Showing papers on "Prejudice published in 1987"

Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk

Abstract: Introduction Structures of Prejudiced Discourse Sources of Prejudiced Talk The Cognitive Dimension Structures and Strategies of Ethnic Prejudice The Interpersonal Communication of Prejudice The Social Context of Prejudice

Religious Orientation and Prejudice: A Comparison of Racial and Sexual Attitudes

Abstract: Past research on the relationship between religious orientation and prejudice against out-groups has focused on racism. A greater tendency toward racist attitudes has been found among persons with an external religious orientation, whereas an intrinsic orientation has sometimes been associated with tolerance. This study examined the influence of religious orientation on attitudes toward an out-group not widely accepted by contemporary religions: lesbians and gay men. Using questionnaire data from white, heterosexual students on four university campuses, an extrinsic orientation was found to be positively correlated with racism, while an intrinsic orientation was not. Intrinsics, however, tended to be more prejudiced against gay people than were extrinsics. It is suggested that an intrinsic orientation does not foster unequivocal acceptance of others but instead encourages tolerance toward specific groups that are accepted by contemporary Judeo-Christian teachings. The hypothesis is discussed that attitude...

The problem of gender in family therapy theory.

Abstract: The field of family therapy is now a continuous process like a car cruising on automatic control with the driver comfortably in the lotus position. Family therapy theory rests on normative concepts of the traditional family and idealized conceptions of family relationships. Inequalities in the family associated with gender have been regarded as of little importance to the development of macro theory in the field. The two most influential therapeutic models, psychodynamic and systemic approaches, are each marked by gender bias. The alpha prejudice of psychodynamic theories exaggerates gender differences; the beta prejudice of systemic approaches ignores them. The construction of gender role concepts has led to a false dichotomy, whether supported by traditionalists or feminists. On close examination, gender role ideals turn out to be simplifications and caricatures. The uncritical use of gender role concepts supports power differences between men and women and ignores the complexities and commonalities of human experience. The failure of family therapy theory to deal with gender issues needs to be addressed if a theory that is not just "more of the same" is to be developed.

A cross-cultural investigation of religious orientation, social norms, and prejudice.

Abstract: Researchers have recently reported that the established low correlation between intrinsic religiousness and prejudice is an artifact of social desirability. They found that only the quest orientation correlated negatively with prejudice. This study examined these developments in a culture in which prejudice against a certain group was not socially undesirable. One hundred and ninety-one Seventh-Day Adventists on the Caribbean island of St. Croix responded to religious orientation measures and a measure of prejudice against Rastafanans. We found that Adventist church members rated the church as more prejudiced than the general population on St. Croix. Strength of commitment to the Adventist church was significantly correlated with prejudice as was church attendance. Intrinsic religiosity was also significantly correlated with prejudice. There was no relationship between the extrinsic or quest orientations and prejudice. We conclude that there is no singular relationship between religious orientation and prejudice; researchers must take account of particular religious and social norms.

Cite unseen: Distortions of the Allport and Postman rumor study in the eyewitness testimony literature

Abstract: In the psychological literature on eyewitness testimory, the classic Allport and Postman (1945, 1947) study of rumor has consistently been described inaccurately. In the inaccurate accounts both the procedures and implications of the study have been substantially distorted. The erroneous descriptions have found their way into the legal literature, apparently as the results of legal scholars' reliance on the inaccurate secondary reports in the psychological literature. Furthermore, psychologists testifying as experts in court have offered inaccurate accounts of the study in support of contentions about effects of prejudice on eyewitness perception. This note contrasts the actual methods and results of the Allport and Postman study with the descriptions in the eyewitness testimony literature, with the aims of averting future errors concerning the study, and of emphasizing the importance of consulting original sources and reading them carefully.

Elizabeth Bouvia, assisted suicide and social prejudice.

