Here's a short thought exercise for you. Think about the year of your birth, and think about the current year. What's the longest period during that time span that the world has been free from intergroup conflict; one nation warring with another, one group fighting with another, or one ethnicity trying to vanquish another?

If your rough estimate is “zero,” you're probably sadly correct. “World peace” is difficult to define—ideally it would be a period of no conflict between identifiable groups—and historically there have been some nations that have enjoyed some measure of harmony. Japan during the Edo Period (1603–1868) is often cited as a time of great peace for that country, and Sweden hasn't been a major presence in a conflict since 1814. But scattered examples are far outweighed by world wars, civil unrest, or seemingly never-ending conflicts over race, religion, or ideology.

Part of what fuels conflict is prejudice. One group's actions may be belligerent toward another, but those actions are often interpreted through a lens of preconceived notions and long-standing beliefs. In this section we examine the causes and consequences of prejudice, and consider ways that group conflict and hostility can be reduced.

A prejudice consists of a negative stereotype and a strong, unreasonable dislike or hatred of a group. Prejudice provides the fuel for ethnocentrism. Its targets change, but it persists everywhere in some form because it has so many sources and functions: psychological, social, economic, and cultural.

1. Psychological causes. Prejudice often serves to ward off feelings of doubt, fear, and insecurity. As research from many nations has confirmed, it is a tonic for low self-esteem: People puff up their own feelings of low self-worth by disliking or hating groups they see as inferior (Islam & Hewstone, 1993; Stephan et al., 1994). Prejudice also allows people to use the target group as a scapegoat (“Those people are the source of all my troubles”), to displace anger and cope with feelings of powerlessness. Immediately after 9/11, some white Americans took out their anger on fellow Americans who happened to be Arab, Sikh, Pakistani, Hindu, or Afghan. Two men in Chicago beat up an Arab-American taxi driver, yelling, “This is what you get, you mass murderer!”

2. Social causes. Not all prejudices, however, have deep-seated psychological roots. Some are acquired through pressure to conform to the views of friends, relatives, or associates; if you don't agree with a group's prejudices toward another group, you may be gently or abruptly asked to leave the group. Some are passed along mindlessly from one generation to another, as when parents communicate to their children, “We don't associate with people like that.”

3. Economic causes. Prejudice makes official forms of discrimination seem legitimate, by justifying the majority group's dominance, status, or greater wealth. Wherever a majority group systematically discriminates against a minority to preserve its power—whites, blacks, Muslims, Hindus, Japanese, Hutu, Christians, Jews, you name it—they will claim that their actions are legitimate because the minority is so obviously inferior and incompetent (Islam & Hewstone, 1993; Jost et al., 2008; Morton et al., 2009; Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1996).

   You can see how prejudice rises and falls with changing economic conditions by observing what happens when two groups are in direct competition for jobs, or when people are worried about their incomes: Prejudice between them increases. Consider how white attitudes toward Chinese immigrants in the United States fluctuated during the 19th century, as reflected in newspapers of the time (Aronson, 2012). When the Chinese were working in the gold mines and potentially taking jobs from white laborers, the white-run newspapers described them as depraved, vicious, and bloodthirsty. Just a decade later, when the Chinese began working on the transcontinental railroad, doing difficult and dangerous jobs that few white men wanted, prejudice against them declined. Whites described them as hardworking, industrious, and law-abiding. Then, after the railroad was finished and the Chinese had to compete with Civil War veterans for scarce jobs, white attitudes changed again. Whites now thought the Chinese were “criminal,” “crafty,” “conniving,” and “stupid.” (The newspapers did not report the attitudes of the Chinese.)

   The oldest prejudice in the world may be sexism, and it, too, serves to legitimize existing sex roles and inequities in power. According to research with 15,000 men and women in 19 nations, hostile sexism, which reflects active dislike of women, is different from benevolent sexism, which puts women on a pedestal. The latter type of sexism is affectionate but patronizing, conveying the attitude that women are so wonderful, good, kind, and moral that they should stay at home, away from the rough-and-tumble (and power and income) of public life (Glick et al., 2000; Glick & Fiske, 2012). Because benevolent sexism lacks a tone of hostility to women, it doesn't seem like a prejudice to many people (Christopher & Wojda, 2008). But both forms of sexism—whether someone thinks women are too good for equality or not good enough—legitimize discrimination against women (Brandt, 2011).

