The social context of prejudice

The social context of prejudice Order Description Read this article: The Women Behind The Masks Of Hate (Links to an external site.) https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/26/books/the-women-behind-the-masks-of-hate.html?src=pm Also read Box 9.4 in the textbook (p. 357) And this: Klan Women ( L.O.T.I.E ) (Links to an external site.) https://www.kkkknights.com/ https://www.kkkknights.com/klan-women-loties/ Then discuss the following questions: What kind of women would join the hate group? What are the reasons they join? How does their prejudice evolve after they join? You can also discuss any other insight or reaction you get from the readings. Chapter 9 * The Social Context of Prejudice Human relationships always occur in an organized social environment-in a family, in a group, in a community, in a nation-that has developed techniques, categories, rules and values that are relevant to human interaction. Hence the understanding of the psychological events that occur in human interactions requires comprehension of the interplay of these events with the social context in which they occur .... The social psychologist must be able to characterize the relevant features of the social environment in order to understand or predict human interaction. -MORTON DEUTSCH AND ROBERT KRAUSS (1965, PP. 2-3) Chapter Outline Realistic Conflict Theory The Work of Muzafer Sherif John Duckitt's Extension of Realistic Conflict Theory Social Identity Theory Social Identity and Intergroup Bias Factors that Influence Social Identity Issues in Social Identity Theory Looking Back at Social Identity Theory Relative Deprivation Theory Relative Deprivation, Dissatisfaction, and Resentment Relative Deprivation and Prejudice 324 Relative Gratification Scapegoating Integrated Threat Theory Hate Group Membership Why People Join Hate Groups Recruiting Hate Group Members Group Socialization Leaving the Group Summary Suggested Readings Key Terms Questions for Review and Discussion THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 325 The theories and research presented prior to this chapter have generally focused on people as individuals in isolation from any social context. This chapter takes a different perspective. Rather than considering people in isolation from others, it focuses on the social context of prejudice and the influence other people have on individuals' attitudes and beliefs. As Deutsch and Krause (1965) pointed out in the quotation that opened this chapter, people do not operate in a vacuum; rather, they operate in an environment-a social context-made up of other people and other social groups. The first four sections of this chapter describe theories that deal with the ways in which relationships between groups-intergroup processes-can contribute to prejudice. The intergroup process perspective focuses on what happens when people think of thelllielves and others in temlS of the social groups to which they belong rather than as individuals. For example, the first theory we discuss, realistic conflict theory, holds that people come to dislike members of other groups because they see those groups as competing with their own group for needed resources. From this perspective, it is not the individual group members' stereotypes and ideologies that influence their attitudes, but the nature of the relationship-competitive or cooperative-----between the groups: People dislike members of competing groups and like members of cooperating groups. The second theory we discuss, social identity theory, examines how people's identities are tied to group membership and how this relationship can lead to intergroup bias. Relative deprivation theory is discussed next; this theory proposes that when people compare their situation to others in similar circumstances, they sometimes conclude they are not getting what they deserve. The fourth theory we present is integrated threat theory, a perspective that explains how the three other theories are related to each other. In the final section of the chapter, we take a look at hate groups, groups whose very existence is predicated on prejudice, and the kinds of people who are attracted to those groups. REALISTIC CONFLICT THEORY Realistic conflict theory (Bobo, 1988; LeVine & Campbell, 1972; Sherif, 1966) is the earliest intergroup theory of prejudice, tracing its roots back to the beginning of the 20th century. In 1906 William Sumner wrote that "the insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or other-groups, is one of war and plunder .... [Attitudes] are produced to correspond. Loyalry to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without-all grow together, common products of the same situation" (p. 12). In contemporary terms, realistic conflict theory proposes that people dislike members of outgroups because their ingroup is competing with the outgroup for resources, resulting in Sumner's "war and plunder." _ Realistic conflict theory proposes that people are motivated by a desire to \ maximize the rewards they receive in life, even if that nleans taking those rewards 326 CHAPTER 9 Laway from other people (Taylor & Moghaddam, 1994). Thus, people join groups because cooperating with ingroup members makes it easier to get rewards. However, because different groups are frequently in pursuit of those same resources, they end up competing with one another for those rewards. According to realistic conflict theory, this competition leads to conillct between groups; one result of this conflict is a disliking for, or prejudice against, members of competing groups. The Work of Muzafer Sherif The research of Muzafer Sherif (1966) provides what is perhaps the most famous demonstration of the principles of realistic conflict theory. From 1949 through 1954, Sherif conducted a series of studies on intergroup conflict, the best known of which is the "Robbers Cave" study carried out at Robbers Cave State Park in southeastern Oklahoma. (Robbers Cave got its name because Jesse James and other outlaws had supposedly used it as a hideout.) The participants in these studies were 11- and 12-year-old boys who thought they were simply attending a summer camp; the researchers were part of the camp staff so they could observe the boys without arousing their suspicions. The boys were strangers to each other before they arrived at the calnp and were carefully selected so that they had similar socioeconomic backgrounds and showed no evidence of mental or emotional problems. They were assigned to two groups that were similar in tenus of average physical strength, athletic skills, and other characteristics of the members. Sherif wanted to be sure that none of the research results could be attributed to systematic differences aITlong the boys or between the groups. Group members were given time to get to know one another and to permit the emergence of natural leaders within the groups. During this period, the groups devised names for tbemselves (the Eagles and the Ratders) and group members worked together on tasks designed to build group cohesion, but the two groups did not yet interact. The researchers then brought the groups together and introduced an element of conlpetition by setting up a series of games-such as baseball, football, and a treasure hunt-in which prizes were qwarded to the members of the winning group. Box 9.1 provides Sherifs description of the outcome: derogation of and aggression toward the outgroup Sherif ended each of the studies with activities that restored good relations between the groups.). Sherif (1966) concluded that "the sufficient condition for the rise of hostile and aggressive deeds and for ... derogatory inlages of the outgroup [is 1 the existence of two groups competing for goals that only one of the groups could attain" (p. 85; italics in original). Although Sherifs (1966) research was conducted more than 50 years ago and used a very restricted participant sample (White, middle-class, Protestant boys), his findings have stood the test of time. Rupert Brown (1995), for example, noted that evidence supporting realistic conflict theory has been found in both laboratory and field research in Europe, Australia, Israel, and Africa as well as the United States. Recent research suggests that competition has carry-over The tournament started in a spirit of good sportsmanship, but as it progressed good feeling began to evaporate. The "good sportsmanship" cheer customarily given after a game, "2-4-6-8-who do we appreciate," followed by the name of the other group, turned into "2-4-6-8"who do we appreci-hate." [Italics in original.] Soon, members of each group began to call their rivals "stinkers," "sneaks," and "cheats." ... The rival groups made threatening posters and planned raids, collecting secret hoards of green apples as ammunition. The Eagles, after defeat in a game, burned a banner left behind by the Rattlers. The next morning the Rattlers seized the Eagles' flag when they arrived on the athletic field. From that time on, name-calling, scuffling, and raids were the rule of the day. A large THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 327 proportion of the boys in each group gave negative ratings to the character of all boys in the other. When the tournament was over, they refused to have anything more to do with members of the other group .... Near the end of this stage [of the study], the members of each group found the other group and its members so distasteful that they expressed strong preferences to have no further contact with them at all. In fact, they were subsequently reluctant even to be in pleasant situations (eating, movies, entertainments), if they knew that the other group would be in the vicinity. Sherif (1966, pp. 82-83). potential. That is, when ingroups are involved in a competitive situation, the result can be prejudiced responses against an outgroup even if the outgroup is not involved in the competition. Gennan college students, for example, showed nlore prejudice toward Muslims after participating in a competitive versus a noncompetitive knowledge test, even though Muslims were not their competitors and did not otherw-ise participate in the experunent (Sassenberg, Moskowitz, J aco by, & Hansen, 2007). John Duckitt's Extension of Realistic Conflict Theory Realistic conflict theoty is a relatively straightforward approach to prejudice: com-=petition leads to conflict that leads to prejudice. However, John Duckitt (1994) has pointed out that most tests of realistic conflict theory have been limited to one type of competition, competition betvveen groups of equal status and power. He went on to note that conflict often arises bet\Veen groups of unequal power and status, such as when a majority group in a society dominates one or more minority group~ Also, in some of these cases, although the majority group denies the minority groups the full benefit of the society's material and social rewards, open conflict often fails to lTIaterialize. To account for these situations, Duckitt developed a typology of types of realistic conflicts and the resulting patterns of prejudice. Table 9.1 shows a portion of his typology. Two types of conflict in Duckitt's (1994) scheme are based on direct inter~\ group COlTIpetition: Realistic conflict theory addresses the first type, competition with an equal group, in which the ingroup sees the outgroup as a threat to the ingroup's ability to acquire some resource. This perceived threat leads the ingroup members to feel hostility toward the outgroup. These feelings of hostility 328 CHAPTER 9 TAB L E 9.1 Types of Realistic Conflict and Resulting Patterns of Prejudice Image of Orientation to Nature of Conflict Outgroup Outgroup Function for Ingroup Intergroup Competition Competition with equal group Threatening Hostility Mobilizes group members for conflict Domination of outgroup by Inferior Derogation Justifies dominance and ingroup oppression Responses to Domination by Outgroup Stable oppression of ingroup by Superior Submission Avoids conflict outgroup Unstable oppression of ingroup Oppressive Hostility Mobilizes group members by outgroup to challenge oppression Responses to Challenges to Ingroup Dominance I"group sees challenge as Inferior and Hostility and Justifies suppressing the unjustified threatening derogation challenge and mobilizes group members for conflict Ingroup sees challenges as Powerful Appearance of Avoids conflict justified tolerance SOURCE: Adapted from TabJe 6.1 in John Duckitt, The Socia! Psychology of Prejudice, Table 6,1, p. 109. Copyright © 1992. reprinted by permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, OT. provide the motivation for the group to engage in a conflict with the outgroup as a way to acquire the resource, But what happens if one group wins the conflict? In that case, domination of the outgroup by the ingroup occurs and the result often is that the winning group dominates and exploits the losing group. Such an outcome is evident in the domination and exploitation that have historically characterized the relationships of the White majority in the United States to minority groups (see Chapter 1) and to the relationships of colonial powers to the people whose lands they colonized, such as when Great Britain ruled India betv.reen 1858 and 1947. In such cases. members of the dominant group generally see menlbers of the subordinate group as inferior and derogate them by stereotyping them in negative ways or in positive ways that connote low power and status. This positive stereotyping reflects the "benevolent" fonn of prejudice discussed in Chapter 6. The dominant group then uses these stereotypes as legitimizing myths (in the language of social dominance theory; see Sidanius & Pratto. 1999. Chapter 7) to justifY their dominance and oppression. These myths typically include the assertion that the "negative" qualities of the subordinated group must be controlled for the protection of both groups and that members of the subordinated group must not be given too much responsibility or power because they are incapable of handling it. "-...., How does a subordinated group respond to the dominating group? Duckitt I (1994) proposes that either of two processes can occur. In stable oppression (see THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 329 Table 9.1), the subordinated group accepts the dominating group's view that it is \ superior to them and submits to that group to avoid conflict. Members of the sub-=J ordinated group may also take on the dominatiug group's value system, r<jecting their own group's values in the process. This acceptance of the dominant grouP'S] values is sometimes referred to as false consciousness, "the holding of false or inaccurate beliefs that are contrary to one's own social interest and which thereby contribute to [maintaining] the disadvantaged position of ... the group" (Jost, 1995, p. 400). False consciousness leads "members of a subordinate group to believe that they are inferior, deserving of their plight, or incapable of taking action against the causes of their subordination" (Jost, 1995, p. 400), which makes them unwilling to challenge the dominant group's position. In the second process:-] unstable oppression, the subordinated group rejects the subordinating stereotypes and lower status assigned to it by the dominating group and sees the dominating group as oppressive. The realization that they are oppressed leads subordinated group members to develop hostility toward the dominating group. These feelings of hostility motivate subordinated group members to challenge the other group's dominance and oppression. Duckitt's (1994) final question is "How does the dominating group re~ spond to the subordinated group's challenge?" (see Table 9.1) If their response is to see the challenge as unjustified, the dominating group concludes that the subordinated group is both threatening and inferior. The dominating group members then respond with hostility to the perceived threat and with increased derogation to reinforce their view that the subordinated group is inferior. These attitudes are used to justify whatever actions the dominating group members believe are necessary to maintain the status quo. If the response is to see the] challenge as justified, however, the subordinated group is seen as legitimate and they are given the power to demand change. For example, Duckitt (1994) noted that the U.S. civil rights movement gained ground in the 1960s because of "the perception by Inany whites that the black struggle is one that cannot legitimately be denied on the basis of important social values such as democracy and equality of opportunity" (p. 107). Another positive outcome is that the dominating group begins to treat the subordinated group with true tolerance. Unfortunately, however, in nlany cases there is only the superficial appearance of tolerance. For example, as was discussed in Chapter 6, overt prejudice in the United States has been supplanted by more subtle forms of prejudice that have been described as modern, sYlnbolic, or aversive. Whether this tolerance is real or superficial, it provides a means of avoiding overt intergroup conflict. Realistic conflict theory holds that prejudice and discrimination arise as a result of real competition between groups for resources that both groups want. These resources may be either material, such as money, goods, or land, or social, such as status or power. One implication of realistic conflict theory, then, is that if groups are not in competition, there should be no prejudice or discrimination. However, the next theory to be considered. social identity theory, holds that intergroup competition is not a necessary prerequisite for prejudice and discrilnination; rather, the mere existence of social groups is sufficient. 