Abstract: This chapter concentrates on the historical and contemporary experience of disabled people. The most prominent and vigorous suicide rights activists seek legalization of assisted suicide not only for those who are terminally ill, but also for an array of other socially devalued and disadvantaged persons, most notably, people with disabilities and older people. The prejudices apparent in fictional film portrayals reappeared in the real life legal case of Elizabeth Bouvia. Her experience epitomizes all of the devaluation and discrimination inflicted on disabled people by society Because of cerebral palsy, Ms. Bouvia is quadri plegic. Both suicide rights and antisuicide advocates express prejudice in their persistent use of intensely stigmatizing language: disabled people are defective, damaged, debilitated, deformed, distressed, afflicted, anomalous, helpless and/or infirm. Proponents of legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill persons argue that it need not lead inevitably down a "slippery slope" to voluntary and involuntary euthanasia of other persons.

Biological Bases of Prejudice

Abstract: Our knowledge of the causes of social prejudice is insufficient; conventional sociological and psychological approaches should be com- plemented by a search for biological causes. Evolutionary theory can explain why there is a need for prejudices. The formation of prejudices is supported by some characteristics of our cognitive apparatus. Apart from that, behavioural tendencies such as group orientation and xenophobia, as well as the biologically rooted rejection of outsiders, contribute to the formation of prejudices. Prejudices are hard to fight because of their biological basis, but insight into this element may indicate effective countermeasures. In this paper prejudice is broadly defined as a construct based on insufficient empirical evidence. It includes patterns of perception, interpretation, evaluation and action which are relatively immune to criticism and change. A prejudice (in this sense) has a cognitive, an affective, and, under certain conditions, a conative aspect. Behavioural scientists disagree on the causes of prejudice. Psychologists generally look for causes located inside the individual, and sociologists focus on social factors. I prefer to start with the biological factors which might be involved. The known sociological and psychological approaches will not be replaced by biological explanations, but they should be complemented by a comprehensive biocultural

The Symbolism of Social Discrimination: A Decoding of Discriminatory Language

Abstract: OSAMU MIHASHI iS Professor in the Department of Human Sciences at Wako University (2i60 Kanai-ch6, Machida-shi, Tokyo I94-0I, Japan). Bom in I936, he received his B.A. in sociology from Tokyo University in I960. After serving as head of the research program department of the Nippon Research Center Co., Ltd., he began teaching sociology at the university in I969. He has carried out a number of surveys, among them surveys of domestic workers in buraku industry, leather workers, and Korean and Chinese residents of Kanagawa Prefecture. His research interests are in contemporary discrimination and its sociohistory and in sociohistory from the viewpoint of the human body. His publications include Sabetsu ron Noto (Notes on Discrimination) (Tokyo: Shinsensha, I973 and I986 [revised edition]), Tobenai Karada: Shintai-sei no Shakaigaku (Body Situation: A Sociological Essay on Contemporary Japanese Society) (Tokyo: Sanseido, i982), and, with others, Nihon no Nakano Kankoku-Chosen-jin, Chu2goku-jin (Korean and Chinese Residents in Japan) (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, I986). Discrimination indicates a relation, and therefore it has many meanings. It is traditional in sociology and social psychology to distinguish "prejudice" from "discrimination," the former emphasizing the psychological and the latter denoting a system. In contrast, I have suggested the existence of something that links what is behind the discrimination, which is really a misconception of the person discriminated against, with the stereotypes. I have identified this something as symbolic thinking and have approached the problem of discrimination against Koreans resident in Japan and against the minority called burakumin from this viewpoint (Mihashi I973). In cultural anthropology, in which symbols themselves are the subjects of study, analyzing the world around one in terms of symbols is a matter of consciousness as well as system, and therefore the concept of discrimination naturally encompasses both prejudice and discrimination as defined in other fields. Considering the problem of discrimination from this point of view focuses attention on the thinking behind the relationship called discrimination and enables us to grasp the dynamics of that relationship. In the times when people were bound to feudal statuses, "discrimination" simply meant "distinction," and no one bothered to discuss its nature. They simply lived within the discrimination. In a sense, then, the problem of discrimination arose only in modern timesafter people were freed from the feudal restrictions. If we define discrimination operationally as a relationship in which one group imposes extremely disadvantageous conditions on another, it can be found throughout history, but it is the feeling of many that the degree of discrimination, if indeed that can be measured, has increased in modern times (Takatori, Noma, and Yasuoka I984). Therefore, discrimination must be treated as a problem intimately related to the modem age and connected with both the surface aspects and the depths of culture. This paper is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of discrimination today and the way in which it is related to "modernity" by employing the comprehensive approach introduced by cultural anthropology. I will focus on bullying (ijime)1 and on discrimination against some of the main minority groups in Japan.