   Perhaps you are thinking: “What about men? There are plenty of prejudices against men, too—that they are sexual predators, emotionally heartless, domineering, and arrogant.” In fact, according to a 16-nation study of attitudes toward men, many people do believe that men are aggressive and predatory, and overall just not as warm and wonderful as women (Glick et al., 2004). This attitude seems hostile to men, the researchers found, but it also reflects and supports gender inequality by characterizing men as being designed for leadership, dominance, and high-paying jobs.

4. Cultural and national causes. Finally, prejudice bonds people to their own ethnic or national group and its ways; by disliking “them,” we feel closer to our own group. That feeling, in turn, justifies whatever we do to “them” to preserve our customs and national policies. In fact, although many people assume that prejudice causes war, the reverse is far more often the case: War causes prejudice. When two nations declare war, when one country decides to invade another, or when a weak leader displaces the country's economic problems onto a minority scapegoat, the citizenry's prejudice against that enemy or scapegoat will be inflamed. Of course, sometimes anger at an enemy is justified, but war usually turns legitimate anger into blind prejudice: Those people are not only the enemy; they are less than human and deserve to be exterminated (Keen, 1986; Staub, 1999). That is why enemies are so often described as vermin, rats, mad dogs, heathens, baby killers, or monsters—anything but human beings like us.

Review8.1 summarizes the causes of prejudice.

With the historic election in 2008 of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American president, and with women increasingly attaining positions of status and authority in business and government, many people became hopeful that the worst forms of racism and sexism in the United States were ending. Indeed, on surveys in the United States and Canada throughout the 2000s, prejudice toward blacks, gays, and women declined, especially among young people (Weaver, 2008). But in 2012, an AP survey found that among white Americans, prejudice toward blacks and other minorities was rising significantly again. Recent racial tensions, fueled by high-profile cases involving police and minority group members, suggest that negative attitudes still exist.

The reason, as Gordon Allport (1954/1979) observed so long ago, is that “defeated intellectually, prejudice lingers emotionally.” Attitudes may change and discriminatory behavior may be outlawed, but deep-seated negative feelings and bigotry may persist in subtle ways. As we just saw, prejudices may lie dormant during good times, only to be easily aroused during bad times.

That is why prejudice is like a weasel—hard to grasp and hold on to. Moreover, not all prejudiced people are prejudiced in the same way or to the same extent. Suppose that Raymond wishes to be tolerant and open-minded, but he grew up in a small homogeneous community and feels uncomfortable with members of other cultural and religious groups. Should we put Raymond in the same category as Rupert, an outspoken bigot who detests all ethnic groups other than his own? Do good intentions count? What if Raymond knows nothing about Muslims and mindlessly blurts out a remark that reveals his ignorance? Is that prejudice or thoughtlessness? And what about people who say they are not prejudiced but then make remarks that suggest otherwise?

The Many Targets of Prejudice

Although social psychologists welcome the evidence that explicit, conscious prejudices have declined and that it is no longer fashionable to admit one's prejudices, some have used various measures to see whether implicit, unconscious negative feelings between groups have also diminished. They maintain that implicit attitudes, being automatic and unintentional, reflect lingering negative feelings that keep prejudice alive below the surface (Cheon et al., 2015; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2008). They have developed several ways of measuring these feelings (Olson, 2009):

1. Measures of social distance and “microaggressions.”Social distance is a possible behavioral expression of prejudice, a reluctance to get “too close” to another group. Does a straight man stand farther away from a gay man than from another heterosexual? Does a nondisabled woman move away from a woman in a wheelchair? Some psychologists call these subtle acts “microaggressions”: the “slights, indignities, and put-downs” that many minorities and people with physical disabilities experience (Dovidio, Pagotto, & Hebl, 2011; Nadal et al., 2011). Derald Sue (2010) offers these examples: A white professor compliments an Asian American graduate student on his “excellent English,” although the student has lived in the United States his whole life. A white woman leaving work starts to enter an elevator, sees a black man inside, covers her necklace with her hand, and “remembers” she left something at her desk, thereby conveying to her black coworker that she thinks he is a potential thief. Men in a discussion group ignore the contributions of the one female member, talking past her and paying attention to only one another.

