Showing papers on "Prejudice published in 1980"

Self-Interest vs. Symbolic Politics in Policy Attitudes and Presidential Voting

Abstract: This article contrasts short-term self-interest and longstanding symbolic attitudes as determinants of (1) voters' attitudes toward government policy on four controversial issues (unemployment, national health insurance, busing, and law and order), and (2) issue voting concerning those policy areas. In general, we found the various self-interest measures to have very little effect in determining either policy preferences or voting behavior. In contrast, symbolic attitudes (liberal or conservative ideology, party identification, and racial prejudice) had major effects. Nor did self-interest play much of a role in creating “issue publics” that were particularly attentive to, informed about, or constrained in their attitudes about these specific policy issues. Conditions that might facilitate more self-interested political attitudes, specifically having privatistic (rather than public-regarding) personal values, perceiving the policy area as a major national problem, being high in political sophistication, perceiving the government as responsive, or having a sense of political efficacy, were also explored, but had no effect. The possibility that some long-term self-interest might be reflected in either group membership or in symbolic attitudes themselves is examined. While such possibilities cannot be definitively rejected, problems with interpreting standard demographic findings as self-interest effects are discussed.

The Myth of Left-Wing Authoritarianism

Abstract: The authors of The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, et al., 1950), armed with the modern tools of psychoanalysis as well as ancient knowledge of scapegoating, reported an extensive series of investigations into the psychological roots of fascism. The book's basic thesis was that antisemitism and prejudice toward outgoups, collectively designated ethnocentrism, is basic to the fascism-prone personality. Further, the authors believed that a multifaceted approach, based upon psychoanalytic understandings of personality, could

Prejudice among Afrikaans- and English-Speaking South African Students

Abstract: Summary Important previous research indicates that white South Africans are extremely prejudiced and suggests that cultural norms might be the dominant determinant of these prejudices In the present study it was argued that a distinction should be made between Afrikaans- and English-speaking whites and that a comparison with previous research would be justifiable only if similar measuring instruments were used Consequently, 134 Afrikaans- (40 males and 94 females) and 112 English-speaking (21 males and 91 females) university students were used as Ss, while the 29 item F scale and final version of the E scale of Adorno et al, as well as Wilson and Patterson's conservatism scale, were used to measure authoritarianism, prejudice, and conservatism The results indicate that only the Afrikaans-speaking Ss manifest a considerable amount of prejudice, authoritarianism, and conservatism Although it is clear that cultural norms do influence the development of prejudice, factors such as conservatism and authori

Racism and Authoritarianism among White South Africans

Abstract: Summary Previous work with student samples has suggested that authoritarianism may not have the same significance in relation to racism in South Africa as it does elsewhere. It has been proposed instead that both racism and authoritarianism are simply social norms in South Africa. The present study examined these hypotheses on a random sample of 100 residents of Johannesburg. When compared with the results of similar surveys in Australia, the South Africans were found in fact not to be particularly authoritarian or racially prejudiced. Prejudice and F scale score correlated .59, but a scale of authoritarianism in personality inventory format predicted prejudice not at all (r = −.07). It was concluded that the F scale was primarily a measure of social conservatism and that South African institutional racism could best be understood as a response to perceived threat.

Images of Social Groups: Categorical or Qualified?