330 CHAPTER 9 SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY Following Sherif's (1966) work on intergroup conflict and prejudice, research on intergroup behavior virtually disappeared in the United States (Turner, 1996), replaced by an emphasis on individual-level cognitive processes, such as those described in Chapters 3 and 4 (E. E.Jones, 1998). Social identity theory was developed by European psychologists who believed that North American psychologists were putting too much emphasis on the individual and not paying sufficient attention to the role social group l11ernbership plays in influencing attitudes and behavior (Turner, 1996). Foremost among these theorists was Henri Tajfel who noted that realistic conflict theory was correct in holding that competition for resources leads to intergroup conflict. He wondered, however, if such competition was necessary for conflict and proposed that group membership "can, on its OWll) determine, .. intergroup behavior" (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flamant, 1971, p. 153; emphasis in original). ~ Social identity theory is based on the concept of social identity, the part of a person's self-concept that derives from membership in groups that are important to the person. Such groups can include one's family, college, nation, and so forth. en identifYing with a group, the person feels that what happens to the group is happening to him or her as well (Augoustinos & Walker, 1995). For example, if someone praises your college, you feel good about it; if someone disparages your college, you feel upset. Why do you, as the saying goes, "take it personally?" Because your college is part of your social identity, so how people see your college does reflect on you personally; your college is, to some extent, part of you, a part that links you to similar people, such as other students who attend your college, and differentiates you fi'om other people, such as students at other colleges. People have multiple social identities (Deaux, 1996), such as being a male New Yorker who is a student at the University of Alabama; the particular identity or identities that are active or salient at anyone time depends on a number of factors that we discuss shortly. Social identity theory also holds that people are motivated to develop and Inaintain social identities that are positive but that clearly set their groups apart from other groups. That is, people want to see their groups as distinct from, but also better than, other groups: They want their group to be number one. Social Identity and Intergroup Bias Tajfel and his colleagues (Tajfel, 1969; Tajfel et a!., 1971) proposed that when people identify with an ingroup and view other people as members of an outgroup, they perceive members of the ingroup in more positive tenns than members of the outgroup. Tajfel and his colleagues demonstrated this phenomenon in a series of experiments using the minimal group paradigm discussed in Chapter 3. Recall that, in this paradigm, research participants are assigned to groups based on very minimal, even trivial, criteria. Yet even when group members never interact, people show an ingroup bias in favor of members of their own group. Although the amount of THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 331 ingroup bias found in this kind of research is often small, the effect is consistent, having been repeatedly replicated in the decades since Tajfel's original research (Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992). Social identity theorists have proposed two hypotheses to explain the ingroup bias effect. These hypotheses are the categorization-competition hypothesis and self-esteem hypothesis, and the processes they describe can operate either separately or in tandem. The Categorization-competition Hypothesis. The categOriZation-COmpetitionJ hypothesis holds that categorizing oneself and others into an ingroup and an outgroup is sufficient to generate intergroup competition. Recall from Chapter 3 that when a particular social identity is activated, an outgroup homogeneity tiffect occurs: People perceive members of the outgroup as nlore similar to each other than they actually are, while seeing members of the ingroup as distinct individuals (Linville, Fischer, & Salovey, 1989; Park & Judd, 1990). As a result, people believe differences between the ingroup and the outgroup to be greater than they really are. For example, many Americans who are not of Latin American descent tend to see "Latinos" or "Hispanics" as a single cultural group, all of whose members share similar values, customs, food preferences, and so forth. In contrast, Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and people whose ancestors came from other Latin American countries, see themselves as distinct groups and can point to significant cultural and language differences that set them apart from one another (Huddy & Virtanen, 1995). When a social identity is activated, then, people place themselves and others into sharply distinct and contrasting categories. This categorization process results in people taking an "us versus them" perspective on the ingroup and outgroup (Hartstone & Augoustinos, 1995). North American culture (among others) teaches that relations between groups are naturally competitive and that other groups cannot be trusted because they are out to get the resources "our" group needs (Insko & Schopler, 1987). Categorizing people into ingroups and outgroups therefore arouses feelings of competition and a desire to win. These competitive feelings then lead to an ingroup favoritism <iffeet: People fav;J; their own group to protect their group's interest against the competition (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). On a larger scale, perceived competition can lead people to thi that outgroups cause society's problems and that intergroup contact should be avoided (Jackson, 2002). One implication of this competition arousal hypothesis is that intergroup bias should be strongest when people see their group in relation to just one other group. Intergroup bias should decrease as the number of other groups increases, because people's feelings of competition are diluted across more outgroups. Thus, the ingroup bias is found in research when participants are divided into two groups, which arouses the competitive motive, but not when people are divided into three groups, which dilutes that motive (Hartstone & Augoustinos, 1995; Spielman, 2000). The Self-esteem Hypothesis. Although the categorization-competition hypothesis provides one explanation for intergroup bias, perhaps the most studied 332 CHAPTER 9 explanation has been the self-esteem hypothesis (Aberson, Healy, & Romero, 2000; CRUbin & Hewstone, 1998). Social identity theory proposes that people are motivated to achieve and lluintain positive social identities. Because people's social identities interact -with their personal identities, having a positive social identity leads to positive self-esteem: When a group people identifY with does well, its members feel good about themselves. For example, people who identify with their colleges often enhance their self-esteem by basking in the reflected glory of successful athletic teanlS, enthusing about how "we won" and "we're number one" (Cialdini et al., 1976). Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams (1990) proposed that self-esteem plays three roles in intergroup bias. First, intergroup bias results in an increase in positive social identity by demonstrating that the ingroup is better than the outgroup; this increase in positive social identity is reflected in an increase in self-esteem. Second, because engaging in intergroup bias can raise self-esteenl, people with low self-esteem will engage in intergroup bias to raise their selfesteem. Third, when an event threatens people's self-esteem, especially an event linked to an important social identity, they can defend their self-esteem through intergroup bias. As we saw in Chapter 7, considerable research has been conducted on the selfesteem hypothesis. Although the results of the studies have not always been consistent with one another, research using the minimal group paradigm has generally supported Hogg and Abrams' (1990) three propositions (Aberson et al., 2000; Rubin & Hewstone, 1998). Thus, in line with the first proposition, researchers have found small but consistent positive correlations between self-esteenl and intergroup bias, with higher self-esteem being associated with more bias. Although this finding might seem to contradict the second proposition, that low self-esteem leads to bias, Christopher Aberson and his colleagues (2000) noted that people with low self-esteem do engage in intergroup bias but use different tactics than people with high self-esteem. People with high self-esteelll are more likely to engage in direct bias, such as by overrewarding members of their groups, whereas people with low self-esteem tend to show bias indirectly, such as by expressing a desire for greater separation from the outgroup. Finally, the results of research on the effects of self-esteem threat have generally supported the third proposition, that threats to self-esteem motivate intergroup bias. This is particularly true for individuals who strongly identifY with their ingroup, perhaps because strong identification with the ingroup increases commitment to the group (Branscombe, Ehners, Spears, & Doosje, 1999). Factors that Influence Social Identity People have multiple potential social identities--such as student, mend, sorority member, woman, child-care worker-each of which is available for activation at anyone time. What factors, then, affect which social identity or identities are activated and what detennines the strength of people's social identities? Five factors appear to be llllportant: self-categorization, a need for optimal distinctiveness, threat to the group, chronic social identities, and individual differences. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 333 Self-categorization. Researchers using the minimal group paradigm randomly assign people to artificial groups; as we have discussed, this. categorization is sufficient to create an ingroup bias, However, as we also noted, people are mor~ likely to accept a social identity-and that identity is likely to be stronger-if they self-categorize, or determine for themselves which group or groups they belong to (Perreault & Bourhis, 1999). Self-categotization theory (Turner & Oakes, 1989), proposes that categorizing oneself as a group member becomes more likely as the perceived difference between the ingroup and an outgroup increases, One way of looking at this process is in terms of distinctiveness, the exutent to which a person feels that he or s.he differs along some dimension from other people in a situation (Sampson, 1999). The greater the perceived difference, the more likely a person is to self-categorize on the differentiating dimension and take on the social identity associated with that dimension, For example, an Asian woman is more likely to identifY herself by her ethnicity when most of the people around her are White (McGuire & McGuire, 1988). Likewise, men are more likely to think of themselves as male when in a group of women but are less likely to do so when in a group of men; similarly, women are more likely to describe themselves as female when in a group of men rather than a group of women (Swan & Wyer, 1997). The particular identity self-categorization activates depends on factors that change from situation to situation; as a result, social identity can change from situation to situation, For example, social identity as a sorority member might be low for Miranda when she attends a meeting of her sorority, In this setting, she sees herself and her sorority sisters as individuals with unique personalities and there are no women from other sororities present to create a perception of difference from other groups, However, at a meeting of the Panhellemc Council, Miranda may be the only member of her sorority present, so the contrast between herself as member of her sorority and the other women present (who are members of other sororities) becomes more salient, leading Miranda to feel greater social identification with her own sorority, If Miranda goes to another meeting at which she is the only woman, her social identity as a sorority member may fade into the background and her social identity as a woman may become more salient; now the contrast is based on gender rather than sorority membership, Box 9.2 provides a real-life example of how feelings of distinctiveness can lead to prejudice. One result of self-categorization is that as social identity increases and personal identity decreases, group identity, group goals, and the influence of other group members become more important than personal identity, personal goals, and personal motives in guiding beliefs and behavior (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994). Self-categorization theory calls this process self-stereotyping: group lnemberSJ view themselves in terms of the (usually positive) stereotypes they have of their group so that the self becomes one with the group and the positive view of the group is reflected in a positive view of the self, Differentiation from outgroups, then, is one factor that motivates selfcategorization, A second &ctor is a need for certainty or correctness, Psychological research consistently shows that that people have a strong need to believe that 334 CHAPTER 9 Social identity theory holds that increased feelings of social identity lead to prejudice because of perceptions of intergroup competition and as a way of maintaining self-esteem. One factor that increases social identity is an increase in distinctiveness, which can be brought about by the presence of members of other groups. Consequently, as members of other groups become more salient to people, their feelings of prejudice should increase. This process is illustrated by the results of a study conducted by Marylee Taylor (1998). She used national survey data to examine the relationship between the proportion of Black residents in neighborhoods and anti-Black prejudice among White residents of those neighborhoods. As the figure below shows, the distinctiveness-prejudice hypothesis was partially E '"C .~ 30 ~ ;.c: 20 Cl C 0 E 10 m e 0 u 0 ---------- "u'" '6 .~e- -10 a. "Cl I!! -20 ~" o 5 10 supported: White prejudice increased as the percentage of Black residents increased to around 20 percent. Taylor also found, as would be predicted by social identity theory, that White residents' feelings of competition with Blacks, indicated by feelings of economic and political threat, were correlated with both the percentage of Black residents in their neighborhoods and their degree of prejudice. Note that prejudice peaked when the proportion of Black residents was about 20 percent and then decreased as the Black population increased. This finding reflects the principle that, under certain conditions, intergroup contact can reduce prejudice (Pettigrew, 1998). The role of intergroup contact in redUcing prejudice is discussed in Chapter 14. 