2. Measures of unequal treatment. Most forms of explicit discrimination are now illegal in the United States, but prejudices can express themselves behaviorally in less obvious ways. Consider how blacks and whites are treated unequally in the “war against drugs” (Fellner, 2009). Across the country, relative to their numbers in the general population and among drug offenders, African Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on drug charges. A study in Seattle, which is 70 percent white, found that the great majority of those who use or sell serious drugs are white, yet almost two-thirds of those who are arrested are black. Whites constitute the majority of those who use or sell methamphetamine, Ecstasy, powder cocaine, and heroin; blacks are the majority of those who use or sell crack. But the police virtually ignore the white market and concentrate on crack arrests. The focus on crack offenders did not appear to be related to the frequency of crack transactions compared to other drugs, public safety or health concerns, crime rates, or citizen complaints. The researchers concluded that the police department's drug law enforcement reflects racial discrimination: the unconscious impact of race on official perceptions of who is causing the city's drug problem (Beckett, Nyrop, & Pfingst, 2006).

3. Measures of what people do when they are stressed or angry. Many people are willing to control their negative feelings under normal conditions, but as soon as they are angry, drunk, or frustrated, or get a jolt to their self-esteem, their unexpressed prejudice often reveals itself (Aronson, 2012). In one of the first experiments to demonstrate this phenomenon, white students were asked to administer shock to black or white confederates of the experimenter in what the students believed was a study of biofeedback. In the experimental condition, participants overheard the biofeedback “victim” (who actually received no shock) saying derogatory things about them. In the control condition, participants overheard no such nasty remarks. Then all the participants had another opportunity to shock the victims; their degree of aggression was defined as the amount of shock they administered. At first, white students actually showed less aggression toward blacks than toward whites. But as soon as the white students were angered by overhearing derogatory remarks about themselves, they showed more aggression toward blacks than toward whites (Rogers & Prentice-Dunn, 1981). The same pattern appeared in studies of how English-speaking Canadians behave toward French-speaking Canadians (Meindl & Lerner, 1985), straights toward gays, non-Jewish students toward Jews (Fein & Spencer, 1997), and men toward women (Maass et al., 2003).

4. Measures of brain activity. Social neuroscientists have been using fMRI to determine which parts of the brain are involved in forming stereotypes, holding prejudiced beliefs, and feeling disgust, anger, or anxiety about an ethnic or stigmatized group, such as addicts or the homeless (Cacioppo et al., 2003; Harris & Fiske, 2006; Stanley, Phelps, & Banaji, 2008). In one study, when African Americans and whites saw pictures of each other, activity in the amygdala (the brain structure associated with fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions) was elevated. But it was not elevated when people saw pictures of members of their own group (Hart et al., 2000). However, the fact that parts of the brain are activated under some conditions does not mean a person is “prejudiced.” In a similar experiment, when participants were registering the faces as individuals or as part of a simple visual test rather than as members of the category “blacks,” there was no increased activation in the amygdala. The brain may be designed to register differences, it appears, but any negative associations with those differences depend on context and learning (Wheeler & Fiske, 2005).

5. Measures of implicit attitudes. A final, controversial method of assessing prejudice is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures the speed of people's positive and negative associations to a target group (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998; Greenwald et al., 2009). Its proponents have argued that if white students take longer to respond to black faces associated with positive words (e.g., triumph, honest) than to black faces associated with negative words (e.g., devil, failure), it must mean that white students have an unconscious prejudice toward blacks. Millions of people have taken the test online, and it has also been given to students, business managers, and many other groups to identify their alleged prejudices toward blacks, Asians, women, older adults, and other categories (Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2007).