Attitudinal aspects of immigrants’ choice of home language

Abstract: This study explores the relationship between language‐related attitudes of English speaking immigrants in Israel and their choice of L1 or L2 (Hebrew) for communication with their Israeli‐born children. A sample of 20 parents was interviewed. An unexpected finding was that lack of proficiency in L2 just as often encouraged a parent to choose L2 as L1. Among the other motivating factors, child‐based reasons, including the estimated effects of bilingualism, were more significant overall than socially‐based sentiments. Measures of traditionalism and nationalism and of prejudice for or against each language group did not discriminate between the two kinds of parents. However, attitudes toward the language per se were in the direction of language choice. Each group attributed more positive characteristics to its own choice then to the other language.

Raking the Field of the Discourse of Racism

Abstract: In order to disavow our social life of a set of social relations as destructive as racism, it is necessary to comprehend it in its full complexity. It is little wonder, then, that racism is yet so much a feature of contemporary social experience. The prevailing accounts of racism institutionalized by the mainstream academic perspectives have created an "object" corresponding only in part to the wide range of racism's manifestations in our daily experience. Racism has been defined widely as an irrational group prejudice asserting superiority or inferiority of members of races on unwarranted groups of physical or mythical properties, such as skin color, blood, and so forth. Consider, however, the following spreading examples: Charles, a white Englishman, votes to end West Indian immigration because he finds his neighborhood transforming culturally from one of "privacy, chamber music and bacon 'n eggs" to that of "public steel drum music, Jamaican food and natty dreadlocks. " Similarly, Friedrich, a white German, votes to end migrant labor because he watched his turf changing from one of "Wagner and schnitzel" to "belly dancing, shish kebab and Turkish delight." Both are clearly racist in their relevant beliefs and acts here. But no prejudgment need be made by them about some a priori group

Doctors and ageism.

Abstract: Ageism, defined as "discrimination against the old on the grounds of their being old,"1 emerged as a concept in the United States in the 1960s and promptly joined racism and sexism in the rogues' gallery of social attitudes unacceptable to pressure groups. The Grey Panthers, having found their demon, fought it with commendable zeal and effect. People, it seemed, could be made to feel uncomfortable if accused of even quite recently identified discriminatory attitudes or practices. The idea of ageism is less familiar in Britain, but that should not make us complacent. Though to many an uncouth neologism, the word at least invites us to examine our prejudices, and the intended analogy with racism suggests an illuminating exercise. Would we dare translate our less amiable generalisations about elderly patients, our more exasperated reactions to them, directly into terms of colour? ("Don't you find it depressing working with black patients all the time?" "Twelve new admissions last night and only three of them white." "How can I be expected to run a teaching medical ward with all these beds blocked by, ahem, ethnic minorities?") The point need not be laboured. Perhaps some doctors are ageist, some of the time at least. Such systematic research as has been carried out on the subject, mainly among medical students, confirms that a problem exists.23 A negative attitude to the elderly?"a medical prejudice against old patients"2?is worrying simply because so many patients are old and many clinical encounters will therefore be vitiated if doctors are reluctant, ambivalent, or hostile towards them. Older patients have too many diagnoses and insufficient respect for the traditional specialty boundaries of medicine. They may offer slow and elusive histories and may have, in most cases through no fault of their own, social problems. Their proper diagnosis and management may be less than straightforward for busy doctors in general practice and in the single organ specialties, where many contributing factors, ignorance of the basics of geriatric medicine perhaps included, may combine to produce frustration, exasperation, withdrawal, or rejection. "We come to clinical medicine with humanity and after three years they have educated it out of us," observed a medical student quoted by Gale and Livesley in a 1971 study which showed that junior hospital doctors' attitudes to the care of the elderly were much less favourable than those of clinical medical students.4 Teaching hospital ageism, which can reasonably be held to account for the difference, is hard to resist but may not go on forever. The present generation of teachers is the last not widely exposed to undergraduate education in geriatric medicine,5 and recent evidence from the evaluation of such teaching efforts suggests that a better understanding of the special needs of elderly patients results in more positive attitudes towards their care.6 7