Abstract: This paper makes a direct empirical assessment of the way Americans go about describing social groups in three important intergroup contexts-race, gender, and social class. Results from a national survey indicate that when respondents are given the opportunity to express themselves in a relatively unconstrained format, qualified images of groups generally prevail over categorical descriptions. Further, the amount and pattern of categorical thinking vary considerably across the three intergroup contexts, reflecting the different kinds of group images that underly race, gender, and social class relations. Mary R. Jackman is an Associate Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Associate of the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. Mary Scheuer Senter is an Instructor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Central Michigan University. The authors would like to thank Robert W. Jackman, Joan Huber, Anne Adams, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments, and Suzanne Purcell and Maria Kousis for their assistance. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute for Mental Health (MH-26433) and the National Science Foundation (SOC 75-00405). Public Opinion Quarterly ? 1980 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc 0033-362X/80/0044-341/$l 75 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.49 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:06:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 342 JACKMAN AND SENTER thought to be pervasive and widespread (Katz and Braly, 1947; Centers, 1951; Ehrlich, 1962, 1973:32; Williams, 1964:36, 41; Karlins et al., 1969; Eldridge, 1979:22-27), and their analysis has been central to the study of intergroup beliefs and stereotypes. Indeed, most definitions of a stereotype include categorical thinking as a critical element (Fishman, 1956; Richter, 1956; Vinacke, 1957; Allport, 1958; Secord, 1959; Koenig and King, 1964; Williams, 1964; Campbell, 1967; Harding et al., 1969; Tajfel, 1969; Cauthen et al., 1971; Brigham, 1971; Mackie, 1973). While the categorical description of groups has been a central concern of past research, standard measures have assumed rather than demonstrated its existence. Analysts have constrained respondents to express their beliefs about group traits in categorical terms, and have then inferred that categorical thinking is endemic to intergroup perceptions. In addition, most research on trait attribution to social groups has relied on select subsamples (generally college students), so that we know relatively little about the nature of trait attribution among a cross-section of the general public. In this study, we report on a new measure of beliefs about group traits that was administered in a national probability survey of the United States. A more sensitive reflection than past measures of how personality traits are assigned to social groups, our measure is applied to the images of race, gender, and social class groups held by blacks and whites, women and men, and people from four subjectively defined social classes, respectively. The results of our analysis belie the common conclusion that categorical images of social groups are pervasive and widespread. Instead, they yield useful and suggestive data on the varied extent to which different social groups are described in categorical or qualified terms. Categorical Thinking: Central Issues Many analysts consider the tendency to simplify and classify the world as fundamental to perception as well as a functional coping mechanism for bringing some order to the confusion of reality (Lippman, 1922; Allport, 1958; Tajfel, 1969; Ehrlich, 1973:38). In the context of intergroup beliefs, this process is believed to become exaggerated and emotionally invested. The categorical perception of groups "provides the mold which gives shape to intergroup attitudes" (Tajfel, 1969:91). Stereotype assignmefits become "the language of prejudice" (Ehrlich, 1973:21). The categorical attribution of traits to social groups is regarded as invidious for two reasons. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.49 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:06:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms IMAGES OF SOCIAL GROUPS One line of reasoning stresses that any perception that unequivocally lumps all the members of a group into one unvaried category is intrinsically invidious because it credits group membership with an overwhelming role in determining individual personality characteristics, and because it provides the perfect grounding for discriminatory policies and practices. Most important, however, the categorical description of a group represents a closed and insensitive perception that routinely pigeonholes group members and leaves the perceiver unreceptive to contrary evidence, which is either overlooked or dismissed as a mere "exception." Categorical descriptions of groups are thus seen as inherently "inaccurate" and irrational (Lippmann, 1922; Richter, 1956; Allport, 1958; Williams, 1964:36; Ehrlich, 1973; Mackie, 1973; Tajfel, 1969; 1978). According to a second line of reasoning, the invidiousness of categorical images of groups stems from the unqualified attribution of positive traits to one's own group and negative qualities to other groups. Perceptions that reflect ethnocentrism and prejudice assert one group's monopoly of "good" traits and another group's monopoly of "bad" traits (Vinacke, 1957; Allport, 1958; Williams, 1964:40; Campbell, 1967; Harding, 1968; Tajfel, 1969; 1978; Eldridge,

Sex Prejudice Among White Protestants: Like or Unlike Ethnic Prejudice?