We say “alleged” prejudices because other social psychologists believe that whatever the test measures, it is not a stable prejudice (De Houwer et al., 2009; Oswald et al., 2013). Two experimenters got an IAT effect by matching target faces with nonsense words and neutral words that had no evaluative connotations at all. They concluded that the IAT does not measure emotional evaluations of the target but rather the salience of the word associated with it—how much it stands out. (Negative words attract more attention in general.) When they corrected for these factors, the presumed unconscious prejudice faded away (Rothermund & Wentura, 2004). Moreover, as we saw earlier, people find familiar names, products, and even nonsense syllables to be more pleasant than unfamiliar ones. Some investigators argue that the IAT may simply be measuring, say, white subjects' unfamiliarity with African Americans and the greater salience of white faces to them, rather than a true prejudice (Kinoshita & Peek-O'Leary, 2005).

As you can see, defining and measuring prejudice are not easy tasks. To understand prejudice, we must distinguish explicit attitudes from unconscious ones, active hostility from simple discomfort, what people say from what they feel, and what people feel from how they actually behave.

Implicit Association Test

The findings that emerge from the study of prejudice show us that efforts to reduce prejudice by appealing to moral or intellectual arguments are not enough. They must also touch people's deeper insecurities, fears, or negative associations with a group. Of course, given the many sources and functions of prejudice, no one method will work in all circumstances or for all prejudices. But just as social psychologists investigate the situations that increase prejudice and animosity between groups, they have also examined the situations that might reduce them. Here are four of them (Allport, 1954/1979; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006):

1. Both sides must have equal legal status, economic opportunities, and power. This requirement is the spur behind efforts to change laws that permit discrimination. Integration of public facilities in the American South would never have occurred if civil rights advocates had waited for segregationists to have a change of heart. Women would never have gotten the right to vote, attend college, or do “men's work” (law, medicine, bartending . . .) without persistent challenges to the laws that permitted gender discrimination. But changing the law is not enough if two groups remain in competition for jobs or if one group retains power and dominance over the other.

2. Authorities and community institutions must provide moral, legal, and economic support for both sides. Society must establish norms of equality and support them in the actions of its officials—teachers, employers, the judicial system, government officials, and the police. Where segregation is official government policy or an unofficial but established practice, conflict and prejudice not only will continue but also will seem normal and justified.

3. Both sides must have many opportunities to work and socialize together, formally and informally. According to the contact hypothesis, prejudice declines when people have the chance to get used to another group's rules, food, customs, and attitudes, thereby discovering their shared interests and shared humanity and learning that “those people” aren't, in fact, “all alike.” The contact hypothesis has been supported by many studies in the laboratory and in the real world: studies of newly integrated housing projects in the American South during the 1950s and 1960s; young people's attitudes toward older adults; healthy people's attitudes toward the mentally ill; nondisabled children's attitudes toward the disabled; and straight people's prejudices toward gay men and lesbians (Herek & Capitanio, 1996; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006; Wilner, Walkley, & Cook, 1955). Remarkably, contact actually works best for the most intolerant and mentally rigid people, apparently because it reduces their feelings of threat and anxiety and increases feelings of empathy and trust (Hodson, 2011).

        Multiethnic college campuses are a living laboratory for testing the contact hypothesis. White students who have roommates, friends, and romantic relationships across ethnic lines tend to become less prejudiced and find commonalities (Van Laar, Levin, & Sidanius, 2008). Cross-group friendships benefit minorities and reduce their prejudices, too. Minority students who join ethnic student organizations tend to develop, over time, not only an even stronger ethnic identity, but also an increased sense of victimization. Just like white students who live in white fraternities and sororities, they often come to feel they have less in common with other ethnic groups (Sidanius et al., 2004). But a longitudinal study of black and Latino students at a predominantly white university found that friendships with whites increased their feelings of belonging and reduced their feelings of dissatisfaction with the school. This was especially true for students who had been feeling insecure and sensitive about being rejected as members of a minority (Mendoza-Denton & Page-Gould, 2008). (See Figure8.5.)

