From Prejudice to Intergroup Emotions

Differentiated Reactions to Social Groups

Diane M. Mackie, Eliot R. Smith

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781841690476
• eBook ISBN: 9781317710202
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The theories or programs of research described in the chapters of this book move beyond the traditional evaluation model of prejudice, drawing on a broad range of theoretical ancestry to develop models of why, when, and how differentiated reactions to groups arise, and what their consequences might be. The chapters have in common a re-focusing of interest on emotion as a theoretical base for understanding differentiated reactions to, and differentiated behaviors toward, social groups. The contributions also share a focus on specific interactional and structural relations among groups as a source of these differentiated emotional reactions. The chapters in the volume thus reflect a theoretical shift from an earlier emphasis on knowledge about ingroups and outgroups to a new perspective on prejudice in which socially-grounded emotional differentiation becomes a basis for social regulation.

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Beyond Prejudice

Moving from Positive and Negative Evaluations to Differentiated Reactions to Social Groups

DIANE M. MACKIE
ELIOT R. SMITH

The annals of history and contemporary news sources bear overwhelming witness to the variety of ways in which outgroups are devalued, discriminated against, and sometimes decimated by the members of other groups. The human toll of such negative intergroup behavior, as well as its apparent near universality, and its seeming intransigence, have always loomed as much more than just theoretical and empirical challenges to social psychologists. Horrified at the scope and extremity of Nazi-exploited anti-Semitism, and frustrated at the obstinacy of international, religious, and ethnic strife, social psychologists have always recognized the urgent practical burden that their study of discrimination must bear.

In attempting to understand, predict, and inhibit such negative intergroup behavior, social psychologists have typically focused on prejudice—a positive or negative evaluation of a group and its members—as the cause of discrimination (Allport, 1954; Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980; Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Mackie & Smith, 1998; Sigall & Page, 1971; Spencer & Fein, 1997; Tajfel, 1969; Zanna, 1994). This evaluative model of prejudice is almost as old as the discipline itself (Allport, 1946, 1954; Jones, 1998). The development of attitude theory made social psychology uniquely impermeable to behaviorist inroads, and evaluations with social groups as their object were central in the development of attitude theory. Theories of the antecedents of prejudice toward other groups have changed remarkably over the course of the decades, reflecting the discipline's changing preoccupations with personality, cognitive, and motivational explanations of phenomena. But the end product of such theories has typically been prejudice defined as a (usually) negative evaluation of, dislike for, or antipathy toward a group and its members. In this attitude-based model, discrimination—behavior directed toward a group or its members—can then be viewed as evaluation-consistent behavior.

The fruitfulness of this approach is reflected in the many theoretical, empirical, and practical achievements obvious in any review of stereotyping, prejudice, or intergroup relations (Brewer & Brown, 1998; Brown & Gaertner, 2001; Fiske, 1998; Mackie & Smith, 1998; Sedikides, Schopler, & Insko, 1998). As with any maturing theory, however, the very success of the endeavor makes clear its limitations. In its most traditional form, and borrowing from its attitudinal ancestors, prejudice as a unidimensional liking or disliking associated with the mental representation of a social group has some significant difficulties in explaining intergroup behavior. Not coincidentally, recent developments in attitude theory have also started to acknowledge these same limitations.

First, traditional models of prejudice provide no theoretical basis for considering differentiated reactions to social groups. By the attitude model, prejudice toward groups who have negative characteristics (and are thus negatively evaluated) or who engender negative feelings (and are thus negatively evaluated) is identical. So too is prejudice toward groups that elicit fear (and are thus negatively evaluated) and toward those that elicit anger (and are thus negatively evaluated). Dissatisfaction with this type of inflexibility in the attitude domain is reflected in the development of component models, in which attitudes based primarily on affective versus cognitive versus behavioral foundations are distinguished (Chaiken, Pomerantz, & Giner-Sorolla, 1995; Edwards & von Hippel, 1995; Zanna & Rempel, 1988). To our knowledge, no current model has gone further in looking at the different types of information within one of the component classes upon which evaluations are thought to be based.