Abstract: Analysis of attitudes about female participation in politics from two recent national polls reveals divergence between white Protestant prejudice toward women and white Protestant prejudice toward race and ethnic groups documented by previous research. Like ethnic prejudice, political sex prejudice is higher among white Protestants than among unaffiliated whites. Unlike ethnic prejudice, (1) persons affiliated with fundamentalist Protestant groups do not display greater sex prejudice than those affiliated with nonfundamentalist groups; (2) among the sample as a whole and among nonfundamentalists, the less religious are not more prejudiced toward women than the more religious; and (3) within fundamentalist groups the more religious exhibit higher levels of sex prejudice, an association that does not appear due to variations in localism. This divergence seems more a result of a biblical bias against women pervasive among Protestant groups (unlike the absence of biblical statements about most current race and ethnic groups) rather than of women's in-group status (unlike the usual out-group status of race and ethnic groups). Among white Protestants, the relationship of denominational affiliation and religiosity to prejudice toward blacks, Jews, and Catholics is reasonably well documented. Gorsuch and Aleshire conclude from their review of 112 studies on Christian faith and ethnic prejudice that white Protestants associated with groups possessing fundamentalist belief systems are generally more prejudiced than members of nonfundamentalist groups, with unchurched whites exhibiting the least prejudice. High religiosity, however, seems to mitigate ethnic prejudice: highly active members of both *Revision of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, 1978. We would like to thank the Texas Tech Secondary Analysis Research Institute for making available the data for this analysis from Roper Public Opinion Center; the Texas Tech Computer Center for use of their facilities to analyze these data; and several colleagues-Jack Balswick, Paul Chalfant, Margaret Farnworth, George Lowe, Marietta Morrissey, and Joe Ventimiglia-as well as anonymous referees for helpful comments. ? 1980 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732/80/010169-85$01.70

The Social and Self-Identities of Fijian Indians in Vancouver.

Abstract: A sustained anthropological interest in ethnic relations has developed during the past decade. Despite this, analysis of the mechanisms that generate, support, and modify ethnic identities have received little attention. Neither has there been much concern expressed for how ethnic identities articulate with each other. It is suggested that in order for an actor to perform in a given situation he must minimally understand three socially defined ethnic identities: his group's self-identity, his understanding of his group's social identity in the eyes of others, and his conception of the self-identity of those with whom he interacts. These social identities are not arbitrary, for they must be reconciled with ideas of self and world and with supporting information received from social interaction. Fijian Indian immigrants in Vancouver, British Columbia, are shown to build their understanding of their social worth in this fashion, producing an explanation for why they are subject to prejudice when they believe both themselves and other Canadians to be good and ethical people. Anthropological and sociological approaches to ethnicity have traditionally tended to focus almost exclusively on three basic areas: intergroup structural relationships of power and privilege, the internal sociocultural organization of ethnic minorities, and the description of ethnic stereotypes. Only in the last 10 years has there arisen a sustained interest in interactional ethnic relations and the range of phenomena and processes that are to be found at the interface between groups. Following the early lead of Goffman (1959, 1963, 1967), Fredrik Barth's seminal introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969:9-39) can be credited with almost single-handedly initiating this new anthropological orientation toward ethnic relations.1 Barth and others (Braroe 1975:12-37; Eidheim 1969; Berreman 1 975) have convincingly argued that more traditional approaches have been inadequate to explain the maintenance of ethnicity despite the constant transfer of ideas, people, and things across ethnic