4. Both sides must cooperate, working together for a common goal. Although contact reduces prejudice, it is also true that prejudice reduces contact. And when groups don't like each other, forced contact just makes each side resentful and even more prejudiced, as a longitudinal field survey of students in Germany, Belgium, and England found (Binder et al., 2009). At many multiethnic high schools, ethnic groups form cliques and gangs, fighting one another and defending their own ways.

        To reduce the intergroup tension and competition that exist in many schools, Elliot Aronson and his colleagues developed the “jigsaw” method of building cooperation. Students from different ethnic groups work together on a task that is broken up like a jigsaw puzzle; each person needs to cooperate with the others to put the assignment together. Students in such classes, from elementary school through college, tend to do better, like their classmates better, and become less stereotyped and prejudiced in their thinking than students in traditional classrooms (Aronson, 2000; J. Aronson, 2010; Slavin & Cooper, 1999). Cooperation and interdependence often reduce us–them thinking and prejudice by creating an encompassing social identity—the Eagles and Rattlers solution.

Figure 8.5

Cross-Ethnic Friendships

Each of these four approaches to creating greater harmony between groups is important, but none is sufficient on its own. Perhaps one reason that group conflicts and prejudice are so persistent is that all four conditions for reducing them are rarely met at the same time.

The most difficult lesson from the study of social psychology, as we have seen throughout this chapter, is that human nature contains the potential for unspeakable acts of cruelty and inspiring acts of goodness. Most people believe that some cultures and individuals are inherently evil and therefore not fully human; if we can just get rid of them, everything will be fine. But from the standpoint of social and cultural psychology, all human beings, like all cultures, contain the potential for both good and evil.

That is why virtually no nation has bloodless hands. The Nazis systematically exterminated millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, and anyone not of the “pure” Aryan “race.” But they were not unique. Americans and Canadians slaughtered native peoples in North America, Turks slaughtered Armenians, the Khmer Rouge slaughtered millions of fellow Cambodians, the Spanish conquistadors slaughtered native peoples in Mexico and South America, Idi Amin waged a reign of terror against his own people in Uganda, the Japanese slaughtered Koreans and Chinese, despotic political regimes in Argentina and Chile killed thousands of dissidents and rebels, Bosnian Serbs massacred Bosnian Muslims in the name of “ethnic cleansing” . . . to say nothing of ongoing warfare in the Middle East and Africa today.

It's easy to conclude that outbreaks of violence like these are a result of inner aggressive drives, the sheer villainy of the perpetrators, or age-old tribal hatreds. But in the social-psychological view, they result from the all-too-normal processes we have discussed in this chapter, including mindless obedience to authority, conformity, groupthink, deindividuation, stereotyping, ethnocentrism, and prejudice. These processes are especially likely to be activated when a government feels weakened and vulnerable. By generating an outside enemy, rulers create us–them thinking to impose order and cohesion among their citizens and to create a scapegoat for the country's economic problems (Smith, 1998). The good news is that when circumstances change, societies can also change from being warlike to being peaceful.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt (1963), who covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann, used the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe how it was possible for Eichmann and other ordinary people in Nazi Germany to commit the monstrous acts they did. (Banal means “commonplace” or “unoriginal.”) The compelling evidence for the banality of evil is difficult for many people to accept. Clearly, some people do stand out as being unusually heroic or unusually sadistic. But as we have seen, good people can do terribly disturbing things when their roles encourage or require them to do so, when the situation takes over and they do not stop to think critically.

The research discussed in this chapter suggests that ethnocentrism and prejudice are part of our human heritage, awaiting the conditions that will awaken them. But it can also help us formulate ways of living in a diverse world. By identifying the conditions that create the banality of evil, perhaps we can create other conditions that foster the “banality of virtue”—everyday acts of kindness, selflessness, and generosity.