which is a behaviour that illustrates unequal treatment of an individual or group on the basis of prejudice (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). The purpose of this blog essay is to identify the targets of prejudice and discrimination, investigate why they exist and discuss how to reduce their presence in society. This will be discussed using examples of Jane Elliot's, "Australian Eye: Blue Eyed Brown Eyed."
Australian Eye: Blue Eyed Brown Eyed (Elliot, Robins, Cullen, Talmadge, & Golenbock, 2002).
Jane Elliot has been conducting workshops all over the world on prejudice and discrimination over the past three decades. In 2002 she came to Australia to run a series of workshops dividing blue eyed Caucasians and a brown eyed mixture of Caucasians, Aboriginals and other ethnics. Elliot set the tone of the workshop immediately, by using harsh language and finger pointing toward the blue eyed individuals, as well as using collars on them to ensure that they would stand out. Alternatively the brown eyed individuals were treated with respect and following the signing in, they were to meet with Elliot in a large room with comfortable seating. On the other hand, the blue eyed individuals were escorted into a room with no windows or air conditioning. The blue eyed people were guarded and not allowed to communicate with each other; therefore feeling discriminated against before meeting with Elliot and the brown eyed people.
Who Are The Targets?
In Elliot's workshops, it is obvious that the targets of prejudice and discrimination are blue eyed people. However, for many years in society, the most common targets have been Black people (racism) and women (sexism), and more recently Arabs, Homosexuals and overweight people (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). Elliot focuses on picking out a physical characteristic (eye colour) and relates this to racism when performing the exercise and debriefing the participants (Elliot et al., 2002). The exercises that Elliot uses are dictation and a culturally biased IQ test that favours Black people.
Prior to the IQ test, Elliot tells the brown eyed people that they are smarter than the blue eyes and they will to better than them on the test because they are smarter and more curious about other people (Elliot et al., 2002) To further discriminate against the blue eyed people, Elliot gives the Brown eyes the answer to every second question on the IQ test (Elliot et al., 2002). Elliot et al. (2002) states that this is not cheating, rather it is reinforcing the brown eyes position of power in society (which is what white people do every day by administering culturally biased tests).
The results of the IQ test reinforces Elliot's expectations of blue eyed people (illustrates a self fulfilling prophecy) showing that there is no way for these people to win. This is what causes hostile reactions from groups who suffer discrimination and is illustrated when some of the blue eyed people have to leave the workshop because they refuse to live down to Elliot's expectations.
Why Does It Exist?
There is no doubt that prejudice and discrimination still exists in today's society. But what is more important is why these attitudes and behaviours still exist. In Elliot's American production "Blue Eyed", she asks whites in a seminar to stand up if they would like to be treated like black people. None of the white people stood up, which prompted Elliot to ask, "Why do you people then stand back and let black people be treated the way they do (Verhaag, 2004)". The very reason why prejudice and discrimination still exists is because no-one does anything to intervene when it happens. This goes for unfair treatment toward other groups (e.g., women in the workplace) as well.
Social psychology theories of intergroup relationships demonstrate the roles of competition and threat in predicting intergroup prejudices (Sears as cited in Ward & Masgoret, 2006). Competition is the situation where some people can attain goals only if others don't (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008), and often results in threat between two groups. In competition, there is an ingroup (us) and an outgroup (them). Evolution has played a large role in the categorisation of groups. For example, hunter groups lived under conditions of little food, water and shelter in the early days of evolution. If two groups shared the one area there would not be enough resources for both groups. Therefore the group that showed prejudice and acted on driving the other group out would win the resources (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008).
This behaviour still happens today with job competition, as white people are trying to protect their jobs from individuals that belong to outgroups by discriminating against them. Elliot et al. (2002) states that IQ tests and school textbooks are culturally biased to ensure that white people get the best jobs, therefore reinforcing their position in society. Stephan, Ybarra, Mortinez, Schwarzwald, & Tur-Kaspa (1998) proposed an Integrated Threat Theory (ITT) which states the four threats which lead to prejudiced feelings toward outgroups. These are realistic threats (arise as a result of scarce resources), symbolic threats (differences in norms, beliefs and values), negative stereotypes and intergroup anxiety (fear of being embarrassed by outgroups).
Another reason why prejudice and discrimination still exist in society is socialisation. Socialisation is the fostering of negative attitudes toward members of outgroups that have been learnt through parents, peers and ultimately mass media (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). These influences often lead to ingroup favouritism which is favourable treatment toward one's ingroup as opposed to the outgroup (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). This behaviour is self serving and can lead to an increase in the ingroup's self-esteem, therefore reinforcing or justifying the behaviour. The scapegoat theory states that problems in society are unfairly blamed on outgroup members (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008) and is another reason why prejudice and discrimination still exists. Elliot et al. (2002) demonstrates this throughout her whole video recording by blaming the blue eyes for things that were out of their control.
