Ambivalent Classism: The Importance of Assessing Hostile and Benevolent Ideologies about Poor People

Abstract

We present a model of ambivalent classism in which hostile (overtly negative and insulting) and benevolent (subjectively positive but condescending) attitudes about poor people co-exist and independently predict endorsement of restrictive and poverty-perpetuating welfare policies. Whereas existing classism scales predominantly measure antipathy toward poor people, we developed and validated the Ambivalent Classism Inventory (ACI), a 20-item scale that captures both hostile and benevolent attitudes toward poor people. The ACI has one hostile factor (hostile classism) and two benevolent factors (protective paternalism and complementary class differentiation). Data from four samples (total n?=?1,543) indicate that the ACI has good reliability and validity. Findings underscore the role of benevolent beliefs in classist attitudes. Item generation, analytical methods, and implications are discussed.     

The Effects of Stereotyping and Implicit Theory on Benevolent Prejudice Toward Aboriginal Canadians

Stereotyping and implicit theory on benevolent prejudice toward an Aboriginal student were investigated in a mock work setting. In a 2 (Stereotype: prime vs. no prime) × 2 (Theory: entity vs. incremental) × 2 (Race: Aboriginal vs. Caucasian) between‐subjects design, non‐Aboriginal participants were primed or not primed with a negative Aboriginal stereotype and an entity or incremental implicit theory before evaluating an Aboriginal or Caucasian student. Consistent with a benevolent prejudice perspective, when primed with the stereotype, only participants holding an entity theory expressed greater desire to help the Aboriginal compared to the Caucasian candidate, despite both candidates demonstrating identical performance information. Implications for prejudice in work environments are discussed.     

Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexist Attitudes Toward Positive and Negative Sexual Female Subtypes

Expressions of hostile and benevolent sexism toward a female character whose behavior was consistent with either a positive (i.e., chaste) or negative (i.e., promiscuous) sexual female subtype were examined. Consistent with the theory that benevolent and hostile sexism form complementary ideologies that serve to maintain and legitimize gender-based social hierarchies, men expressed increased hostile, but decreased benevolent,sexism toward a female character who fit a negative subtype, whereas they expressed increased benevolent, but decreased hostile, sexism toward a female character who fit a positive subtype that was consistent with traditional gender roles. Furthermore, men’s sexual self-schema moderated expressions of hostile sexism across subtypes, whichsuggests that men who think of themselves in sexual terms (i.e., those who are sexuallyschematic) may be predisposed to (a) interpret information about women in sexual terms and categorize women into positive or negative sexual female subtypes on the basis of limited information, which leads to (b) increased hostile sexist attributions when womenare perceived as fitting a negative sexual subtype. These findings emphasize the role of both social dominance motives and the more subtle sociocognitive processes underlyinggender stereotyping in the expression of ambivalent sexism.     

Education and Catholic Religiosity as Predictors of Hostile and Benevolent Sexism Toward Women and Men

The relationships of education and religiosity to hostile and benevolently sexist attitudes toward women and men, as assessed by the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) and the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (AMI; Glick & Fiske, 1999), was explored in a random sample of 1,003 adults (508 women, 495 men) from Galicia, Spain. For both men and women (a) level of educational attainment negatively correlated with hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes, and (b) Catholic religiosity uniquely predicted more benevolent, but not more hostile, sexist attitudes. Although correlational, these data are consistent with the notion that active participation in the Catholic Church may reinforce benevolently sexist ideologies that legitimate gender inequality, whereas education may be effective in diminishing sexist beliefs.     

The Role of Hostile and Benevolent Sexism in Women's and Men's Perceptions of the Menstruating Woman

Perceptions of menstruating women were studied in a sample of 244, predominantly European American, college freshmen. Both women and men rated the menstruating woman, as compared with the average woman, as higher on the Neuroticism factor from Lippa's (1991) measure of the Big Five personality factors. Men also rated her as lower on the Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness factors, and women rated her lower on the Extraversion factor. Women rated her as perceiving herself as less masculine and more feminine. Both women and men rated her as less "energized" and "sexy," but more "irritable,""sad," and "angry." In addition, men rated her as less "clean and fresh,""nurturing," and "reasonable," and more "spacey" and "annoying." Significant relationships were found between negative impressions of the menstruating woman and the Hostile Sexism Scale ( Glick & Fiske, 1996 ). Although most ratings by men and women were negative, women perceived the menstruating woman as more "maternal,""strong," and "trustworthy."     

Hostile and Benevolent Sexism and Attitudes Toward Establishing Consent Among Chinese Men: The Detrimental Role of Token Resistance Beliefs and Binge Drinking

Sex Roles - Attitudes toward establishing sexual consent is an important prerequisite for understanding whether and how men will actively negotiate consent in sexual activities. However, little is...     

Identity Cues: Evidence From and for Intra‐Individual Perspectives on Positive and Negative Stereotyping1

Traditional stereotyping research has adopted an intergroup perspective: Comparisons are made between ways in which targets belonging to different social groups are stereotyped. We adopt an intra‐individual perspective and examine how a single target, belonging to multiple social groups, is stereotyped differently based on identity cues. Participants interacted with a partner (a research confederate) in a series of e‐mail exchanges. The partner used e‐mail addresses that subtly cued either the partner's gender identity, the partner's ethnic identity, or neither identity. This subtle identity cue led participants to stereotype their partners in very different ways, biasing recall in directions consistent with the positive and negative stereotypes associated with the different identities cued. Applications of the findings to the problems that stereotypes create are discussed.     