The Importance of Comparison And Contrast in Narrative Organization

Abstract: Visitors to our household in the past couple of years have run the rish of being regaled with corny comic stories told with great gusto by my two children. Two of these stories, transcribed from recent tellings, follow. Although the tonditions of recording (by note pad) produced slower, more cautious, tellings than would have occurred in a spontaneous setting, the stories do not seem to me substantially altered from earlier versions, partly because the children are much practised in their telling. The only important change, tuggested by me, was the loss in each story of the national identity of the characters; this was to avoid perpetuating a subtle form of prejudice, which associates one nationality with stupid or unsociable behavior. Needless to say, though my children were the narrators, they were not the originators of the stories.

Ethnicity: the fourth burden of black women - political action:

Abstract: While white feminists emphasise the problems of patriarchy or capitalism black women stress a triple oppression. All black people are subordinated by racial oppression, women are subordinated by sexual domination, black women are subordinated by both as well as class. I want to point out that the triple oppression of black women is often ignored because of the research framework that is rigidly applied. Researchers study the victims of the triple oppression, rather than studying racism, sexism, or class prejudice at the institutional level. Finally, in defining race relations in terms of cultural rela tions, and not in terms of power relations, black, rather than ethnic, consciousness is ignored, Thus the third section in this paper focuses on struggles instigated by black women, that have been specifically black and structured by racism.

Gender Bias in an Occupational Therapy Text

Abstract: Willard and Spackman's Occupational Therapy does not create an awareness and understanding of the role of women in the field of occupational therapy. Nor does the text include general policy statements or reflections on how gender bias affects our work. What is our true consciousness as women therapists? Maria Mies (1983) wrote that women consent to their own oppression or subordination through silence. "Only when there is a rupture in the 'normal' life of a woman, a divorce, an end of a relationship, is there a chance for her to become conscious of her true condition which had been unconsciously submerged in a patriarchal system" (p. 125). True consciousness occurs in occupational therapy when practitioners avoid the use of activities or occupation in therapy. This is our "rupture". I believe the profession needs to develop a policy statement discussing gender concerns in our theory and practice linked to the progress made by women scientists in anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, and literature. It is critical to good treatment that the gender role factor be included in our research on the generic impact of activity on the individual and small group. As female occupational therapists we have the opportunity to make a significant imprint on a gender-based understanding of the health value of activities in our daily lives.

Geschlecht und Gesellschaft: Die ersten Ärztinnen und sozialpolitische Vorurteile

Abstract: The objective mode of scientific inquiry has increasingly been called into question especially within feminist theory. I have tried to introduce two methodological approaches in examing a small area of medical opinion-making in the medical press at a period in which the question of women doctors was being discussed, but very few women doctors were actually practicing in Germany. Methodologically feminist history sees gender as a structural component used to ascribe sexual division of labour and to form concepts of “masculinity” and “femininity” in a society. It does not define “women's history” as a separate sphere additive to other traditional areas of historical writing including history of science. The second methodological approach is that of deconstruction: “objective” statements in medicine and the biological sciences are part of social and cultural preconceptions. I have examined the pattern of unreflected scientific statements about women's claims to want to become doctors. The pattern is one of preventive prejudice: representative doctors wrote about women in physiological and biological terms of being “weak” and “unfit”. This was an effective strategy for maintaining a status quo of dequalification. The historical examination of women entering the professions has not so much to do with their own capacities, but rather with socially conceived forms of argumentation indirectly applied: preventive statements in medicine about biological function, the “weaker” sex, intellectual denigration, physiological determinism. Some of the statements I found are amusing, but the humour becomes bitter when the consequences enter our social consciousness.