15 20 25 30 Percentage of Black residents in neighborhood White Prejudice as a Function of Percentage of Black Residents in Their Neighborhoods As the percentage of Black residents increases from 0 to 20 percent, prejudice increases and then begins to decrease. Scores are standardized, which means that 0 represents the average prejudice score of all the White respondents; negative numbers indicate Jess than average prejudice and positive numbers indicate greater than average prejudice. SOURCE: Adapted from Taylor (1998, Figure 1, p. 526). THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 335 their attitudes, beliefS, and perceptions are correct (Hogg & Mullen, 1999). Uncertainty about what to believe or how to act is unpleasant because it implies that one has little control over one's life; consequently, people are motivated to reduce uncertainty by verifying the correctness of their beliefs. However, the problem with detennining whether one's beliefS are correct is that there is no concrete standard for judging abstract beliefS. People therefore seek verification of their beliefs by comparing what they believe with what other, similar people believe. If the beliefS match, this comensus is taken as evidence of correctness: The more people who agree, the more correct the beliefs are assumed to be. Hogg and Mullin (1999) proposed that one way to achieve this kind of validation is by identifying with a group that provides clear norms for structuring beliefs and guiding behavior. Because the self-stereotyping effect leads people to substitute the group identity for their personal identities, group beliefs on which everyone agrees replace less certain personal beliefs. This reduces uncertainty and removes an aversive state, so people experience the process as a pleasant one. This, in turn, reinforces self-categorization and group identification. Moreover, when people feel uncertain about the norms in a particular situation, they are more likely to identifY with groups that provide information and that reduce feelings of uncertainty (Grieve & Hogg, 1999). Self-categorization theory assumes that seeing oneself as different from others and the need for certainty are unconscious processes that lead people to categorize themselves in terms of group identity. Researchers also have studied conscious processes as precursors of self-categorization; one of those processes is making a choice to identify with a group. Not surprisingly, people who choose to join a group have a stronger social identity for that group than people who are assigned to a group (Perreault & Bourhis, 1999). There are at least two reasons why this happens. First, people tend to join groups composed of others who have attitudes and values similar to their own (Forsyth, 2006), so a strong basis for mutual identllcation already exists. Second, once people make a choice, they tend to be committed to that choice and to see it in positive terms. To do otherwise would be admitting to a mistake, which most people are reluctant to do (Markus & Zajonc, 1985). Optitnal Distinctiveness. Self-categorization theory holds that people are motivated to identifY with groups that provide them with distinct positive social identities and that fulfill their needs for certainty . .& we discussed, one result of this process is self-stereotyping, in which people replace their personal identities with the group identity. However, one shortcoming of the self-stereotyping hypothesis is that people have a countervailing need to experience themselves as unique individuals who are different from other people (Brewer, 1991; Brewer & Pickett, 1999). Marilynn Brewer (1991) therefore proposed a modification to self-categorization theory, which she calls optimal distinctiveness theory. Optimal distinctiveness theory hOldU-that people are most likely to identify with groups that provide the most satisfYing balance between personal identity and group identity. Consider the earlier example of Miranda, the young woman who represented her sorority at the Panhellenic Council meeting. As we saw, self-categorization theory proposes that she will 336 CHAPTER 9 identifY with her sorority because of the contrast she sees betvveen her sorority and the other sororities represented at the meeting. Optimal distinctiveness theory agrees that that kind of contrast lllotivates group identification, but adds that Miranda also wants to feel that, while being a member of the sorority, she can still be her own person. If the sorority tried to force MITanda to completely replace her personal identity and values with those of the sorority, her level of group identification would be reduced. r Threat to the Group. Events that threaten the well-being of the group generate L_~:ronger identification with the group. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -on the United States Illost certainly threatened the well-being of its citizens. To examine the result of this threat on group identity, Sophia Moskalenko, Clark McCauley, and Paul Rozin (2006) asked U.S. college students to respond to the question "How important to you is your country?" They found that importance ratings increased following the September 11 attack compared to ratings made 6 months earlier. Eighteen months later, ratings had decreased to the pre-attack level. However, reminding U.S. citizens of the attack can cause ingroup identification to increase once more. College students who were asked to think back to the events of September 11, 2001, increased their favorability ratings of President George W. Bush (an indicator of ingroup identification) compared to students in a control condition (Landau et al., 2004). Interestingly, these approval ratings increased for both politically liberal and politically conservative students. I ,ChroniC Social Identities. Although social identity theory emphasizes that social identities that can change frOIn situation to situation, depending on the context, people also have chronic identities that influence their behavior (Shennan, Hamilton, & Lewis, 1999). Chronic identities are ones that are always with us, regardless of how much the situation changes. As Stephen Shennan and his collea~ gues (1999) note, "A ballplayer on the playing field will obviously self-categorize in terms of that athletic category, but may also think of himself as 'a black ballplayer.' A physician will self-categorize as a member of the medical profession, but if female, may often think ofhel~elf as 'the woman doctor'" (p. 92). Chronic identities may be especially llllportant for those people whose minority status makes them distinctive in any intergroup situation regardless of any other identities that situational factors activate. Individual Differences. Just as chronic identities can influence social identity, so can other chronic personal characteristics, such as personality and ideology. Although, as we saw in Chapter 7, researchers have studied the relationships between individual difference variables and prejudice for a long time, social identity theory researchers have just begun to look for links between these variables and social identity. For example, Stephane Perreault and Richard Bourhis (1999) studied the relationship of ethnocentrism, the tendency to favor one's own ethnic and nationality groups over other such groups, to social identification. Using the minimal group paradigm, they found that people high in ethnocentrislll wefe more likely to identity with their assigned groups than were people low in THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 337 ethnocentrism. Thus, some people may have a predisposition to identify more strongly with the groups to which they belong iudependent of any situational factors that might be operating. Issues in Social Identity Theory Although social identity theory has proven to be a useful framework for studying prejudice, a few issues require more research. These issues include whether social identity processes can lead to outgroup derogation as well as ingroup favoritism, the factors that determine whether ingroup m_embers will respond to aggression against a fellow group member, and the relation between social identity and intergroup tolerance. Ingroup Favoritism versus Outgroup Derogation. Generally, research on] social identity theory has found that although people show favoritism toward members of their ingroups, they do not necessarily penalize outgroup members (Brewer, 1979, 1999; Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). According to Charles Stangor and Scott Learly (2006) people are motivated by two important social goals: protecting and enhancing the self and the ingroup and affiliation and social hannony. Consistent with the research we have discussed so far, people receive psychological benefit from being part of a group and ingroup favoritism is usually the primary goal. However, people also are part of a larger community that includes outgroups, and, in general, they approach those interactions with respect. That is, "[i]n general, people view other people positively, act positively toward them in most cases, help them if they can, and expect others to react positively to them in a similar fashion (Stangor & Leary, 2006, p. 250). For example, Christine Theimer, Melartie Killen, and Charles Stangor (2001) studied preschoolers' willingness to exclude another child from an activity that was stereotypically incongruent, such as a boy joirting a group of girls who were playing with doUs. They found that the majority of both iugroup members (girls) and outgroup members (boys) judged that it was wrong to exclude the child from the activity. Moreover, the children's reasoning reflected an attention to social hannony, including concerns about fairness and being nice. Adults also consider fairness in their evaluations of outgroup members. White college students who evaluated job applicants showed a preference for hiring a member of the ingroup (White applicants) over the outgroup (Black applicants) even though, objectively, they were equally qualified. However, they did recommend hiring the Black applicant 45 percent of the time (compared to 75 percent of the time for the White applicant); based on the applicants' objective qualifications, each should have been recommended for hiring 50 percent of the time. This suggests that the evaluators were at least somewhat fair in their assessments of the Black candidate. That is, preference for the ingroup did not translate into rejection of the outgroup (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000). Vicarious Retribution. Despite these research findings, by looking at the world around us, it is easy to see that ingroup favoritism is often accompanied 338 CHAPTER 9 by hamlful discrimination and hostile attitudes toward outgroups, including ~aggreSSion against the outgroup. Under some conditions, ingroup members will aggress against outgroup members even when they themselves have not been directly harmed, an act Brian Licke! and his colleagues (Ijcke!, Miller, Stenstrom, Denson, & Schmader, 2006) tenn vicarious retribution. Lickel and colleagues ~offer the example of violence in Northern Ireland, perpetrated by two opposing groups, the Irish Republican Army, whose members wanted Northern Ireland to reunite with the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic, and the Protestant militia, whose members wanted Northern Ireland to continue under British rule. Prior to the truce between these warring factions, Inembers of both groups participated in retributive killings. These killings occurred even when the retaliators did not themselves experience violence, but a member of their religious group had been hmned by the opposing group. How do ingroup members decide whether to engage in vicarious retribution? Lickel and colleagues (2006) propose that ingroup members first appraise the action in question and decide whether it was directed toward their group and, if so, whether han11 was intended (see Figure 9.1). Ingroup melubers also consider whether the act was intentional. Hence, if a Catholic was murdered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, ll1ernbers of the Protestant militia would have considered Initial Event-Construal ---.... Ingroup Identification ---.... Outgroup Entitativity ---.... Vicarious Retribution • Event Categorization • Group Pride • Casual Inferences • Act Construal • Group-member Empathy • Dispositional Inferences t t Moderators Group Power • PubliCity of the event • Authority structures FIG U R E 9.1 A Framework for understanding Acts of Vicarious Retribution This framework proposes a step-by-step process that ingroup members follow in deciding whether to carry out an act of vicarious retribution. tngroup members first consider whether the event is relevant to their ingroup. If so, their motivation to respond will be affected by how strongly they identify with their ingroup, by whether the action threatened group pride, and by normative pressures to respond. If these factors favor response, the ingroup members consider whether the outgroup is a unified and coherent whole; if so, vicarious retribution is more likely. Moderating factors, such as group power and publicity of the event, are also considered. SOURCE: From Lickel, B., Miller, N., Stenstrom, D.M., Jenson, T.F., & 5chamder, T. (2006). Vicarious retribution: The role of collective blame in intergroup aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 372-390, Figure 1, p. 375. Reprinted by permission. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 339 whether the murder was related to the Protestant/Catholic conilict or had another cause, such as a domestic argument or a botched robbery attempt. If the ingroup members decide the aggressive act was due to conllict between the ingroup and the outgroup, the likelihood of vicarious retribution would then depend on how motivated the ingroup is to respond (Lickel et al., 2006). Factors related to group identity, such as group pride, group-member empathy, and nonnative influences come into play here. If the group's status is threatened, if they feel empathy for the person who experienced the harm, or if cultural noDUS suggest that retaliation is appropriate, motivation to respond will be high and vicarious retribution is more likely. Yet even if one or more of these factors is operating, ingroup members filaY not retaliate. This is especially true if the person responsible for the original violent action is unavailable for retribution, but instead another outgroup member will be the target of the retaliation. In making this decision, ingroups consider whether the outgroup is seen as a unified and coherent whole and so is seen as collectively responsible for the action. If so, ingroup members are more likely to act against an outgroup member, even if that person did not commit the original act. Even if these conditions are met, ingroup provocation may not result in vicarious retribution. Lickel and colleagues (2006) describe additional factors that affect whether an ingroup will respond to an aggressive act. One is the power and status of the ingroup relative to the outgroup: High-power ingroups are more likely to engage in retribution. Another is whether the provocation was publicly known; if so, the ingroup's pride was more likely threatened and their motivation to respond will be enhanced. If their retaliation will likely also become public, they are similarly more likely to act. Finally, if the initial aggressive act was promoted by one of the outgroups' leaders or was directed toward a leader of the ingroup, vicarious retribution will be more likely. This model can also explain why people fail to respond to genocide or mass violence in other countries. For example, although the violence in Darfur has resulted in the loss of over 400,000 lives and the displacement of over 2,500,000 people, international response has been slow and ineffective. According to the vicarious retribution model, members of other countries have failed to curb the violence because, although morally reprehensible, it is not direcdy relevant to them. Hence, although the Bush administration called for action to stop the genocide (President Bush discusses genocide, 2007), the international community did not do so, perhaps because, as stated in the International Herald Tribul1e, it believed that "[r]esponsibility for the Darfur horrors lies squarely with the government of the Sudan" (The genocide continues, 2008). Social Identity and Intergroup Tolerance, Although social identity theory has focused on the negative intergroup effects of social identity, researchers and theorists have begun to address how social identity relates to intergroup tolerance. One approach to this issue focuses on conditions for tolerance and another on the complexity of social identity. Amelie Mummendey and Michael Wenzel (1999) have suggested that, under some conditions, ingroup identification can lead to tolerance rather than hostility. 