Prejudice and Discrimination: Crash Course Psychology #39
Understanding Implicit Bias and Prejudice
The Case of Amadou Diallo
- In February 1999, four NYPD officers encountered Amadou Diallo, a young black man they deemed suspicious.
- Diallo was shot 19 times out of 41 bullets fired by the police while reaching for his wallet to show ID.
- Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" uses this incident to illustrate implicit biases that can lead to tragic outcomes.
Implicit Bias Defined
- Implicit biases are non-conscious attitudes that influence behavior, often more subtly than overt prejudice.
- These biases can affect various aspects of life, including employment opportunities and interactions with law enforcement.
Exploring Social Psychology
- The discussion extends beyond individual judgments to how social psychology examines factors influencing helping or harming behaviors.
- Understanding these uncomfortable aspects is crucial as everyone has experienced or enacted unfair judgments.
Prejudice: A Common Human Condition
- Prejudice refers to unjustified negative attitudes towards individuals or groups based on characteristics like race or gender.
- It differs from stereotyping and discrimination; prejudice is an attitude, while discrimination involves actions based on those attitudes.
The Relationship Between Stereotypes and Discrimination
- Stereotypes can be accurate but often lead to prejudicial attitudes that drive discriminatory behavior.
- Historical examples highlight extreme cases of prejudice leading to violence, such as apartheid in South Africa and the Holocaust.
Changes in Societal Attitudes Over Time
- While overt prejudices have decreased in some areas (e.g., acceptance of female presidential candidates), subtle biases persist.
- Awareness of explicit thoughts versus implicit cognition reveals how unconscious bias operates without our knowledge.
Measuring Implicit Attitudes: The IAT
- The Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed in the late 1990s, assesses hidden biases people may not acknowledge.
Understanding Implicit Prejudice and Discrimination
The Implicit Association Test (IAT)
- The IAT measures implicit associations by asking participants to press keys based on the pairing of faces and objects, revealing underlying biases.
- Participants react faster when sorting stereotypical pairings (e.g., young faces with pleasant objects), indicating an implicit association between youth and goodness.
- This test is predictive of discriminatory behavior, highlighting that even self-proclaimed unprejudiced individuals may harbor implicit biases against older people.
Overt Prejudice in Society
- Despite progress, overt prejudice persists, significantly influencing social psychology research and predicting patterns like wage inequality.
- A 2012 Yale study showed science faculty discriminated against female applicants, viewing them as less competent compared to male counterparts.
- This bias was evident even among women faculty members, illustrating that both targets and perpetuators of stereotypes can hold similar prejudices.
Roots of Prejudice
- Prejudices often justify social inequalities; the "just-world phenomenon" leads individuals to believe that people get what they deserve based on their circumstances.
- The ingroup-outgroup phenomenon fosters division, where individuals favor their group over others, leading to discrimination in various contexts such as sports or politics.
Ingroup Bias and Conflict
- Ingroup bias creates a sense of solidarity but can also lead to irrational favoritism at the expense of outgroups.
- Social psychology exercises demonstrate how arbitrary distinctions can escalate into conflict between groups through exaggerated differences.
Conclusion: Psychological Nature of Conflict
- Historical examples show how the us vs. them mentality has fueled violence in warfare and other conflicts.