The Implications of Essentialist Beliefs for Prejudice.

Prejudice;Essentialism;Psychology;Social Sciences;Psychology

Brickman, Daniel W.Jayaratne, Toby ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Prejudice;    Essentialism;    Psychology;    Social Sciences;    Psychology;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/63752/dbrick_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation examines the relations between lay theories about the nature of social categories and prejudice towards social groups.In Part 1, a new scale for measuring prejudice towards a wide-range of social categories (e.g., African Americans, homosexuals, evangelical Christians) was developed. Subsequently, this scale was used to examine the relation between prejudice and believing that category memberships are caused by either choice or genetics.Results indicated the relations between lay theories and prejudice varied depending on whether particular categories were understood as stigmatized because category memberships are viewed as inherently wrong (alternately, categories may be stigmatized not because membership is viewed as wrong, but because category membership is associated with stigmatized properties).In particular, higher ratings that groups are stigmatized because membership is viewed as inherently wrong were related to larger positive correlations between endorsement of choice theories and prejudice. In contrast, less endorsement of beliefs that categories are stigmatized because membership is viewed as inherently wrong was related to larger positive correlations between prejudice and genetic theories of property differences (e.g., believing that achievement differences between groups are caused by genetics). In Part 2, meta-analytic techniques were used to examine how three essentialist beliefs relate to prejudice towards people who are homosexual.Results indicated that viewing homosexuality as immutable (e.g., fixed at or before birth and stable) was related to less prejudice, as was viewing homosexuality as universal.In contrast, believing that categories based on sexual orientation have discrete boundaries was related to increased prejudice.In Part 3, experimental evidence is presented, which examined how information about genetics interacts with other causal information about the nature of category membership (e.g., the role of social competition in determining group boundaries) in the formation of concepts of new social categories.Overall, the results from this dissertation indicate that beliefs about how social category identities are determined can have important effects on prejudice, and suggest a need for more experimental work on this subject.