Political Contacts: Analyzing the Role of Similarity in Theories of Prejudice

Over the last 50 years, many theories of prejudice reduction in social psychology have embraced the premise that intergroup contact allows people to recognize similarities between themselves, and that this perceived similarity overwhelms the social distance associated with intergroup antipathy. Given the mixed empirical evidence, however, we suggest that the positive effects of perceived similarity have been overemphasized. Although similarity may be sufficient for improved intergroup relations, the relationship between similarity and intergroup relations is far more complex than the literature usually suggests. Moreover, studying difference in intergroup contexts may yield new ways to resolve intergroup conflict and address group inequalities.     

扩展群际接触:观点、机制与展望

扩展群际接触效应指的是如果个体得知内群体成员与外群体成员之间具有友谊关系,可以有效减少个体对外群体的偏见,改善对外群体的态度。群际焦虑、知觉到的内群体/外群体准则、将他人纳入自我、自我表露在扩展群际接触效应中起到中介作用,群体准则的知觉差异性、社会意识态度、内群成员的关系紧密性、与外群体的直接接触程度等在扩展群际接触效应中起到调节作用。未来研究需要关注扩展群际接触效应的动机,比较不同类型群体的扩展群际接触效应,探讨扩展群际接触效应更为长远的社会后果,整合间接群际接触的积极效应。     

偏见研究的进展

对社会心理学中关于偏见的研究进行了总结和展望,涉及偏见的来源、偏见的形式、偏见的消除等,介绍了偏见研究领域的一些新理论、新方法,以及关于性别偏见、种族偏见、文化偏见等的新近研究成果。     

群际威胁：影响因素与减少策略

群际威胁是增强消极刻板印象和偏见的重要因素, 甚至可以导致群际冲突或暴力。影响群际威胁的因素包括个体的感知与经验、群体特征、社会政策和法规等。通过改变社会分类, 模糊群际边界, 并创造群际接触的机会, 能够增加群际认同感, 降低群际威胁感, 减少群际偏见, 促进积极的群际关系。今后的研究需在不同的社会环境中完善群际威胁的理论模型, 并探索相关变量相互作用的内在机制, 为促进和改善群际关系提供理论依据。     

Enhancing the Imagined Contact Effect

ABSTRACT

Recent research has found that mentally simulating positive out-group contact experiences can promote tolerance and more positive intergroup perceptions. We investigated two ways of enhancing this imagined contact effect. In Study 1 we found that asking participants to generate more detail in their imagined encounter led to expectations of their having a greater number of out-group acquaintances in the future. In Study 2 we found that instructing participants to close their eyes during an imagined encounter led to heightened intentions to engage in future actual contact. These findings add further support to the notion that imagining intergroup contact may be a valuable addition to existing interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations.     

Reducing Prejudice: Combating Intergroup Biases

Strategies for reducing prejudice may be directed at the traditional, intentional form of prejudice or at more subtle and perhaps less conscious contemporary forms. Whereas the traditional form of prejudice may be reduced by direct educational and attitude-change techniques, contemporary forms may require alternative strategies oriented toward the individual or involving intergroup contact. Individual-oriented techniques can involve leading people who possess contemporary prejudices to discover inconsistencies among their self-images, values, and behaviors; such inconsistencies can arouse negative emotional states (e.g., guilt), which motivate the development of more favorable attitudes. Intergroup strategies can involve structuring intergroup contact to produce more individualized perceptions of the members of the other group, foster personalized interactions between members of the different groups, or redefine group boundaries to create more inclusive, superordinate representations of the groups. Understanding the nature and bases of prejudice can thus guide, theoretically and pragmatically, interventions that can effectively reduce both traditional and contemporary forms of prejudice.     

Is Anti-Semitism Currently Part of an Authoritarian Attitude Syndrome?

This study used data from the 1990 General Social Survey to investigate the extent to which anti-Semitism had syndromic relationships with other authoritarianism-related attitudes among American white non-Jews. The correlational and factor analytic connections between four measures of anti-Semitism and the other attitudes were generally weak. There were no clear-cut differences between respondents high and low in education in the strength of these connections. Moreover, when the scores of respondents favorable and unfavorable to Jews were compared on a number of authoritarianism-related scales, the differences were usually small. The results suggest a diminished role for anti-Semitism in authoritarian attitude syndromes.     

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.     

Differential attribution of secondary emotions to members of the ingroup and the outgroup: infrahumanization bias in children / Atribución de sentimientos a miembros del endogrupo y del exogrupo: el sesgo de infrahumanización en niños

Abstract

Research on infrahumanization has shown that people reserve uniquely human characteristics, including secondary emotions, for their ingroup, and deny them to their outgroup. However, this hypothesis has been corroborated almost exclusively in adults. The present research objective is to determine whether children, like adults, infrahumanize members of the outgroup. Forty-eight children in a competitive sports context were asked to attribute several secondary emotions to members of the ingroup and the outgroup. Results revealed that, like adults, children infrahumanize the outgroup. Their attributions showed a reluctance to accept the outgroup’s secondary emotions, which they reserved exclusively for the ingroup. Specifically, children attributed more positive and negative secondary emotions to the ingroup than the outgroup.     

想象积极群际接触与群际关系改善实验研究述评

想象群际接触的基本思想指,在心理上想象一个积极的群际接触会创设一个心理接触的脚本,激发与外群体成员成功互动的观念,积极互动观念也就伴随产生对外群体的积极情感,导致对外群体的积极感知,增强和外群体进一步接触的意愿。想象群际接触的实验操纵比较简单,设置实验组和控制组,采用指导语的方式,但是想象群际接触的效应受群体地位、内群体认同状况等变量的调节。在未来的研究中, 需要注意提高研究的效度,加强机制、直接行为效应的研究,想象群际接触理论为改善群际关系提供了一个崭新的框架。