340 CHAPTER 9 If the ingroup either does not believe that it and the outgroup share a common set of values, for example, or does not see their own values as lllore valid than those of the outgroup, then there will be no hostility (see also Stangor & Leary, 2006). Tbey illustrate tlieir point witli the case of Germans' attitudes toward Turks: "Many Germans, although on the one hand generally having negative attitudes towards Turks living in Gennany, on the other hand love to spend their holidays in Turkey. Because during their holidays they are on Turkish territory and in the Turkish culture, they may to a lesser extent represent Turks and themselves as [being governed by the same set of values) and thus experience strange habits and customs as less of a nonn violation or deviance" (p. 169). Noting that people have many potential social identities, Sonia Roccas and Marilynn Brewer (2002; see also Brewer & Pierce, 2005) have proposed that the more complex a person's social identity is, the more tolerant of other groups that person will be. A person with a complex social identity is aware of having multiple identities and sees people who share any of those identities as part of his or her ingroup. In contrast, a person with a simple social identity focuses on only one identity and sees only people who share that one identity as part of the ingroup. Consider, for example, a woman who is Black and a lawyer. If she has a complex social identity, she will view all women, all Black people, and all lawyers as members of her ingroup; if she has a simple social identity that focuses on her profession, she will view all lawyers as members of her ingroup, but exclude anyone who is not a lawyer, even women and Black people who are not lawyers. Roccas and Brewer (2002) postulate that a complex social identity leads people to be more tolerant of group differences because a complex identity reduces the motivation to self-categorize as a member of anyone group. For exanlple, having multiple concurrent social identities reduces feelings of distinctiveness-the person sees him- or herself as fitting in with many groups-and low distinctiveness leads to a lower likelihood of self-categorization. In addition, Roccas and Brewer suggest that a complex social identity protects people from threats to social identity that can lead to ingroup bias: If people have more than one social identity, a threat to one identity can be offset by focusing on a more positive identity until the threat has passed. Looking Back at Social Identity Theory We have spent a lot of time discussing social identity theory because it is one of the most important theories of intergroup relations and so has developed in a complex and multifaceted way. Therefore, let us take a moment to put it all together. Figure 9.2 sUIllinarizes social identity theory in diagrammatic form. At the center of the theory, of course, is social identity: the part of one's self-concept that COInes from membership in groups. Social identity derives from both temporary, situational factors such as self-categorization and the need for optinlal distinctiveness, and from long-tenn factors such as chronic identities and individual difference variables. Self-categorization, in tum, derives from feelings of distinctiveness, need for certainty, and choosing one's identities. Taking on a social identity leads to THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 341 j Distinctiveness : I Need for certainty J t j Self-categorization ~ I Choice of identity IL t j Optimal distinctiveness : rl Feelings of ~ competition I Chronic identities ) Social f-. I Intergroup bias ~ Positive identity and I identity self-esteem I Individual difference I variables I rl Motivation to maintain a positive identity FIG U R E 9.2 Social Identity Theory Social identity derives from both situational factors such as self-categorization and the need for optimal distinctiveness and from long-term factors such as chronic identities and individual difference variables. Self"categorization derives from feelings of distinctiveness, need for certainty, and choosing one's identities. Taking on a social identity leads to feelings of competition with outgroups and a motivation to maintain a positive social identity. These factors lead to ingroup bias, which promotes a positive social identity and self-esteem, thereby reinforcing the social identity. feelings of competition with contrasting outgroups and a motivation to maintain a positive social identity. These factors lead to ingroup bias, which promotes a positive social identity and self-esteem, thereby reinforcing the social identity. RELATIVE DEPRIVATION THEORY Relative deprivation theory (Crosby, 1976; Davis, 1959; Runciman, 1966) 1 addresses the questions of how people become dissatisfied with some aspect of their lives and how they react to that russatisfaction. The theory holds that people become dissatisfied if they either compare their current situation to similar 342 CHAPTER 9 U ituations they had experienced in the past or compare themselves to other people currently in their situation and as a result decide that they lack some resource that they deserve to have. They are not necessarily deprived in absolute terms; in fact, their objective situation might be quite good (Tyler & Smith, 1998). l Rather, they feel deprived relative to what they had in the past or relative to people who have the resource they believe they deserve, giving rise to the term relative deprivation. Relative deprivation's relation to prejudice comes in how people -respond to feelings of deprivation: If people blame another group for causing the deprivation, they come to dislike that group and its melnbers. The concept of relative deprivation originated in research conducted with American soldiers during World War II. One aspect of that research dealt with soldiers' levels of satisfaction (or perhaps more accurately, dissatisfaction) with army life. There were a number of unexpected findings, among which was that soldiers in the air corps expressed more dissatisfaction than soldiers in the military police. This finding was unexpected because promotions and the consequent raises in pay and other benefits came much faster in the air corps than in the military police (Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star, & Williams, 1949). The researchers explained these findings in tenns of relative deprivation: Because ainnen saw many fellow soldiers promoted quickly, they felt deprived when they were not promoted; in contrast, because military policenlen saw few people being promoted quickly, they did not feel deprived relative to their colleagues and as a result felt more satisfied with the prOlTIotion systeul. Since World War II there has been a vast anl0unt of research conducted on relative deprivation theory in a wide variety of contexts (see Walker & Smith, 2002, for a history of this research). Here, of course, we focus on its relationship to prejudice and intergroup relations. Mter describing how the theory proposes that dissatisfaction arises and how people respond to dissatisfaction, this section looks at research on the relation of relative deprivation to prejudice and at the related concepts of relative gratification and scapegoating. Relative Deprivation, Dissatisfaction, and Resentment Relative deprivation theory holds that people become dissatisfied when they compare their cUlTent outcomes with sonle standard. If they see that they are getting less than the standard, they then feel deprived. As shown in Figure 9.3, the standard can be based either on personal experience or from comparing one's own situation to another person's situation (social comparison). James Davies (1969) proposed that personal experience can cause feelings of relative deprivation when reality fails to meet people's expectations. Davies noted that people's expectations for future outcomes tend to increase over time as their actual outconles get better. For example, in the United States the overall standard of living increased from World War II until the 1980s; people got used to this steady increase and expected it to continue, and children carne to expect to do better economically than their parents did. According to Davies's nlodel, people are satisfied as long as their outcomes are a good match for their expectations. However, if outcomes begin to decline, as when the United States began to THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 343 l Personal experience J I Social comparison J I I I Expected/deserved II+-·-----,~-----> Actual outcome outcome I '---____ --l Procedural justice l Perception of relative I deprivation/low distributive justice I Dissatisfaction/resentment! I Hostility toward perceived I cause of deprivation FIG U R E 9,3 Relative Deprivation as a Source of Dissatisfaction and Resentment People compare the outcomes they receive to what they expect and believe that they deserve to receive. This expectation is based on what they received in the past and on what other people are receiving. If they see their outcomes as being less than they deserve, feelings of relative deprivation and low distributive justice (unfairness) ensue. These emotions lead to feelings of dissatisfaction and resentment.. which are intensified if people believe that the outcomes are distributed using unfair procedures (low procedural justice) as well as being too low. Resentment of deprivation leads to hostility toward the perceived cause of the deprivation. lose jobs because of increasing competition from other parts of the world, an increasingly large gap forms between expectations and outcomes. When the size of the gap becomes too large, people feel deprived relative to their past experience. This process is illustrated by Michael Kimmel's (2002) description of men who join White supremacist groups: They are the sons of skilled workers in industries like textiles and tobacco, the sons of owners of small :£anus, shops, and grocery stores. Buffeted by global political and economic forces, the sons have inherited litde of their fathers' legacies. The family fanns have been lost to foreclosure, the small shops squeezed out by Wal-Marts and malls. These young men face a spiral of downward mobility and economic 344 CHAPTER 9 uncertainty. They complain that they are squeezed between the omnivorous jaws of global capital concentration and a federal bureaucracy that is at best indifferent to their plight and at worst complicit in their demise (p. Bll). That is, these people feel deprived relative to what they had come to expect to receive based on their parents' successes. The second source of feelings of relative deprivation is social cOlllparison: People see that others have something and want it; not having it leads theln to feel deprived relative to the comparison other, This was the process that was operating among the air corps soldiers during World War II (Stouffer et al., 1949). l Thus, feelings of relative deprivation are similar to feelings of unfairness, or what is known as low distributive justice (Greenberg, 1996): the perception that outcomes are not being distributed on the expected basis that people who deserve more get more, but on some other, unfair basis, such as ingroup favoritism. As shown in Figure 9.3, this perception of relative deprivation or unfairness leads to feelings of dissatisfacrion and resentment. Robert Folger (1987) points [ out that the negative feelings are exacerbated if people believe that procedural justice---the fairness of the process by which rewards are distributed (Greenberg, 1996)-is also low. For example, a student might feel deprived and upset if she sees that someone got an A on a test on which she got a C; she'd feel even more upset if she thought the other person got the A unfairly, such as by cheating. Conversely, John Jost (1995) has proposed that convincing people that procedural justice is high when distributive justice is low can reduce feelings of dissatisfaction and resentment. Thus, Brenda Major (1994) has suggested that one reason many women are willing to accept less pay than men is that they believe that they do not deserve more nloney. That is, these women may believe that their outcomes are unfair (low distributive justice), but also believe that the difference in salaries between women and n1en is appropriate, so dissatisfaction is low (high procedural justice). When feelings of dissatisfacrion and resentment are aroused, they can lead to hostility toward the group perceived to be benefiting at one's expense. One way these feelings of hostility can be expressed is in the form of prejudice (Duckitt & Mphuthing, 2002; Taylor, 2002). Relative Deprivation and Prejudice Relative deprivation researchers make a distinction between personal and group [ elative deprivation (Runciman, 1966). Personal (or egoistic) relative deprivation refers to the degree to which a person feels deprived as an individual. In contrast, group (or fraternal) relative deprivation refers to the degree to which a person feels that a group he or she identifies with has been deprived of some benefit, independent of the amount of relative deprivation experienced. This distinction is important because, generally, group relative deprivation has been found to be related to prejudice whereas personal relative deprivation has not. The classic study of the relationship of relative deprivation to prejudice was conducted by Reeve Vanneman and Thomas Pettigrew (1972). Using survey data THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 345 of White respondents from four northern cities, Vanneman and Pettigrew classified respondents as personally deprived if they saw their economic gains over the prior 5 years as being less than those of other White people and as experiencing group deprivation if they saw their gains as being less than those of Black people. Vanneman and Pettigrew were therefore able to construct four groups of respondents: (1) those high in both personal and group relative deprivation, (2) those low in both, (3) those high in personal relative deprivation but low in group relative deprivation, and (4) those high in group deprivation but low in personal relative deprivation. They found a modest relationship betvveen group relative deprivation and prejudice: 54 percent of the White people high in group relative deprivation expressed negative attitudes toward Black people compared to 42 percent of Whites who were low in group relative deprivation. In contrast, personal relative deprivation was unrelated to prejudice, with 48 percent of the members of both the high and low groups expressing negative attitudes. Note the importance of the relativity of the feelings of deprivation: Although the White respondents in these surveys were objectivel)' better off than their Mrican American contemporaries, 42 percent of them thought they were losing out relative to Mrican Americans, and it was they who expressed the most prejudice. Ursula Dibble (1981) found similar results in data from a survey of African Anlericans that was conducted at about the same time as Vanneman and Pettigrew's (1972) survey. Dibble studied relative deprivation in terms of job discrimination: People who had themselves experienced job discrimination were classified as personally deprived and those who had not experienced it as not deprived. Group relative deprivation was assessed in tenus of how much job discrimination Blacks in general experienced. Dibble used a measure of hostility as her dependent variable: advocating violence as a means of gaining civil rights. Her results paralleled those of Vanneman and Pettigrew's study of Whites: 28 percent of those high in group relative deprivation advocated violence compared to 13 percent of those low in group relative deprivation. In addition, those high in both forms of relative deprivarion were the most likely to express hostility. In Dibble's study, personal relative deprivation may have resulted in additional hostility because it was defined in very personal tenns-direct experience of job discriminationwhereas Vanneman and Pettigrew defmed it more broadly in tenus of general economic gains. In the years since Dibble (1981) and Vanneman and Pettigrew (1972) conducted their studies, research has continued to show a relationship between group relative deprivation and factors such as prejudice and hostility toward outgroups, both in the Urtited States and in other countries (Brewer & Brown, 1998; Taylor & Moghaddarn, 1994). Although most of this research has been correlational in nature, experiments in which participants' feelings of group relative deprivation are manipulated indicate that relative deprivation causes feelings of prejudice and hostility and that it is these negative emotions that lead to prejudiced reacrions (Grant & Brown, 1995). Furthermore, relarive deprivation can lead to prejudice and hostility toward a minority group even when that group did not cause the deprivation (Guimond & Dambrun, 2002). Clearly, then, feelings of relative deprivation and the associated resentm_ent playa role in intergroup prejudice, 346 CHAPTER 9 Also, it is one of the few theories of prejudice that can explain why SOllle objectively well-off people explain their prejudices as arising from their victimization by less well-off groups (Tyler & Smith, 1998). Relative Gratification [ In contrast to the feeling that people are not getting all they deserve, people also experience relative gratification, or the feeling that things are getting better (see Guimond & Dambrun, 2002). Bernard Grofman and Edward Muller (1973) have proposed that both of these feelings can lead to prejudice. Using survey data, they divided respondents into three groups: those who thought their economic situation would be worse in the future than in the past (relative deprivation), those who thought their economic situation would be better in the future than in the past (relative gratification), and those who thought things would stay the same. Gro:finan and Muller assessed resentment and discontent in tenns of endorsement of political violence as a way to bring about change. They found that both people who thought things would get better and those who thought things would get worse were more willing to endorse political violence than those who saw no change ahead for themselves. More recently, Guimond and Dambrun (2002) replicated Grofman and Muller's (1973) results experimentally, using a measure of ethnic prejudice as their dependent variable. They found that both people who had experienced relative gratification and those who had experienced relative deprivation expressed nlOre prejudice than members of a control group. Research in a natural setting, based on responses from a representative sample of South Mticans, also showed that perceptions of relative deprivation and relative gratification lead to prejudice against immigrants, a prune target for discrimination in that country (Dambrun, Taylor, McDonald, Crush, & Meot, 2006). Why do both deprivation and gratifIcation lead to