Second, in traditional attitude (and therefore prejudice) approaches, evaluation is seen as adhering to or being associated with the attitude object in an all or-none manner. As noted by Bodenhausen, Mussweiler, Gabriel, and Moreno (2001), this approach has generally assumed that "pervasive, culturally embedded forms of social conditioning tend to produce consistent patterns of affective reactions to certain social groups" (p. 321). In other words, negative affective responses become associated with groups through a conditioning mechanism ultimately leading to the responses becoming automatically activated as part of the mental representation of the group. This means that a negatively evaluated group—especially one whose negative evaluation is automatically activated as part of its mental representation—is negatively evaluated, regardless of circumstance. As Smith (1993) pointed out, such a view is particularly problematic for the highly nuanced and complex ways in which "model" minority groups, such as Asian Americans, are treated. Under certain conditions, such groups seem to elicit positive evaluation for their perceived characteristics (such as intelligence and ambition) that are valued by majority groups. Under other circumstances, however, those same qualities appear to threaten majority group dominance, provoking negative evaluations. Struck by the same difficulties, more recent approaches to attitude theory hold that multiple evaluations of objects are possible (Wilson & Hodges, 1992) or have focused on features of an attitude object that allow it to be categorized in multiple ways perhaps eliciting multiple evaluations (Smith, Fazio, & Cejka, 1996). Nevertheless, perhaps because such views undermine one of the classic functions of attitudes (allowing objects to be easily and uniformly evaluated across time and instance), they have not penetrated far into classical attitudinal theory.

Attitude objects about which one is ambivalent raise a third problem for traditional models of attitude, perhaps especially in the intergroup domain. Reactions to many social groups appear to reflect ambivalence, whether this refers to the inability to form a clear evaluation or the presence of both positive and negative components of evaluations. Classic theories of ambivalence in prejudice (Katz, 1981; Katz & Glass, 1979; Katz, Wackenhut, & Hass, 1986; Kinder & Sears, 1981; McConahay, 1983; Sears, 1988) have focused more on the presence of incompatibility among attitude components, and this has also been the main focus in attempts to extend attitude theory by focusing on ambivalence (Fabrigar & Petty, 1999). Such approaches stop short, however, of considering the fact that multiple inconsistent evaluations (and not just components of evaluations) to an object might be possible. Recently, however, Cacioppo and Berntson (1994) have argued that evaluation is not a unidimensional construct. Positive and negative evaluations maybe quite independent of one another, opening the door to the possibility that both positive and negative evaluations (and not just positive and negative antecedents of evaluation) might adhere to an attitude object.

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Perhaps because these issues seem even more pressing in the intergroup relations domain, intergroup relations researchers have also started pushing beyond theories that associate merely positive and negative evaluations to social groups. These researchers have started to explore the antecedents, nature, and consequences of much more complex, modulated, and differentiated reactions to social groups—both membership groups (ingroups) and groups considered psychological outgroups.

These are the approaches we have drawn together in this volume. The theories or programs of research that are being developed contribute to a view of intergroup relations that is more group, situation, and context specific than that allowed by earlier approaches. The authors pursue this view by moving beyond the traditional attitude model of prejudice in important ways, drawing on a broad range of theoretical ancestry to develop models of why, when, and how differentiated reactions to groups arise, and what their consequences might be.

One of the common avenues chosen by many intergroup relations researchers for moving beyond the attitude model is a refocusing of interest on emotion as a theoretical base for understanding prejudice. Such a focus is appealing for several reasons. Affect and emotion seem more intuitively to afford explanations of "hot" or virulent forms of discrimination. Affect seems to be more closely associated with behavior than some cognitive antecedents (Esses & Dovidio, 2000; Millar & Tesser, 1986a). And affective aspects of prejudice may apparently linger even after considerable change in its cognitive component. In G. W. Allport's classic aphorism: "Defeated intellectually, prejudice lingers emotionally" (Allport, 1954, p. 311).

Perhaps of even greater importance, however, is that prevailing theories of emotion offer a conceptual structure paralleling that of attitude theory. Just as beliefs produce attitudes that produce behavior in traditional attitude models, appraisal theories of emotion suggest that cognitive assessment produces emotions that produce associated action patterns (Ellsworth, 1991; Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1988; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). The conceptual gain from importing emotion theory into the intergroup domain, however, centers on the differentiation and specificity that it allows. Appraisals are context specific, and thus groups in different social contexts, or the same group in different social contexts, may elicit different emotions. These different emotions are different in important ways regardless of whether they share some component of, for instance, negative evaluation. So (negative) anger is quite distinct in antecedents and consequences from (negative) fear, which in turn is distinct from (negative) contempt or disgust. As emotions arise from appraisals of circumstances, multiple, different, and conflicting emotions may be experienced about the same group at different times, in different settings, or even simultaneously. A focus on the feelings or emotions aroused, perhaps transiently, perhaps chronically, by intergroup interactions, rather than the static evaluations inherently associated with particular groups, is a theme common to all contributions to the volume.