A Postscript to the Discussion on Grammar of Poetry

Abstract: The linguistic study of poetry is double in scope. On the one hand, the science of language, which obviously should examine verbal signs in all their arrangements and functions, cannot rightfully neglect the poetic function, which together with the other verbal functions participates in the speech of every human being from earliest infancy and plays a crucial role in the structuring of discourse. This function entails an introverted attitude toward verbal signs in their union of the signans and the signatum, and it acquires a dominant position in poetic language. The latter calls for a most meticulous examination by the linguist, especially since verse seems to belong to the universal phenomena of human culture. Saint Augustine even judged that without experience in poetics one would hardly be able to fulfill the duties of a worthy grammarian. On the other hand, all research in the area of poetics presupposes an initiation to the scientific study of language, because poetry is a verbal art and therefore implies, first of all, a particular use of language. At present linguists who venture to study poetic language run into a whole battery of objections from literary critics, some of whom stubbornly contest the right of linguistics to explore the problems of poetry. At most, they propose to assign to this science, in its relation to poetics, the status of an auxiliary discipline. All such restrictive and prohibitive procedures are based upon an outdated prejudice that either deprives linguistics of its primordial objective, i.e. the study of verbal form in relation to its functions, or allots to linguistics but one of the various tasks of language, the referential function. Other biases, which in turn result from a misconception of contemporary linguistics and its vistas, lead the critics into serious blunders. Thus, the idea of linguistics as a discipline enclosed within the narrow limits of the sentence, which consequently makes the linguist incapable of examining the composition of poems, is contradicted by the progressing study of multinuclear utterances and by discourse analysis, one of the tasks which is now at the forefront of linguistic science. At present the linguist is preoccupied with semantic problems at all levels of language, and when he seeks to describe what makes up a poem, then its meaning-in brief, the semantic aspect of the poem-appears precisely as an integral part of the whole, and we may ask why there still are critics who imagine that the semantic analysis of a poetic message involves a transgression of the linguistic approach. If the poem raises questions which go beyond its verbal texture, we enter-and the science of language provides us with a host of examples-into a broader

Reducing racial prejudice by verbal operant conditioning

Abstract: Summary.-Free associations of adjectives to 10 pictures of black persons in various situations by two goups of 10 prejudiced white Southern student nurses in a verbal operant conditioning procedure was employed to reduce prejudice toward black people. Prejudice was measured by the California Ethnocentrism Scale, a 29-scale semantic differential of bipolar evaluative adjectives, and by a 5-min. sample of freely emitted adjectives. The 10 subjects in the two experimental groups and in the control group were first evaluated for prejudice in a group setting and then in the individual conditioning session, to determine their base level. During conditioning the two experimental groups were reinforced with "good" for every favorable adjective emitted, while the control group received none. As expected, positive adjectives increased and negative ones decreased, and scores on the semantic differential and the Erhnocentrism scale were consistent. Prejudiced subjects were ready to respond with a highly unfavorable attitude with reference peers and to give more favorable responses individually to the experimenter. After the individual conditioning of the positive concept, the tendency was to return to the original level of unfavorable responsiveness or to retain the original prejudiced attitude. This effect was called the "rho phenomenon" of concept change. The influence of social status, and suggestibility on the "rho phenomenon" needs funher research.

Racism and German Protestant Theology: A Prelude to the Holocaust

Abstract: The success of racism in modern Europe had a great deal to do with the experience of military defeat and political collapse; France after 1870 and Germany after 1918 were similar in this respect. As a modern ideology, racism be gins in the nineteenth century but older modes of race thinking are rooted in European ethnocentrism stretching backward in time to classical antiquity and the Christian ages. Race thinking was greatly accelerated during the great age of discovery, and even the Enlightenment suffered from white ethnocentric prejudice. When the old Christian universe was replaced by modern secular ideas, racism emerged as a secular myth, the Aryan myth, that soon became a rationale for anti- Jewish feelings in Europe. The alienated European found in this myth a form of spiritual reassurance during an age that seemed disappointing and decadent. German Protestant theology during the nineteenth century was slowly colored by romantic nationalistic ideas that eventually would open the door to racism. The...

Value Judgements and Ideology: Morality and Prejudice in Economic Science

Abstract: Few issues in the social sciences arouse emotions and controversy as strongly as the application of the concepts of moral judgement and ideological prejudice to the methods and substance of social theory. Yet few concepts are as frequently confused and misconstrued as these two concepts, by a large number of social scientists. These two observations are consistent, not contradictory. For, in general, the greater the confusion about a controversial subject, the stronger the degree of friction, and the heat which this generates.