How To Reduce It?
Elliot's Australian Eye: Blue Eyed Brown Eyed video recording (Elliot et al., 2002) is one way to reduce the occurrence of prejudice and discrimination by providing a first hand experience for the blue eyed participants of what it is like to be discriminated against on the basis of an uncontrollable physical characteristic. It also creates awareness for and participants, of how prejudice and discrimination work in society. At the conclusion of the Australian Eye video recording, Elliot asks for feedback from both the blue eyed and brown eyed groups by asking them to write down three adjectives of how they felt during the exercises. The blue eyed (discriminated) group reported words such as devastated, unstable, lonely, confused, powerless, unsatisfied and intimidated (Elliot et al., 2002). Although this program is good at creating awareness, it doesn't really dig deep into the processes of how to reduce prejudice and discrimination in society.
Devine (1989) ran a study on the differences between prejudiced and non-prejudiced people by administrating questionnaires regarding whether or not each individual knew the content of stereotypes and how to activate them. Devine (1989) found that both prejudiced and non-prejudiced people knew the content of stereotypes as well as how to activate a particular stereotype when in the presence of someone from that outgroup, thus suggesting the presence of the automatic system. Further studies by Devine (1989) have shown that it's the conscious system that overrides (or doesn't override for prejudiced people) the particular stereotype and substitutes the prejudiced thoughts with thoughts of fairness toward other groups. It therefore may be impossible to change the nature of prejudices and discrimination but there is a chance of changing the culture of these attitudes and behaviours respectively.
The contact hypothesis states that regular interaction, both socially and professionally, between individuals of different groups will reduce prejudice between groups (Allport as cited in Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). However, it is important that these interactions are positive, are between people of equal status and for prejudice to be reduced toward the entire outgroup, contact with outgroup members must be typical members of their group (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). Pettigrew & Tropp (2006) performed a meta-analysis of intergroup contact theory. The meta-analysis used 713 independent samples and the results showed that intergroup contact reduced the occurrence of prejudice and that these results generalised to a broad range of outgroups and contact settings (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Therefore, forming social multicultural groups at work places or school can be affective in reducing prejudice and discrimination in society.
Ward & Masgoret (2006) also did some research on intergroup contact theory by surveying 500 New Zealanders. Their results agreed with Pettigrew & Tropp (2006) and stated that regular intergroup contact resulted in a decrease in intergroup anxiety, which eliminated perceptions of threat, and therefore reduced prejudice toward outgroups. Ward & Masgoret (2006) also looked at the effect of multicultural ideology, which is the view that diversity is good for society and that it should be shared in an equal way (Berry as cited in Ward & Masgoret, 2006). Ward & Masgoret (2006) also concluded that multicultural ideology lead to eliminated perceptions of threat and reduced levels of prejudice toward outgroups. Therefore, reducing prejudice and discrimination involves attitudinal change in the individual as well as environmental change.
One other concept that deserves to be mentioned in the context of reducing prejudice is the idea of creating superordinate goals. In order for the achievement of these goals, co-operation must occur between the two groups (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008) thus reducing negative feelings and possibly creating pleasant ones. An example of a superordinate goal may be two groups of people working together on a school assignment.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the main targets of prejudice and discrimination are black people followed by women. Jane Elliot focuses on prejudiced attitudes toward black people. Racism exists because of competition in a scarce environment as well as socialisation influences. Elliot also believes that it exists because others let it happen. Reducing racism involves changing individual attitudes as well as changing environmental situations. Elliot's workshops may be capable of changing the attitudes of her participants within hours, but this doesn't mean that the environmental situations outside of her workshops will change straight away.
References
Baumeister, R. F. & Bushman, B. J. (2008). Social Psychology & Human Nature. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5-18.
Elliot, J., Robins, P., Cullen, P., Talmadge, W., & Golenbock, S. A. (2002). Australian Eye: Blue Eyed Brown Eyed [video recording]. Australia: SBS Independent, Anna Max Media & Angry Eye.
Pettigrew, T. F. & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751-783.
Robins, P. Australian Eye Website. Retrieved 30 August, 2007, from http://www.sbs.com.au/australianeye/
Stephan, W. G., Ybarra, O., Martinez, C. M., Schwarzwald, J., & Tur-Kaspa, M. (1998). Prejudice toward immigrants to Spain and Israel: An integrated threat theory analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29(4), 559-576.
Verhaag, B. (2004). Blue Eyed [video recording]. United States of America: Marcom Projects Pty Ltd.
Ward, C. & Masgoret, A. (2006). An integrative model of attitudes toward immigrants. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 30, 671-682.