Influence of Hostile Media Perception on Willingness to Engage in Discursive Activities: An Examination of Mediating Role of Media Indignation

This study examines the mediating role of media indignation, a set of negative emotional reactions to media coverage perceived to have partisan bias, between hostile media perception (HMP) and its consequences in behavioral willingness, more specifically, willingness to engage in discursive activities. It is examined together with a cognitive pathway through individuals' inference on opinion climate. Data from a web-based survey of university students (N = 696) on three controversial issues were analyzed. Findings showed that the degree of perceived partisan bias in mainstream media coverage on an issue was positively related to the intensity of media indignation and levels of incongruity between one's own opinion and perceived majority opinion. Media indignation in turn had a significant and positive effect on willingness to engage in discursive activities across all three issues, mediating the effect of HMP on behavioral willingness, whereas self-majority opinion incongruity did not. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The Evidence of Things Seen and Not Seen: The Legacy of Race and Racism

Franklin , A.J. From Brotherhood to Manhood: How Black Men Rescue Their Relationships and Dreams from the Invisibility Syndrome. John Wiley & Sons , 2004.     

Effects of Prolonged Exposure to Gratuitous Media Violence on Provoked and Unprovoked Hostile Behavior1

On 4 consecutive days, respondents were exposed to gratuitously violent or nonviolent intact feature films. They rated the entertainment value of these films. One day after exposure to the last film of the series, respondents participated in ostensibly unrelated research on emotion recognition. As they performed a test, they were neutrally or abusively treated by a research assistant. Thereafter, they were put in a position to harm this assistant. Both provocation and exposure to violent films were found to foster markedly increased hostile behavior. These effects were noninteractive. Moreover, these effects were uniform for respondent gender. Compared to men, women exhibited less hostility overall, however. The findings thus show that prolonged exposure to gratuitously violent films is capable (a) of escalating hostile behavior in provoked men and women, and (b) perhaps more importantly, of instigating such behavior in unprovoked men and women.     

The Hostile Media Effect,Biased Assimilation,and Perceptions of a Presidential Debate1

This study examined the relation between 2 seemingly inconsistent phenomena: hostile media effect and biased assimilation. Participants (N = 156) reported their preference for George W. Bush or John Kerry and then viewed a live broadcast of the first Bush–Kerry Presidential debate. Consistent with biased assimilation, candidate preference influenced participants on both sides to perceive their candidate won the debate. Nevertheless, candidate preference modestly induced participants to perceive hostile bias from the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer. The influence of anticipated third‐person effects was also examined. Overall, the results suggest biased assimilation and the hostile media effect are not inconsistent. In some situations, they occur simultaneously. Moreover, the hostile media effect appears to extend beyond news reports to other forms of mediation.     

Weapon Bias: Split-Second Decisions and Unintended Stereotyping

ABSTRACT— Race stereotypes can lead people to claim to see a weapon where there is none. Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people's ability to control responses. Such a bias could have important consequences for decision making by police officers and other authorities interacting with racial minorities. The bias requires no intentional racial animus, occurring even for those who are actively trying to avoid it. This research thus raises difficult questions about intent and responsibility for racially biased errors.     

Culture and Stereotyping Processes: Integration and New Directions

Stereotyping is one of the largest and most enduring research areas in social and personality psychology; many of the processes by which stereotypes are formed, maintained, and applied are now well understood. Yet, little is known about the degree to which stereotyping processes apply outside of North American and Western European contexts. This theoretical paper aims to serve as a starting point for researchers interested in the intersection of culture and stereotyping. We review the nascent literature documenting similarities and differences in intergroup perception across cultural groups and note areas in which the cross-cultural and stereotyping literatures have explored common mechanisms that could be profitably integrated. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that will greatly improve our understanding of how culturally influenced cognitive tendencies influence the perception of social groups and their members.     

Racism and Feminism: Is Women's Liberation for Whites Only?

The women's movement is often described as „white middle-class” despite the fact that black women not only are more oppressed than whites, but are more favorable to the goals of the women's movement. Black women, especially those identified with the black rights movement, fear that feminism will split their ranks and divert public attention. Black women's problems also differ from those of whites in other ways, mostly related to the fact that their economic position is much worse than that of either white women or black men. Moreover, blacks hesitate to join organizations they perceive as white dominated. It is argued that both black and women's rights movements need each others' support and that black women cannot achieve equality unless both movements succeed     

Activating Semantic Knowledge During Spoken Words and Environmental Sounds: Evidence From the Visual World Paradigm

Two visual world experiments investigated the activation of semantically related concepts during the processing of environmental sounds and spoken words. Participants heard environmental sounds such as barking or spoken words such as “puppy” while viewing visual arrays with objects such as a bone (semantically related competitor) and candle (unrelated distractor). In Experiment 1, a puppy (target) was also included in the visual array; in Experiment 2, it was not. During both types of auditory stimuli, competitors were fixated significantly more than distractors, supporting the coactivation of semantically related concepts in both cases; comparisons of the two types of auditory stimuli also revealed significantly larger effects with environmental sounds than spoken words. We discuss implications of these results for theories of semantic knowledge.     

Social Categorization and Stereotyping In vivo: The VUCA Challenge

A substantial literature has examined the nature of social categorization, a fundamental process having important implications for a wide variety of social phenomena. The great majority of this research has focused on the role of particular, clearly identified social categories (e.g. race, nationality, etc.) while ignoring or holding constant other identity dimensions. This approach has afforded considerable leverage for understanding how salient social identities influence perception, judgment, and behavior. However, it leaves unaddressed many questions about how particular social identities become salient and how (and whether) identities might be inferred when category membership is ambiguous or unknown. Everyday social perception often occurs under conditions of volatility (dynamic contexts), uncertainty (missing information), complexity (multiple bases for categorization), and ambiguity (unclear meaning of available cues). As a consequence, research must address how these factors might qualify basic processes of social categorization. Available evidence is reviewed, and directions for future research are discussed.