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12 - Aversive Racism and Contemporary Bias
- from Part II - Prejudice in Specific Domains
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- By John F. Dovidio, Yale University, Samuel L. Gaertner, University of Delaware, Adam R. Pearson, Pomona College
- Edited by Chris G. Sibley, University of Auckland, Fiona Kate Barlow, University of Queensland
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice
- Published online:
- 17 November 2016
- Print publication:
- 31 October 2016, pp 267-294
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- Chapter
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Summary
In the United States, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by significant societal changes. The Civil Rights Movement and social, political, and moral forces stimulated these changes to address racism by White Americans toward Black Americans and achieve the nation's historical egalitarian ideals. With the Civil Rights legislation and other federal mandates, it was no longer simply immoral to discriminate against Blacks; it was now also illegal. Surveys and national polls revealed significant reductions in overt expressions of prejudice among Whites toward Blacks (Dovidio & Gartner, 2004). This unprecedented change in race relations in the United States changed the nature of racial attitudes, from blatant to subtle, and consequently the study of prejudice in psychology (Dovidio, 2001). In other countries, similar normative changes have reduced blatant expressions of prejudice while more subtle, yet equally pernicious, forms of bias persist (see Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995).
This chapter reviews the development of theory about contemporary forms of racism – focusing primarily on aversive racism – tracing the evolution of this perspective, describing key empirical evidence, and identifying productive avenues for future research. We begin by reviewing relations among different theories of subtle contemporary racism and discussing work on implicit prejudice and its relationship to aversive racism. We then consider the implications of aversive racism for interventions to reduce bias and identify promising new directions for research on contemporary racism, in general, and aversive racism, in particular.
Overview of Theories of Subtle Racism
The changing social norms and values shaped by the civil rights era posed unique challenges to the study of prejudice. Although overt expressions of prejudice and negative stereotyping have substantially declined, in part because of new normative pressures toward egalitarianism, privately held beliefs continue to reflect negative racial attitudes and beliefs. One effect of these new norms was that people appeared to more deliberately manage how others perceived their racial attitudes. For example, when expressing attitudes under conditions in which they were led to believe their true attitudes could be detected (e.g., bogus pipeline; Roese & Jamieson, 1993), Whites displayed significantly more negative attitudes toward Blacks than when they reported their attitudes under more normal conditions. This effect occurred, in part, because people normally consciously manage self-reports of prejudice and interracial behaviors to appear nonbiased.
12 - From attitudes to (in)action: the darker side of ‘we’
- from Part II - Prejudice and social change revisited
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- By John F. Dovidio, Yale University, Tamar Saguy, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Samuel L. Gaertner, University of Delaware, Erin L. Thomas, Yale University
- Edited by John Dixon, Lancaster University, Mark Levine, University of Exeter
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- Book:
- Beyond Prejudice
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 12 January 2012, pp 248-268
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Summary
The study of intergroup relations has traditionally focused on the role of individual prejudice in motivating discrimination and creating disparities. Prejudice has been classically defined as a negative attitude, in Allport’s (1954) terms ‘an antipathy based on faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he [sic] is a member of that group’ (p. 9). Over the past fifty years, in particular, psychologists have invested considerable energy in exploring how interventions, such as appropriately structured intergroup contact, can reduce prejudice (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006). In addition, stimulated by the classic work of Tajfel and Turner (1979), recent approaches have also examined how group perceptions and identity can influence intergroup prejudice (Brown, 1996) and inform strategies for reducing bias (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2010). Extending the line of analysis presented by Wright and Baray in the previous chapter, this chapter acknowledges the benefits of these frameworks for improving intergroup attitudes and relieving immediate tensions but also suggests that such approaches, in isolation, may have unintended consequences that inhibit action by members of disadvantaged and advantaged groups towards social structural changes towards equality in the longer term.
We focus our analysis in this chapter on a line of research that we initiated over twenty years ago on the common ingroup identity model (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2000, 2009; Gaertner et al., 1989, 1993). Previous research on prejudice reduction had, over an extended period, identified positive intergroup contact as a potent intervention for reducing prejudice and investigated the parameters (e.g. equal status and cooperative interaction) that moderated the effectiveness of contact (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006, 2008). The common ingroup identity model, in contrast, considered the psychological processes – specifically, cognitive representations of social groups – that mediate the impact of various conditions of contact on reductions in prejudice.