prejudice? Guimond and Dambrun (2002) suggest that it is because people define their self-interest differently in the two situations. People who are relatively deprived focus on their perceived losses and experience resentment and hostility toward those whom they blame for those losses. In contrast, people who are relatively gratified focus on their group's superior position relative to outgroups. As proposed by social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; see Chapter 7), they hold negative beliefS about outgroups as a means of justifYing their relatively advantaged position. People who see themselves as neither deprived nor gratified relative to outgroups-that is, people who perceive their ingroups and outgroups as having equivalent outcomes-have neither the need to ascribe blame for loss nor the need to justify their greater outcomes as motives for prejudice. Scapegoating One aspect of Guimond and Dambrun's (2002) findings that you may have noticed is that people sometimes express prejudice against others who played r no role in their relative deprivation. This process of blaming (and sometimes THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 347 punishing) an innocent outgroup for the misfortunes of one's ingroup is caUed \ scapegoating. Perhaps the most infamous example of scapegoating was th..:J Nazis' blaming the Jewish people for all the economic and social problems that beset Germany following World War L The Nazis then used the Jews' supposed guilt as a justification for murdering six million Jews. Blaming an outgroup for the ingroup's problems is not a new phenomenon. For example, Gordon Allport (1954) quoted the 3rd century Roman writer Tertullian as having observed that "[the Roman people] take the Christians to be the cause of every disaster to the state, of every misfortune to the people. If the Tiber reaches the wall, if the Nile does not reach the fields, if the sky does not move or if the earth does, if there is a famine, or if there is a plague, the cry is at once, 'The Christians to the lions' " (p. 243). In essence, then, scapegoating provides what might be called a "designated villain" to explain the deprivation and frustration caused by social and economic problems. Two theories have been proposed to explain scapegoating, frustration-aggression-displacement theory and Glick's (2002; 2005) ideological theory, Both theories view scapegoating as a response to frustration; however, they differ in their explanations of the psychological processes that lead from perceived deprivation to intergroup hostility. Frustration-aggression-displacement Theory. Frustration-aggression-displacement theory was one of the first theories proposed to explain scapegoaring (Allport, 1954), This theory is based on the frustration theory of aggression, which John Dollard and his colleagues derived from the psychoanalytic theory of aggression (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939; see Berkowitz, 1993, for a more recent account of the theory), The frustration theory of aggression holds that fru~s-j tration causes aggression. The preferred target of that aggression is the cause of the ' frustration, but if it is not possible to be aggressive toward that source, aggression will be displaced onto a more readily available target, For example, a person who is treated unfairly by her boss might feel like taking aggressive action either physically or verbally, but may do nothing out of concern for losing her job. However, she vents her frustration when she gets home by yelling at her dog; that is, she displaces her aggression from her boss to her dog. This displacement can occur at the societal level as well. For example, post-World War I Gennany faced a host of social and economic problems, including hyperinflation of the currency, high crime rates, and political riots. Because there were no clear causes for these problems, the Nazis exploited the situation by blaming the problems on a Jewish conspiracy to undermine Gennany. Although the frustration-aggression-displacement theory of scapegoating has been around for a long time, it has a number of shortcomings. One of the biggest is that more than 60 years of research have failed to provide strong support for it (Duckitt, 1994; Glick, 2002; 2005). Even the study most commonly cited in support of the theory, Carl Hovland and Robert Sears' (1940) study of the relation between deteriorating economic conditions and racial lynchings in the United States, has been shown to be problematic. Hovland and Sears postulated that White Americans would scapegoat African Americans during economic downturns and provided historical data that appeared to show a correlation between negative 348 (HAPTER 9 economic indicators and lynchings. However, using more modem statistical tools, Donald Green and his colleagues (Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998) showed that the correlation did not really exist. In addition, they were not able to find correlations between economic downturns and hate crimes directed at other minority groups. Another problem is that frustration-aggression theory is, at heart, a theOlY of individual, not group, behavior: The theory cannot explain why individual frustration should result in scapegoating of groups (Glick, 2002; 2005). Even at the individual level, support for the theolY is weak. For example, compared to nonprejudiced people, prejudiced people who are flUstrated show Incre aggression toward members of groups against whom they hold prejudices. However, prejudiced individuals also show lllore aggression toward people against whom they are not prejudiced. Thus, prejudiced people seem to be aggressive against everyone, not just the targets of their prejudices as the theory would predict (Duckitt, 1994). Finally, the frustration-aggression-displacenlent theory cannot explain why SOllie outgroups are chosen as scapegoats while others are not (Duckitt, 1994), a problem Allport noted in 1954. However, a more recent theory of scapegoating, Peter Glick's (2002; 2005) ideological theory, does explain how scapegoats are chosen. Ideological Theory. Figure 9.4 shows Glick's (2002; 2005) ideological theory j Of scapegoating. The theory starts with a perception of group relative deprivation. If there is no clear cause for the deprivation, people search for one. If an i.deology (such as Nazism) exists that provides a scapegoat to explain their predicament, people take up that ideology because it fulfills their need to understand the cause of their deprivation. The ideology can also fulfill other needs, such as having a positive social identity, by providing a common outgroup for people to contrast themselves with, and by showing that the predicament is the outgroup's fault, so ingroup Inembers should not feel bad about themselves. Several factors increase a group's vulnerability to becoming a scapegoat (Duckitt, 1994; Glick, 2002; 2005). Scapegoats usually have little power so that they cannot effectively resist or retaliate for any actions taken against them. They are typically outgroups that are visible enough in society to be salient to the ingroup. Visibility can take a number of forms, including physical characteristics such as skin color or well-publicized deviance from social norms as in the case of a political group. They usually are disliked and already stereotyped in ways that make them believable as the cause of the group's deprivation. For example, in describing the German Nazis' scapegoating of Jews, Ervin Staub (2002) noted that "there had been a long history of anti-Semitisnl, with periods of intense mistreatment of Jews .... In addition to early Christian anti-Semitism ... , the intense anti-Semitism of Luther ... , who described Jews in language similar to that later used by Hitler, was an important influence. Centuries of discrimination and persecution further enhanced anti-Semitism and made it part of German culture" (p. 15). Finally, the scapegoated group tends to be seen as a threat to the ingroup, a theme that is usually strongly emphasized in ideological propaganda. Commitment to the ideology leads to hostile action against the scapegoated group. Because people need to feel justified in taking such action, the action both reinforces and enhances the negative stereotypes of the scapegoat: People THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 349 Outgroup that is • of low power • visible • disliked • appropriately stereotyped • seen as a threat Reinforcement! exaggeration of stereotypes and resentment Frustration/group deprivation without a clear cause Search for a cause Commitment to ideology that provides a scapegoat as the cause ~ Ideologically motivated action (e.g., hate crimes) FIG U R E 9.4 Peter Glick's (2002) Ideological Model of Scapegoating Group relative deprivation without a clear causal agent leads to a search for a cause of the deprivation. If an ideology (such as Nazism) exists that provides a causal scapegoat, people adhere to the ideology because it fulfills their need to understand the cause of their deprivation. The ideology can also fulfill other needs, such as social identity and collective self-esteem. Outgroups are chosen as scapegoats if they have little power, are visible, are disliked, are stereotyped in ways that make them appropriate as the cause of the deprivation, and are seen as a threat to the ingroup. Commitment to the ideology leads to action against the scapegoated group. The action both reinforces the stereotypes and commitment to the ideology. The reinforced stereotypes lend additional apparent validity to the ideology and help justify the actions taken against the scapegoated group. SOURCE: Adapted from Peter Glick. (2002). "Sacrificial Lambs dressed in wolves' clothing: Envious prejudice, ideology, and the scapegoating of Jews," Figure 5.2, p. 126.ln Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust, ed. by Newman and Erber. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. reason that the outgroup must in fact be bad to deserve what the ingroup did to them. Taking action in support of the ideology also tends to increase commitment to the ideology. The reinforced stereotypes lend additional verisimilitude to the ideology. Glick's (2002; 2005) ideological theory is very new and as yet has not been tested vvith research. However, it does an excellent job of explaining the process of scapegoating and so holds great promise. INTEGRATED THREAT THEORY Although we have discussed realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and relative deprivation theory separately, they are, in fact, closely linked. Walter and Cookie Stephan's (Stephan et al., 2002; Stephan & Stephan, 2000) integrated threat theory of prejudice, illustrated in Figure 9.5, provides one way of showing how the theories relate to one another. Stephan and Stephan propose that prejudice derives from three types of perceived threat to one's ingroup: intergroup anxiety, perceptions of realistic threats, and perceptions of symbolic threats, Intergroup anxiety, di'lCussed in Chapter 5, consists of factors that make people feel anxious or nervous in the presence of members of other groups. These 350 CHAPTER 9 factors include such things as fear of being embarrassed by saying or doing the wrong thing, aversive prejudices, and so forth. Perceptions of realistic threat derive from intergroup conilict and competition, and from feelings of group relative deprivation. &" noted earlier, sometimes groups really are in competition for resources and so constitute threats to each other and, as research using the rnirllmal group paradigm has found, simply putting people into groups can create ingroup favoritism which, in tum, can stimulate competition. Feelings of relative deprivation Inay or may not stem from real deplivation, but, as we saw earlier, in either case bLurring another group for the deprivation creates hostility toward that group. In addition, feelings of group relative deprivation can lead to feelings of cOlupetitiveness with the outgroup (Mummendey, Kessler, Klink, & Mielke, 1999). Symbolic threats come from perceptions that the outgroup differs from the ingroup in tenus of values, attitudes, beliefS, moral standards, and other symbolic, as opposed to material, factors. Perceptions of such differences are often associated with the belief that the outgroup is trying to undermine those factoIS, especially values, and destroy the ingroup by destroying its cultural underpinnings (Biernat, Vescio, Theno, & Crandall, 1996). Ingroup identification Intergroup anxiety from factors such as: • fear of embarrassment • aversiVe prejudice Perception of realistic threat from: • intergroup conflict and competition • group relative deprivation Perception of symbolic threat from perceived differences in: • values • attitudes • beliefs • moral standards Expressed prejudice FIG U R E 9.5 Walter and Cookie Stephan's (2000) Integrated Threat Theory of Prejudice Greater identification with the ingroup leads to more perceived realistic and symbolic threats and more intergroup anxiety. Higher levels of these factors lead to more prejudice. Adapted from Walter G. Stephan and Cookie W. Stephan. (2000). An integrated threat theory of prejudice. SOURCE: Adapted from Walter G. Stephan and Cookie W. Stephan, 2000. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination, Figure 2.4, p. 37. Reprinted by permission of lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 351 Identification with the ingroup is associated with all three types of threat. As shown earlier in Figure 9.2, increases in ingroup identification lead to increases in feelings of competitiveness with the outgroup, and increased social identity has been found to be associated with perceptions of greater group relative deprivation in both correlational research (Mull1mendey et al., 1999; Tropp & Wright, 1999) and experimental research (Grant & Browu, 1995). Furtherruore, stronger identification with the ingroup reflects stronger investment in group values, moral standards, and so forth. Therefore, people strongly identified with the ingroup are more sensitive to seeing ingroup-outgroup differences in values as threaterting (Stephan et aI., 2002). Blake Riek and his colleagues (Riek, Mania, & Gaertner, 2006) reviewed ahilost 100 tests of integrated threat theoty and found that, as predicted by the model shown in Figure 9.5, identification with the ingroup was related to realistic threat, symbolic threat, and intergroup anxiety. These, in tum, each had unique influences on attitudes toward the outgroup. However, the relationship between both realistic threat and intergroup anxiety was stronger for low- rather than high-status outgroups. Overall, then, integrated threat theory provides a useful modelfor tying intergroup conflict and competition, relative deprivation, and other factors into a package of perceptions that potentiates prejudice. HATE GROUP MEMBERSHIP Hate groups represent an extreme fonn of social identity. A hate group is aD organization whose central principles include hostility toward racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups. Most hate groups also espouse White racial supremacy and advocate the segregation or deportation of minority groups, or, in a few cases, the annihilation of those groups. Some hate groups, such as the one called Christian Identity, claim to be religions or churches; others, such as the Ku Klux Klan do not claim religious status but do assert that Christianity is one of their guiding principles. A number of hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, are fairly well organized with a national structure, whereas others, such as racist skinheads, are loose coalitions of local groups. Hate groups engage in a variety of activities, including holding membership meetings, rallies, and bring-the-family social events; engaging in protests and demonstrations; distributing pamphlets; producing television shows for public access cable channels; runrting World Wide Web sites; and producing and distributing recordings of racist music. Interestingly, despite the violent rhetoric hate group leaders often use in their speeches and literature, with a few exceptions (such as racist skinheads) the groups rarely initiate violent activities and often disown members who engage in violence (Levin & McDevitt, 2002). A study of extremist internet sites found that only 16.6 percent had content that specifically urged violence and that it was common for sites to contain language specifically condemning violence (Gerstenfeld, Grant, & Chiang, 2003). The groups operate this way because they want to project an image of nonnalcy, an image of people who prefer to disagree peacefully with government racial policy, but who are also willing to engage in arrued defense of what they see as their rights (Blee, 2002, 2007; Ezekiel, 1995). 352 CHAPTER 9 The purpose of this section is to examine the psychological factors that predispose people to join hate groups, the way in which hate groups recruit new members, how the groups socialize recruits into becoming "good" group members, and factors that motivate people to leave the groups. Space does not pennit a discussion of the historical, political, and sociological factors that have led to the rise and continuation of hate groups in the United States. Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile (2000), among others, have done an excellent job of covering this complex topic. Most of the information about hate group members comes from ethnographic studies of current and fonner members, especially those conducted by James Aho (1988, 1990), Tore Bj0rgo (1998), Kathleen Blee (2002), and Raphael Ezekiel (1995, 2002). As Blee (2002) notes, one must be careful when evaluating people's reports of their motivations because autobiographical memory is constructive; that is, people, usually unconsciously, select and interpret past events in tenus of their CUlTent belief systems to help them justify those beliefS. Nonetheless, the consistencies in the findings of the research conducted by Aha, Blee, Ezekiel (who worked in different parts of the United States at different times), and Bj0rgo (who worked in Europe) provide support for the generality of the motivational themes and group processes they identified. Why People Join Hate Groups There is no one reason why people join hate groups. Rather, there seem to be a set of factors that, in various combinations, lead people to see joining a hate group as something reasonable to do. Ar110ng these factors are the person's racial attitudes, being in search of solutions to problems and questions that have arisen in the person's life, youthful rebellion, the allure of violence, and being male. Racial Attitudes. Clearly, racial attitudes playa role in hate group membership: No one who holds nonracist attitudes is likely to join such a group. However, although rabid racism might characterize a few people at the time they join hate groups, most new recruits do not hold extreme racist attitudes (Aho, 1990; Bj0rgo, 1998; Blee, 2002, 2007). Perhaps because oftllls, about one fifth of the Web sites -include explicit statements that the group is not racist (Gerstenfeld et al., 2003). Instead of explicit racism, hate groups are often are characterized by what Philomena Essed (1991) called everyday racism or what James Jones (1997) called cultural racism. Everyday racism and cultural racism reflect the assumption inherent in l11uch of North American culture that the only correct social and cultural values are European Christian values. This assumption, in turn, promotes ~negative, stereotyped views of people, such as members of minority groups, whose values are presumed to differ frorn the European Christian nann (Biernat et al., 1996). Everyday racism is the process that, for example, lets people laugh at racist jokes and leads them to feel uncOlnfortable in the presence of minority group members, even though they see themselves as unprejudiced and would not intentionally act in a racist manner. Everyday racism does not by itself lead people into hate groups, but it does provide a foundation on which hate group recruiters can build when trying to THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 353 persuade people to join their groups. fu we will see, once people are recruitedJ - into hate groups the process of organizational socialization converts everyday racism into extreme racism, or in Blee's (2002) term, extraordinary racism. Aha (1988), for example, noted that "It is not uncommon to meet presendy dedicated neo-Nazis who, when they fIrst read or heard its doctrines were either shocked by them, morally revolted, or simply amused by what they took to be its patent absurdities" (p. 161). A Search for Solutions. Stephen Worchel (1999) has suggested that throughout their lives people are on a search for solutions to the philosophical and practical problerru; that inevitably confront them. They are trying to decide what things are important in life. When bad things happen, people want to undmtand the causes so they can put things right. People waut the sense of comradeship and community that comes from associating with like-minded people. People want to make the world a better place for thelllielves and their children. Hate groups can appeal to some people because the groups seem to provide the answers to their question<; and solutions to their problems. &, Worchel (1999) noted, people want their lives to have meaning and purpose, they want to know ~hat they are having an impact on the world and on other people, and they want to have sense of pride and self-value. Membership in hate groups can help fu1£l1 such needs, Based on his interviews with young members of racist groups, Ezekiel (1995) concluded that participating in the groups "brings a sense of m_eaning-at least for a while ... , To struggle in a cause that transcends the individual lends meaning to a life, no matter how ill-founded or narrowing the cause, For young men in the neo-Nazi group that I had studied in Detroit, membership was an alternative to atomization and drift; within the group they worked for a cause and took direct risks in the company of comrades" (p. 32). Pride and self-image may also playa role in the appeal of hate groups. Bj0rgo (1998) concluded that pride "perhaps is the most important factor involved when youths join racist groups .... Individuals who have failed to establi'ih a positive identity and status in relation to school, work, sports, or other social activities sometimes try to win respect by joining groups with a dangerous and intimidating image" (pp. 235-236). Other people, especially young people, may simply be drifting, looking for something to give purpose and direction to their lives (Bjorgo, 1998). For example, Aho (1990) reported that while observing a paramilitary training exercise being conducted by a hate group, "I spoke to a young man garbed in jungle fatigues carrying an automatic rifle .... Behind the mosquito face-net I discovered a bored ... high school student who became animated only when conversation shifted to his 'rear interests in art, drama, and wrestling" (p. 32). Thus, one neo-Nazi recruiting manual urges members to "recruit ". disaffected white kids who feel 'left out,' isolated, unpopular, or on the fringe or margins of things at school (outsiders, loners) .... Working with Nazi skinheads will give them a sense of accomplishment, success, and belonging. In recruiting, proceed from such 'outsiders' inwards toward the mainstream, conventional, average students" (quoted in Blazak, 2001, p. 988). One propaganda tool that hate groups use to attract high school and college students who are searching for direction and meaning in their lives is racist rock 354 CHAPTER 9 music (Blee, 2002; Loow, 1998). Racist rock bands write and perform songs that disparage and dehumanize members of racial and religious minority groups while extolling the superiority of the White race. Blee (2002) quotes one neo-Nazi leader as saying that "music has the potential to get through to the kids like nothing else. The great thing about ll1Usic is, if a kid likes it, he will dub copies for his friends, and they will dub copies for their friends, and so on. This has the potential to become a grassroots, underground type movement" (p. 161). This approach can be effective. Blee (2002) goes on to describe one young woman who told her: "How I really started believing, thinking in that white separatist sense and then got all white separatist, it was really through the music. There's a whole other genre of music out there that no one ever hears about, and it's real powerful, especially at that awkward stage where no one knows exactly who they are, It gives you an identity, it says you're special, you know, because you're white" (p. 162). Multimedia, such as video downloads and games, which appeal to young people, are also common (Gerstenfeld et al., 2003). Many members of hate groups have grievances and want to set them right. For example, they may believe that the government and other powerful groups whose actions they cannot control, such as employers, are treating them unfairly. In some cases, this sense of grievance might be a reaction to the loss of White privilege brought about by civil rights legislation. No longer, for example, does a White job applicant get automatic preference over minority applicants (TurpinPetrosino, 2002). Exploiting the principle of group relative deptivation, hate group recruiters frame this situation as one of minority group members unfairly taking jobs away from more deserving White applicants. In other cases, pe"onal grievances might lead to feelings of deprivation. Ezekiel (1995), for example, suggested that a sense of grievance might be especially characteristic of poor Whites who feel their plight is being ignored because news media reports and government officials' speeches focus on minority group poverty. This attention paid to minority group poverty lllay also lead poor Whites to feel shOltchanged on social services (Bj0rgo, 1998). Similar processes might also be at work among the middle class (Kimmel, 2002). Thus, one hate group recruiter told sociologist Randy Blazak (2001), "The easiest place to recruit is around some big layoff. ... You wait for things to get bad and you go to the kids, not the parents and say, 'You know why your dad got laid om It's because the money hungry Jews sent his job to China. They care more about the ... Chinese than they do about White workers" (p. 992). In addition, Ezekiel noted that the poor White hate group members he interviewed "were people who at a deep level felt terror that they were about to be extinguished. They felt that their lives might disappear at any moment. They felt that they might be blown away by the next wind" (p. 156). Their fear carne from being born in poverty and from a lack of hope that things would get better. Hate groups try to recruit new members by claiming to provide a means for White people to unite and fight for what the groups present as rightfully theirs. People also need to feel a sense of community. Bj0rgo (1998) and Ezekiel (1995) reported that the young hate group members they intelviewed usually had few strong social ties outside the group. The groups therefore provided friendship and support networks not otherwise available to their members. In THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 355 addition, most of the members had few close family ties and often did not have a father figure in the home. For these young men, older group members served as father figures and role models, providing advice and guidance. Finally, in his study of hate group members, Aho (1990) noted that one important motivation was to make the world a better place. Most of Aha's interviewees were Christian religious fundanlentalists who saw a strong conilict between their religious standards and the corruption and immorality rife in the United States and the world at large. For these people, the hate groups provided a set of scapegoats to blame for the perceived corruption and immorality-religious and racial minority groups-and a solution-wresting control of the country from those groups and putting it in the hands of right-minded White Christians. See Box 9.3 for more on religion and hate groups. Although it may seem like a contradiction, some hate groups claim to be religions. Betty Dobratz (2001) and Jonathan White (2001) identify three principal racist religions: Christian Identity, Creatorism, and Odinism (The World Church of the Creator). Christian Identity has three central beliefs (Barkun, 1997): that European Whites, not Jews, are the chosen people of God, and as such should have dominance over all other peoples; that Jews are the children of the devil, born from the liaison between Satan and Eve; and that" Aryans" must battle a Jewish conspiracy to prevent the Second Coming of Christ. Creatorism is a form of racist deism that holds that the Creator set the universe in motion and established laws of nature to govern it; people must work things out on their own within the strictures of these natural laws. According to Creatorism, racial primacy and purity are essential to human surviva I because "nature does not approve of miscegenation or mongrelization of the races" (Dobratz, 2001, p. 290). Creatorism claims no scriptural base for its racism, but holds that "Our religion is our race" (quoted in White, 2001, p. 940). Finally, Odinism is a resurrection of ancient Norse mythology in the service of racism. It claims that Northern European "Aryans" are a separate race that is superior to all other races and so must be kept racially pure. The best way to ensure purity is through the separation of the races (Dobratz, 2001). Although racist religions, especially those that claim a Christian basis, focus their recruiting efforts on people whom White (2001) refers to as mainstream fundamentalists (Dobratz, 2001), there are important differences between mainstream Christian fundamentalism and racist religion (White, 2001). Although we present those differences in terms of end points of a continuum, anyone person's beliefs could fall somewhere between those points: Although both mainstream fundamentalism and racist religion favor a literal interpretation of the Bible, mainstream fundamentalists embrace its call for universal love. In contrast, racist religion "accepts the idea of love [only] for one's own kind [and] is defined by hate. One does not simply love, one loves in conjunction with hate. For example, one loves Christians because one hates everyone who is not a Christian. One loves Whites because one hates everyone who is not White" (White, 2001, p. 945). Racist religion claims that the Bible can be interpreted to support racism; mainstream fundamentalists reject such claims. In the United States, mainstream fundamentalist belief is not linked to one's race or ethnicity, whereas race is a central feature of racist religion, which claims that God favors the White race and God's love (and by extension, believers' love) applies only to Whites. Mainstream fundamentalists believe that they must prepare for the Second Coming of Christ, which will take place in accordance with Biblical prophecies yet to be fulfilled, through religious observance. Racist religions believe that the prophecies have already been fulfilled and that they must fight to create conditions conducive to the Second Coming. They (continued) 356 CHAPTER 9 believe that they must "give history a push" (Lacquer, Box. (Continued) (Dobratz, 2001; White, 2001).·For example, Dobratz (2001) quotes one group leader as saying, "Christianity provides us with the moral framework of our groups, as well as, the spiritual outlet" (p. 293). In addition, different religious visions-such as Christianity, deism, and paganism-permit appeals to different kinds of people (Dobratz, 2001). For example, someone who rejects Christianity might be attracted to a deist or pagan version of racism. Dobratz also notes, however, that religion can create tensions between groups whose religious visions are fundamentally opposed. In addition, some racists groups, such as White Aryan Resistance, reject religion entirely. As a result, many hate groups downplay religion, considering it to be a personal matter that is irrelevant to the group's goals. 