Conceptualizing prejudice as an emotion almost inevitably entails other theoretical bootstrapping, and two such developments also feature as general streams of thought in most of the contributions to the volume. First, emotion has been conceptualized as an individual process and product. How then can group membership and intergroup interactions be the vehicle for emotional reactions? In fact, the development of social identity (Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Tajfel, 1982) and self-categorization (Turner 1985; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) theories made clear that when group members perceive themselves as interchangeable exemplars of the membership group, those ingroups and ingroup memberships become part of the self. Thus the psychological self extends beyond the individual to include the group, so group membership and intergroup interactions become important sources of emotion (Smith, 1993). Several of the chapters in the volume develop this perspective, demonstrating the importance of categorization processes to the generation of emotions, even in situations in which events do not impinge on individuals at all.

Second, emotions are inherently functional in that they guide self-regulation. Whereas the explanation of discrimination has always been important in the intergroup domain, adherence to the attitude model of prejudice has led researchers to conceptualize discrimination as action consistent with only either the perceived positive or negative evaluation of the target. Perhaps of most appeal in the conceptual leverage offered by considering prejudice as social emotion is that different emotions are associated with equally specific and differentiated tendencies to act—that is, to self-regulate. Anger is an approach emotion, whereas fear increases avoidance; sadness elicits withdrawal, disgust separation, and so forth. Thus with the self extended into the group, self and social regulatory processes could also be seen as the goal of intergroup emotions and behavior. The regulatory nature of emotional approaches to prejudice also features prominently in many of the contributing chapters.

In moving beyond prejudice, researchers have looked to different aspects of the intergroup context as the source of differentiated reactions to the ingroup and to other groups, and we have used these predominant foci to organize the contributions to the volume.

The first set of chapters (Chapters 2 through 8) in the volume all locate differentiated emotional reactions to groups in categorization processes and the appraisals that follow from them. These chapters tend also to have in common the demonstration of emotion as arising from group membership and being experienced on behalf of die group, regardless of whether events impinge personally on individuals or not.

The first two chapters focus on self-regulatory emotions that can be aroused purely as a result of group membership. In Chapter 2, Bizman and Yinon extend Higgins' (1987, 1989) theory of self-discrepancy by assessing ideal and ought discrepancies from the actual self that result from membership in certain groups. Consistent with studies of discrepancies operating at the personal level, the authors find that actual-ideal group discrepancies uniquely produce dejection-related emotions, whereas actual-ought group discrepancies are linked to agitation-related emotions. Although Bizman and Yinon do not pursue the implications of these different emotional reactions to the ingroup as a basis for prejudice toward outgroups, the implication is clear—self-regulatory motives and processes powerfully affect emotional reactions to the ingroup.

The implications of such self-regulatory processes for reactions to both ingroups and outgroups is the focus of Chapter 3, by Shah, Brazy, and Higgins. These authors extend into the intergroup domain the tenets of Higgins' (1997) regulatory focus theory, in which the goals of approaching gains (promotion) and avoiding losses (prevention) are seen as quite independent. Satisfaction or frustration of these different goals triggers different affective states even in regards to the same target. The authors demonstrate that individual differences in sensitivity to promotion or prevention goals as well as the manipulated salience of such goals dictate both emotional reactions to and behavior toward other ingroup and outgroup members. A concern with promotion versus prevention also seems ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Beyond Prejudice: Moving from Positive and Negative Evaluations to Differentiated Reactions to Social Groups
• 2 Social Self-Discrepancies and Group-Based Emotional Distress
• 3 Promotion and Prevention Forms of Ingroup Bias
• 4 Antecedents and Consequences of Collective Guilt
• 5 Intergroup Emotions and Self-Categorization: The Impact of Perspective-Taking on Reactions to Victims of Harmful Behavior
• 6 Intergroup Encounters and Threat: A Multi-Method Approach
• 7 Experiencing Intergroup Emotions
• 8 Expressing Emotions and Decoding Them: Ingroups and Outgroups Do Not Share the Same Advantages
• 9 The Role of Affect in Determining Intergroup Behavior: The Case of Willingness to Engage in Intergroup Contact
• 10 Close Encounters of the Suspicious Kind: Outgroup Paranoia in Hierarchical Trust Dilemmas
• 11 The Role of Threat in Intergroup Relations
• 12 Intergroup Emotions and Images
• 13 The System Justification Motive in Intergroup Relations
• 14 Emotions Up and Down: Intergroup Emotions Result from Perceived Status and Competition
• 15 Intergroup Emotions: A Biocultural Approach
• 16 Commentary
• Index