"A Contrariety of Emotion": Jane Austen's Ambivalent Lovers in Pride and Prejudice

Abstract: The Oxford English Dictionary defines "ambivalence" as "the coexistence in one person of the emotional attitudes of love and hate, or other opposite feelings, towards the same object or situation," and this concept would seem to apply precisely to Pride and Prejudice. During the first half of the novel, the central couple, Elizabeth and Darcy, are held together by just such contradictory feelings. Like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, each is the one the other loves to hate—and hates to love. And, like Beatrice and Benedick, the two lovers are matched in every way, including disdain for the other, and each finds the other a fascinating and inescapable object of attention. Yet that unwilling attraction to the other makes each hate the other as a threat to his or her pride and emotional independence. But one lover's expression of this hatred only increases the other's fascination; the power of the fascination increases the threat, which intensifies the expressions of hatred. This vicious circle can only be broken when the lovers fully accept their love and dismiss their hatred—that is, when their feelings for each other are no longer ambivalent.

Working with uncertainty. A handbook for those involved in training on HIV and AIDS.

Abstract: The Education Unit of the Family Planning Association has prepared this manual as an aid to persons whose responsibility it has become to disseminate AIDS information Chapter 1 "Introduction" sets forth the Family Planning Associations approach to training; suggests ways of using the manual; describes the training sessions in terms of exercises in intergroup negotiation among sponsors trainers and participants; cautions sensitivity in sexual discussions especially among culturally diverse groups; and points out that confidentiality must be respected Chapter 2 "Climate Setting" discusses how to help the class relax and how to gauge their level of knowledge Chapter 3 "Information" discusses how to dispel myths and correct misinformation fill in gaps in information and clarify attitudes and assumptions about AIDS Chapter 4 "Feelings and Values" is designed to give participants a chance to clarify their feelings and values about sex and AIDS in a safe environment Chapter 5 "Risks and Uncertainty" addresses risk-taking behavior in relation to AIDS Chapter 6 "Prejudice" teaches ways of sifting out ones own prejudices against homosexuals blacks drug users and others so that these prejudices cannot affect the way staff personnel deal with AIDS Chapter 7 "Communicating Sexually" addresses the reticence of people to discuss sex explicitly; such reticence must be overcome before the questions of preventing AIDS through safe sex can be discussed Chapter 8 "Safer Sex" explores creative ways of promoting safe sexual practices without merely distributing a list of prohibitions Chapter 9 "Action Planning" suggests ways of implementing what has been learned Chapter 10 "Evaluation" presents a sample evaluation form and emphasizes that the students should regard it as necessary feedback rather than an end-of-class formality Chapter 11 "Closure" gives some suggestions for a final exchange of notes on what has been learned Chapter 12 "Resources" gives a list of organizations books audiovisuals and other training materials available

How to Teach and to Ensure a Good, Sound Religious Education through a Multi‐faith Approach at the Primary School Level

Abstract: If Religious Education is to have an effective place in education and is not objectionable to younger pupils, there would appear to be a case for laying a foundation of knowledge, while the attitude to the subject is favourable and learning is thus easier to achieve. Then pupils are more likely to be in a well‐informed position to discuss religion at the top of the school, than if teaching has already begun at an age when, although they were intellectually ready and able to undertake open debate, prejudice had already closed teenagers’ eyes to the whole matter (Attfield, 1974) The school should be a community within which children should learn to live the ‘good life’... By example at first hand children can learn to love and care for others, to be generous, kind and courageous. Good experiences in personal relationships in early life will make a most important contribution to an understanding of spiritual and moral values when children are older. (The Plowden Report, 1967, Vol. 1, p. 206, para. 568)