Prejudice Reduction

Definition

Prejudice reduction refers to a decrease in (most often) negative attitudes or evaluations that individuals hold in relation to other people. These negative attitudes are based on the groups to which people belong, such as a White person disliking someone because he or she is a Black person. Although social psychologists have linked the idea of prejudice reduction most directly with changing negative attitudes, this term is also used to refer to decreasing stereotypic beliefs (such as the belief that all gay men are promiscuous), outward expressions of bias, or negative behaviors.

Background and History

Prejudice reduction was first studied only when prejudice was seen as a social problem in the United States. Until the 1920s, there was widespread belief among nonscientists and scientists alike in the racial superiority of Whites. Indeed, prejudice was considered perfectly defensible and rationale. Between the 1920s and 1940s, scientists increasingly viewed prejudice as problematic and certain aspects of World War II (e.g., anti-Semitism and genocide) underscored this. Prejudice clearly was a social problem and strategies for curbing it needed to be understood.

In 1954, Gordon Allport published his book The Nature of Prejudice, which provided the first comprehensive analysis of prejudice and laid the foundation for decades of subsequent research. Allport's writing provides many roots of modern work, three of which are especially important. First, Allport discussed the natural human tendency to categorize to simplify the world, noting that this includes categorizing people into groups. Many mental tricks allow people to place others into categories and, once categorization occurs, many other processes naturally occur to make categories resistant to change. For example, a boy who tugs on a girl's pigtails may be viewed as an aggressive Black boy, whereas the same behavior by a White boy may be interpreted as playful. Therefore, reducing prejudice often involves getting people to alter the nature of the categories in their minds so they can perceive people differently.

A second root of modern work on prejudice reduction is Allport's discussion of the inner conflict that people can experience in relation to their prejudices and the motivation that this conflict provides for prejudice reduction. Here Allport referred to Gunnar Myrdal, who in 1944 discussed the “American dilemma.” According to Myrdal, many Americans are prone to a moral conflict between the ideas of equality on which the nation was founded and the racist traditions of prejudice and discrimination. The idea that conflict between values and prejudiced tendencies can spur people to reduce their prejudice later became a cornerstone of various strategies for reducing prejudice.

A third root found in Allport's work is his intergroup-contact hypothesis. The idea that contact between people of different backgrounds and races can help people realize that some of their beliefs are incorrect or that they do like people who are different from themselves is straightforward. However, making contact between groups work to reduce prejudice is more complicated. Allport correctly noted this and described some of the conditions that must be met for contact to reduce prejudice successfully.

At different points in time, different prejudice reduction strategies have become more or less important in the field of social psychology. These changes often can be traced to the combination of historical or societal changes and with popular methods within the field. For example, starting in the 1980s, blatant prejudice became less accepted and prevalent in the [Page 696]United States while subtle biases and prejudices remained quite common. Also, social psychologists interested in prejudice were adopting many techniques from cognitive psychology to study the mind's use of social stereotypes. The result was the discovery that prejudiced responses sometimes occur not because people consciously hold prejudiced beliefs and attitudes but, rather, because learned prejudices and stereotypes can be activated and used without people even being aware that this is happening. Patricia Devine formally advanced and tested this argument. A new view of prejudice reduction emerged from this line of thinking that involved learning to control and change biases resulting from nonconscious processes.

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