1996, p. 32). Both mainstream fundamentalism and racist religion view evil as an active, important force on the world that must be countered. However, mainstream fundamentalists attribute evil to the work of Satan, which must be countered through religious adherence, whereas racist religion attributes evil to secular conspiracies, especially Jewish conspiracies, which must be physically destroyed. Racist groups present themselves as religions because religion can unify people who might actually hold disparate racial beliefs, provide a justification for those beliefs, and, as noted earlier, be a recruiting tool [ Youthful Rebellion. Some young people may join hate groups as a way of . expressing rebellion against established authority, especially when they feel disenchanted with and alienated from the political process. Bj0rgo (1998) noted that youthful rebellion moves counter to whatever the current establishment's political doctrine is. Young rebels turned to leftist politics in the 1960s because the political establishment was then conservative; a more liberal political establishment pushes rebellion toward the political riglit. For example, Bj0rgo (1998) quoted one fonner member of a European hate group as saying, "If you really want to provoke society these days, you have to become either a National Socialist [Nazi] or a Satanist" (p. 235). Similarly, Ezekiel (1995) found that the young hate group members he interviewed in Detroit "feel strongly the urge to be shocking and to scandalize the Establishnlent, and nothing serves the purpose easier [sic] than the swastika" (p. 157). [ The Allure of Violence. Some people, especially young men, find hate groups attractive because of the violent images the groups project (Bj0rgo, 1998). -Because most groups rarely engage in violent activities but do indulge in violent rhetoric, membership provides a feeling of machismo, excitenlent, and danger without much real risk. Many groups also provide paramilitary training, so that members can feel empowered by the use of weapons but do not have to undergo the rigors and discipline of military training. [ Gender. Most hate group members are men (Aho, 1990; Blee, 2002; Ezekiel, 1995), perhaps because the groups' ~iolent images repel women while attracting men. In addition, most hate groups promote traditional gender roles and male leadership and dominance in all activities. For the most part, male hate group members' attitudes toward White women are benevolendy sexist: women's proper roles are raising children and housework while men provide WOlnen with the protection THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 357 they need to carry out their roles (Blee, 2002). In contrast, hate group members tend to be hostilely sexist toward minority group women, portraying them as sources of moral corruption. Despite these sexist organizational attitudes, many hate groups have a significant number of female ll1_embers, and the groups target women for recruitment, perhaps in an effort to soften their images (Blee, 2002). Myths Concerning Hate Group Members. Although there is a stereotype that portrays hate group members as being poor and uneducated (Aho, 1990; Blee, 2002), that is not always the case. Although Ezekiel (1995) focused his research on hate group members in poor White neighborhoods, most of the people Aho (1990) and Blee (2002) interviewed were middle class and reasonably well educated. In fact, as described in Box 9.4, Blee was particularly struck by the ordinariness of the women she interviewed. Of the 278 hate group members Aho interviewed, 50 percent had completed college or had had some post-high-school education and 39 percent had completed high school or had obtained a General Educational Development (GED) certificate; only 11 percent were high school dropouts. Currently, many hate groups are focusing their recruiting efforts on the better-educated segment of the population, especially those in high school and college (Turpin-Petrosino, 2002). The Psychological Functions of Group Membership. People can be attracted to hate groups because they are searching for an<;wers and solutions to life's questions and problems, because they feel a need to rebel, because they :find the violent images of the hate groups appealing, or from a combination of these factors. Especially for people searching for answers, their everyday racist attitudes can provide a source of answers: Being faced with the contrast of living in poverty when others have more leads to a search for someone to blame; racism's answer Kathleen Blee (2002) described the women she interviewed as being extraordinary in terms of their degree of racism. Nonetheless, she noted that almost all lived rather ordinary lives and would not stand out in a crowd of everyday working- and middle-class people. Consider two of the women she talked with, who could be almost anyone's mother or grandmother: Among the women I interviewed there was no single racist type. The media depict unkempt, surly women in faded T-shirts, but the reality is different. One of my first interviews was with Mary, a vivacious [Ku Klux] Klanswoman who met me at her door with a big smile and ushered me into her large, inviting kitchen. Her blond hair was pulled back into a long ponytail and tied with a large green bow. She wore dangling gold hoop earrings, blue jeans, a modest flowered blouse, and no visible tattoos or other racist insignia. Her only other jewelry was a simple gold-colored necklace. Perhaps sensing my surprise at her unremarkable appearance, she joked that her suburban appearance was her "undercover uniform." Trudy, an elderly Nazi activist I interviewed somewhat later, lived in a one-story, almost shabby ranch house on a lower-middle-class street in a small town in the Midwest. Her house was furnished plainly. Moving cautiously with the aid of a walker, she brought out tea and cookies prepared for my visit (pp. 7-8), 358 CHAPTER 9 is that there is a minority group conspiracy to keep you down (Ezekiel, 1995). When faced with a conflict between one's religious principles and a degenerate secular world in which one must live, racism's answer is to remove the corrupting influence by removing religious and racial minority groups (Aho, 1990). When faced with a decline in traditional White domlnance, racism's answer is to restore White entitlement (Turpin-Petrosino, 2002). &, Ezekiel (1995) wrote of the people he interviewed, "Most were members in this extreme racist group because the membership served a function, not because they had to enact their racism. Given another format in which they could have relieved their fears, given an alternative group that offered comradeship, reassuring activities, glamour, and excitement, they could easily have switched their allegiances. They would have remained racist-like their neighbors who hadn't joined a group-but they would not have needed to carry out racist actions in a group setting" (p. 159). Recruiting Hate Group Members Why is it that some people who are psychologically predisposed to join hate groups do so while others do not? Having a psychological predisposition to joining a hate group is not sufficient. Potential new nlembers must be recruited into the group; those who are not recruited are likely to find more constructive ways of resolving their personal searches for answers, such as through church work, neighborhood associations, or traditional political activities (Aho, 1990). Most people who join hate groups do not seek the groups out; instead, current group members recruit them into the groups (Aho, 1990; Blee, 2002). The recmiting is usually done by someone the recruit knows; as Blee (2002) noted, "It is a mistake to assume that the process of recruitment into racist groups differs markedly from that through which individuals enter churches, neighborhood associations, or bowling leagues-they join because of contacts with current members and, in SOUle cases, a particular receptivity to the group's ideas" (p. 188). Thus, Aho found that 55 percent of the hate group members he interviewed had been recruited by friends or family membe", 17 percent by other pe"onal acquaintances such as coworkers, and 18 percent by people encountered at political meetings. Only 1 0 percent sought membership after reading literature produced by a group. As one of Aho's (1990) interviewees explained, "It was my fi"iends that started to convince me that blacks weren't my equal" (p. 188). The recruiter is someone the recruit trusts and respects, either because the recnliter is a family luember or friend, or because the recruiter has gained the recruit's trust and respect by acting as mentor and role model in an activity Unp01~ ant in the recruit's life. For example, Aho (1990) told of a group of young railroad employees who developed strong feelings of respect for an older work group leader who was also a racist: "His (personality] first attracts the younger men to him, not his beliefs. Only after strong bonds are established does he open to them his prolific library of radical literature" (p. 189). As this exanlple shows, recruitment into a hate group is usually a gradual process (Aho, 1990; Blee, 2002). Nter gaining the trust of potential recruits, the recruiter THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 359 guides conversations toward political issues of general interest, such as crime, unemployment, education, and government policies. While doing so, the recruiter feels out the potential new group members for receptivity to the group's ideology. A recruiter might, for example, interpret crime statistics in racial terms by blaming luembers of minority groups to see how potential recruits react. If they appear to be receptive to the group's ideology, the recruiter can guide them to draw on their everyday racism to make such interpretations for themselves, encouraging their commitment to the group's belief system. Finally, the recruiter will invite recruits to a group function to meet other people who think the same way. Many group functions are rather innocuous events, such as bring-the-£unily picnics, giving the group an appearance of nonnalcy. For example, "A flyer advertising a neo-Nazi event promises a day of fellowship and racist learning, along with a social time of music and meals at a local banquet hall" (Blee, 2002, p. 131). This normalcy reassures the recruits that these people, at least, do not meet the stereotype of rabid racist maniacs, but are "just plain folk" who, like the recruits, are trying to raise their families in a difficult world. Blee (2002), for example, reported that "a neo-Nazi recalled being surprised to find that a racist event was 'kind oflike a big powwow or something. There was no cross burnings or screaming'" (pp. 130-131). Thus, one step at a time, recruits are drawn into full group membership. Group Socialization Socialization is the process by which new members learn a group's values and learn how to be good group members. This section discusses the process of socialization in hate groups and some of the social and psychological outcomes of that socialization process. The Socialization Process. Like other groups and organizations, hate groups socialize new members by means of fOIDul and infonnal education and through participation in rituals. In addition, hate groups try to reinforce the socialization process by isolating members from opposing viewpoints. Fonnal education of both new and old group members uses lectures and speeches by leaders, books and pamphlets about the group's ideology, and video and audio recordings of speeches of propaganda disguised as docull1_entary presentations. However, Blee (2002) suggested that these efforts may not be very effective because members tend to "tune out" the speeches and the printed, audio, and video materials are usually poorly written and produced, and boring. For example, she reported that "[aJt a neo-Nazi gathering I attended, most people paid only sporadic attention to long, boring speeches [on the topic of Jews and Mrican Americans as racial enemies] by the group's self-proclaimed leaders. Even a livelier (at least to me) presentation by two younger members ... had no more success in sustaining the interest of the audience, many of whom left early or spent time conspicuously reading the newspaper" (Blee, 2002, p. 76). In contrast, Blee (2002) found that "much more animated discussions of racial enemies occurred in informal conversations held in the food line, in the queue for bathrooms, or in small groups clustered at the outskirts of the tent where speeches 360 CHAPTER 9 were given" (p. 77). That is, discussions with peers and other people in the group whom menlbers respect personally is a much stronger source of infonnation than fonnal presentations. Such face-to-face indoctrination is especially effective because the discussions can address issues of special concern to the person being socialized and the indoctrinator can exploit this concern to lead the person into more extreme beliefS and greater commitment to the group's ideology. Participation in rituals is an inlportant part of the socialization process for hate groups. These rituals include group singing of racist songs, parades and llutches, dressing in ritual clothing such as Ku Klux Klan robes and neo-Nazi unifonns, and ceremonies such as fmmal initiation into group membership and cross-bmnings (Aho, 1990; Blee, 2002). These rituals serve two purposes. First, they promote group unity and cohesiveness. Doing things together and dressing alike increase meulbers' identification with the group and their feelings of oneness with other members. Second, rituals selve to increase ll1embers' commitment to the group. Taking action on behalf of a group, especially public action, increases one's psychological investment in the group (see, for example, Forsyth, 2006). Putting effort and psychological energy into the group's activities means that a person has more to lose by leaving the group: The act ofleaving essentially says that the time and effort given to the group were wasted reSQurces that cannot be recovered. As new members become lucre C011111litted to the group, they spend more tune with other group members and less time with family, friends, and acquaintances who are not Inenlbers of the group. This change in the new members' social networks has two effects (Aho, 1990; Bj0rgo, 1998; Blee, 2002). First, by associating with people who share their beliefs, group members receive support for those beliefs and reassurance that the beliefs they hold are conect. Second, increased association with group Inembers isolates people from infonnation that contradicts the group's ideology and provides the group with the opportunity to rebut any contradictory infoffilation Inembers might encounter. As one of Bj0rgo's (1998) interviewees noted, "In the past, when I had an opinion, I could discuss it with people who disagreed with me. Now I can only discuss with people who already agree with me completely. What if! am wrong?" (p. 240). To maximize isolation from infonnation that contradicts the group's ideology and to increase dependence on the group for social support, many hate groups encourage new menlbers to sever ties with nonracist family members and friends and to replace them with the "family" of the group (Bj0rgo, 1998; Blee, 2002). The Outcomes of Socialization. Blee (2002) noted that "[rJacist groups change people. Most of the women I interviewed were changed profoundly by being in a racist group .... They went from holding racist attitudes to being racial activists, from racial apathy to racial zeal" (p. 188). These changes involve members' social networks, their self-concepts, and the way they think about the world. Hate group members tend to let their social relationships with nonmembers wither away and create new relationships with other group members. As noted earlier, the groups encourage this change to isolate members fronl infonnation that contradicts the group's ideology. However, the members often find the new relationships rewarding (Aho, 1990; Blee, 2002). Aho (1990), for example, noted that THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 361 "while they rarely mention this as a motive for joining [the racist] movement, most [members] appear to have benefited personally from their affiliations by sustaining rewarding relationships with their recruiting agents" (p. 76). This restructuring of social networks is accelerated and made easier when, as often happens, the new members' families and friends shun them for joining a hate group (Aho, 1988; Blee, 2002). & a result, the group becomes the center of members' social lives. Because the group members live in a social envirOlllnent that emphasizes race and supposed racial differences, being White becomes more central to members' social identities, intensifying the effects of social identity described in our discussion of social identity theory. For example, one woman member of the Ku Klux Klan told Blee (2002), "It is not so much that I am in the Klan, it is the fact that the Klan is in me. By the Klan being in me I have no choice other than to remain, I can't walk away from myself' (p. 32). In groups that advocate violence, the social environment makes violence seem to be acceptable and proper, and members become more tolerant of violence toward minority groups and of taking part in such violence. For example, one member of a violent hate group explained her experience this way: "It is remarkable how fast I have shifted my boundaries regarding violence. I used to be against violence, but now it does not cost me a penny to beat and take out all my aggression against someone who represents what I hate.... From being stunned and scared by seeing and experiencing violence, I have come to enjoy it" (quoted by Bj0rgo, 1998, p. 239). Hand in hand with changes in the self-concept come changes in how members think about the world. Because of the groups' emphasis on race, m_embers begin to interpret events, especially negative events, in racial tenus (Aha, 1990; Blee, 2002; Ezekiel, 1995). When bad things happen, people want to understand why. The ideology of hate groups provides the answer for their members: It is because religious and ethnic minority groups have conspired to make them happen. Similarly, group members come to redefine their self-interest in racial terms, believing that keeping members of minority groups from improving their lives will make life better for the hate group members and their families. Finally, racial attitudes become more extreme and more solidified, with everyday racism being transfonned into extraordinary racism, so that "being prejudiced against Jews [becomes] believing that there is a Jewish conspiracy that determines the fate of individual Aryans [the term used by racist groups for people of Northern European descent], or. .. thinking that African American.., are inferior to whites Lbecomes] seeing Mrican Americans as an imminent threat to the white race" (Blee, 2002, pp. 75-76). Leaving the Group Although most hate groups have a core of dedicated members, for the most part, hate group membership is very unstable: People continuously come and go between various groups and move into and out of the racist movement as a whole. "In the words of one [Ku Klux] Klan chief, the movem_ent is a revolving door" (Ezekiel, 1995, p. xxii). Why do people leave racist groups? Two factors seem to 362 CHAPTER 9 be the most important: disenchantment with the group's ideology or tactics (such as violence) and the pull of social relationships outside the group. Disenchantment With the Group. Disenchantnlent with the group can stem from a number of sources (Bj0rgo,1998), These sources include negative effects on members' lives, loss of faith in the group's ideology, and concern over group extremism. As noted earlier, joining a hate group can generate disapproval from the member's family and fiiends, sometimes resulting in ostracism. If these social relationships are important to the person, he or she may give up the group to preserve those relationships. In addition, group membership can affect members' work and careers, Being very active in the movement can take time away frOlU a job, resulting in poorer job perfonnance and the risk of being fired. In addition. because having hate group members working for thenl may adversely affect the reputations of their businesses, employers may fire enlployees who are known to be members of hate groups and refuse to hire known members. Finally, for members who take an active part in demonstrations and engage in violent activities, there is the possibility of arrest and prosecution and the resulting adverse publicity. Many people join hate groups because the groups and their ideology appeal to members' real need for meaning in their lives and answers to their problems. However, as Ezekiel (1995) has noted. velY often the main thing the groups provide is "a particular kind of theater. The movement lives on demonstrations, rallies, and counterrallies; on marches and countennarches; on rabid speeches at twilight; on cross-burnings with Gothic ritual by moonlight. By their nature those actions guarantee failure [because they] bear little relation to the issues of [the members'] lives·' (p. 32). Even when groups have an ideology that provides answers, if those answers prove unsatisfactory, or if people come to see the answers as incorrect, they will be nlotivated to leave the group (Aho, 1988, 1990; Blee, 2002). Although many hate groups advocate, and some engage in, violence against their "enemies," very often they prefer to downplay the violent aspects of their ideologies to make themselves luore appealing to potential new members. Bj0rgo (1998) suggested that people who are attracted to racist ideology but reject violence as a means of achieving racist goals will leave groups when the violent aspect of their ideology becomes apparent. However. Ezekiel (1995) noted that concern over violence may also result from fear for personal safety: Groups "lose the greater part of their followers as dangerous confrontations multiply; the less intense followers decide after a few such experiences that there are better ways to spend time'· (p. 102). Relationships Outside the Group. Because hate group members often sever their ties with family members and friends who are not group members, they become dependent on the group for meeting their needs for affiliation, status, and respect. Consequently, even when people become disenchanted with a group's ideology they may not leave if they cannot satisfY their social needs outside the group. Therefore, establishing or renewing a rewarding relationship with a person THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 363 who is not a group member is the key to defection from the group (Aho, 1988, 1990; Bj0rgo, 1998; Blee, 2002; EzekieL 1995). A person is most likely to leave a hate group if he or she does not find group membership to be rewarding but does have a rewarding relationship outside the group. For example, "Getting a girlfriend who is not involved with the [racist] movement is probably the most common circumstance that motivates boys to leave and remain outside ... ,However, if the relationship breaks up, chances are high that they will return to the group" (Bjorgo, 1998, p. 317). The more extensive and rewarding a social network a defector fronl a hate group has, the less likely the person is to retum to the hate group movement if one relationship ends. Therefore, rather than shunning a family member or friend who joins a hate group, one should maintain contact as a way of encouraging the person to leave the group. This encouragement should take two forms. One is finding out the needs that group membership fulfills and providing alternative, constructive ways for the person to meet those needs. Simultaneously, one should work to counter the group propaganda aimed at solidifYing the attitudes that support the person's membership in the group. SUMMARY This chapter examined two aspects of the social context of prejudice: intergroup processes and hate group luembership. Realistic conflict theory is the oldest intergroup theory of prejudice. The theory holds that people dislike members of outgroups because the ingroup is cOlupeting with the outgroup for resources. Because this competition threatens the survival of the ingroup, outgroup menlbers are seen in negative terms. If one group wins the cOlupetition and gains dominance over the other group, the dominating group justifies its position by viewing the subjugated group as inferior and stereotypes them in negative ways or in positive ways that enlphasize their low power and status. The subjugated group, in tum, can avoid conflict by accepting the dominating group's definition of their position; conversely, viewing the dominating group as oppressive can mobilize members of the subjugated group to chal1enge the dominating group's position. The dominating group can respond to this chal1enge by defining the subj ugated group as threatening as well as inferior as a way of preparing to suppress the challenge; conversely, the dominating group can avoid conflict by being more tolerant of the subjugated group's desire for equality. Social identity theory explains prejudice in temlS of the link between people's self-concepts and their membership in groups that are important to them. Because people see these groups as part of themselves, they try to ensure the status of these groups by favoring ingroup members over outgroup members when allocating resources. This ingroup bias arises from feelings of competition that arise when people think of their group relative to other groups and from a need to enhance their own self-esteem by enhancing the position of their group relative to other groups. An important factor influencing people's level of identification vvith a group is self-categorization: seeing oneself in group rather than individual teuns. 364 CHAPTER 9 Self-categorization increases when situational factors emphasize one's group membership, when Olle looks to the group as a source of information on important topics, and when one has chosen to join the group. Other factors influencing identification with the group are a need to balance group and personal identity, the chronic identities one always experiences, threats to the group, and attitudes and values that emphasize the group over the individual. Although social identity can lead to prejudice, it can also lead to tolerance if ingroup members do not see their values as conflicting with those of the outgroup or if a person has a complex social identity. Relative deprivation theory explains prejudice as a reaction to feelings of being treated unfairly: If people blame a group for their unfarr treatment, they develop negative feelings toward members of that group. These feelings of unfair treatm_ent can be personal or can lead people to see their group as the collective victim of unfair treatment. Feelings of group deprivation are more closely related to prejudice than are feelings of personal deprivation. Feelings of being more highly benefited than other groups can also cause prejudice: rather than feeling angry because the other group has deprived thenl of something, people derogate the other group to justify being better off. Feelings of relative deprivation can result in scapegoating: choosing a group to be the "designated villain" who caused the deprivation. Fmstration-aggression-displacement theory explains scapegoating as a way of shifting blame for deprivation from one's own group to the designated group. Glick's (2002) ideological theOlY explains scapegoating as a way of fulfilling people's need to understand why the deprivation exists. Groups chosen as scapegoats tend to have little power, be salient to members of the ingroup, be disliked, be stereotyped in ways that make them believable as causes of the deprivation, and be seen as a threat to the ingroup. Integrated threat theory brings realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and relative deprivation theory together using the concept of threat. Perceptions of realistic threat can derive from intergroup conflict and feelings of group relative deprivation, and perceptions of symbolic threat can derive from social identity processes. Hate groups are organizations whose central principles include hostility toward racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups. People attracted to hate groups tend to have negative racial attitudes, to be searching for solutions to problems and questions that have arisen in the person's life, to be young and rebellious, and to be attracted to violence. Contrary to the stereotype of hate group members, nuny are reasonably well-educated members of the middle class. Most hate group members are recruited by friends or relatives and undergo socialization processes that nlake their racial attitudes more extreme. Socialization tactics include education, isolation from opposing viewpoints, and participation in rituals. This process tends to reduce members' social networks to only other group nlembers, provides them with a greater sense of social identity as White people, and leads them to see the world as dangerous and threatening. People who leave hate groups generally do so because they become disenchanted with the group's ideology and establish social ties outside the group that meet their psychological needs. SUGGESTED READINGS Realistic Conflict Theory THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 365 Duckitt, J. (1994). 11" social psycholoRy 'If prejudice. Westport, CT: Praeger. Chapter 6 includes a complete description of Duckitt's extension of realistic contlict theory. Sherif, M. (1966). In common predicament: Social psychology of intergroup coriflict and cooperation. Boston: Houghton Miillin. Sherifs book contains a detailed description of the Robbers Cave study and related research. Taylor, D. M., & Moghaddam, F. M. (1994). T71Cories of intelJIroup relations: International social psychological perspectives (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the current status of realistic conflict theory. Social Identity Theory Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate? Journal <if Social Issues, 55, 429-444. In this article Brewer provides an excellent discussion of the distinction between ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation. Brewer, M. B., & Pickett, C. L. (1999). Distinctiveness motives as a source of the social self In T. Tyler, R. Kramer, & O. John (Eds.), The psychology 'If the social self (pp. 71-87). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. This chapter provides a recent overview of optimal distinctiveness theory. Brown, R. (2000). Social identity theory: Past achievements, current problems and future challenges. European Joumal if Social Psychology, 30, 745-778. Brown provides an overview of the current status of social identity theory. Roccas, S., & Brewer, M. B. (2002). Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review! 6,88-106. Roccas and Brewer discuss the implications of having a complex versus simple social identity. Relative Deprivation Theory Glick, P. (2002). Sacrificial lambs dressed in wolves' clothing: Envious prejudice, ideology, and the scapegoating ofjews. In L. S. New111_an & R. Erber (Eds.), Understanding genocide: TIle social psyc1lOlogy if the Holocaust (pp. 113-142). New York: Oxford University Press. Glick provides an excellent explanation of the psychological underpinnings of scapegoating. Guimond, S., & Dambrun, M. (2002). When prosperity breeds intergroup hostility: The effects of relative deprivation and relative gratification on prejudice. Personality and Sodal Psychology Bulletill, 28, 900-912. Guimond and Dambrun discuss the counterintuitive finding that relative gratification, as well as relative deprivation, can lead to prejudice. 366 CHAPTER 9 Walker, 1., & Smith, H. J. (2002). Fifty years of relative deprivation research. In 1. Walker & H. J. Smith (Eds.), Relative deprivation: SpecificatioN, development, and integration (pp. 1-9). New York: Cambridge University Press. This chapter provides a historical overview of relative deprivation theory. Other chapters in the book discuss the current status of theory, including its application to prejudice and discrimination. Integrated Threat Theory Stephan, W. G., & Stephan, C. W. (2000). An integrated threat theory of prejudice. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Reducing prejudice altd discrimination (pp. 23--46). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of Stephan and Stephan's theory. Riek, B. M., Marna, E. W., & Gaertner, S. L. (2006). Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 336-353. The authors review the literature supporting integrated threat theory and offer suggestions for future research. Hate Group Membership BIee, K. M. (2002). Inside organized racism: Women in the hate movement. Berkeley: University of Califomia Press. Ezekiel, R. S. (1995). 1he racist mind: Portraits if American l1eo~Nazis and Klansmen. New York: Penguin. Ezekiel, R. S. (2002). An ethnographer looks at neo-Nazi and Klan groups: The Racist Mind revisited. American Behavioral Scientist, 46,51-71. Blee (2002) and Ezekiel (1995) provide excellent ethnographic studies of hate group members that provide a good "feel" for what the people are like. Ezekiel (2002) summarizes his 1995 findings and ties them in with more recent research. chronic identities cultural racism distributive justice everyday racism extraordinaty racism false consciousness KEY TERMS group (or fraternal) relative deprivation hate group ingroup bias personal (or egoistic) relative deprivation procedural justice relative deprivation relative gratification scapegoating self-stereotyping social identity vicarious retribution THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PREJUDICE 367 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 1. Describe the realistic conflict theory of prejudice. 2. Using Table 9.1 as a guide, describe how intergroup conflicts now taking place in various parts of the world fit Duckitt's model. 3. Describe the processes by which social identity can lead to prejudice on the one hand or to tolerance on the other hand. Illustrate your explanation with examples from your own experience. 4. Describe the factors that influence the degree of identification one feels with a group. 5. Explain the factors that influence self-categorization. In what ways is self-categorization similar to and different from the social categorization of others discussed in Chapter 4? 6. Explain optimal distinctiveness theory. What shortcomings of selfcategorization theory does it address? 7. What are chronic social identities? Which of your social identities would you describe as chronic? 8. Explain the difference between ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation. Why is this distinction important? 9. According to the model of vicarious retribution, what conditions would detennine whether a gang member responded to an act of violence against a fellow gang member? 10. Describe the relarive deprivation theory of prejudice. 11. How can feelings of relative gratification cause prejudice? 12. Think back to the theory of modem-symbolic prejudice described in Chapter 6. How are feelings of relative deprivation related to that fonn of prejudice? 13. What is scapegoating? Describe the frustration-aggression-displacement and ideological theories of scapegoating. What characteristics make a group vulnerable to scapegoating? 14. Describe some current examples of scapegoating. How well do the scapegoated groups fit the profile of vulnerability to scapegoating? Which theory better explains each example? 15. Explain how integrated threat theory links realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and relative deprivation theory. How are these theories related to social dominance theory, described in Chapter 7? 16. What are hate groups? What psychological functions does hate group membership have? 17. How are hate group members recruited? What factors make a person vulnerable to recruitment by hate groups? 368 CHAPTER 9 18. Describe the process of socializing a hate group nlember. What are the QutcOlnes of the socialization process? 19. What factors motivate people to leave hate groups? 20. Describe how hate groups exploit the processes described earlier in the chapter (such as realistic group conflict, social identity, relative depti.vation, and so forth) to recruit and socialize new members.

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