Page 43 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

2. INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL DISCRIMINATION
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concerned about others' welfare, empathic, and tolerant of other individ­
uals and groups (Pratto et al., 1994).
A third individual difference is the level of prejudice that people hold.
Whereas authoritarianism and social dominance orientation may be related
directly to overt biases, such as old-fashioned racism, other forms of bias
have emerged as current norms and laws sanction open discrimination.
Examples of contemporary racial biases include aversive racism (Gaertner
& Dovidio, 1986), modern racism (McConahay, 1986), and symbolic racism
(Sears, Henry, & Kosterman, 2000). A common, critical aspect these three
different forms of contemporary bias is the conflict between the denial
of personal prejudice and underlying unconscious negative feelings and
beliefs.
Dovidio and Gaertner (2000), for example, proposed that aversive
racism may be one factor that contributes to disparities in the workplace.
At the time of hiring, aversive racism can affect how qualifications are
perceived and weighed, in ways that systematically disadvantage Black
relative to White applicants. Dovidio and Gaertner found that racial bias
among Black applicants was not expressed when Black and White job can­
didates were clearly qualified or clearly unqualified for a position. How­
ever, when qualifications were not clear, bias against Black candidates
emerged.
Measures of implicit attitudes and stereotypes, assessed using response
latency techniques, have helped to identify who is likely to exhibit these
types of subtle biases. In general, response time measures relate to a wide
range of personal characteristics and orientations, such as self-esteem and
political ideology (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003), and these
measures have been used to increase the accuracy of predicting voting
behavior, other political positions, and consumer behavior (Bassili, 1995;
Fazio, Powell, & Williams, 1989). Using response time measures to assess
implicit feelings about Blacks and self-report techniques to measure ex­
plicit attitudes, Dovidio, Kawakami, and Gaertner (2002) evaluated the ef­
fects of White individuals' unconscious (implicit) and conscious (explicit)
attitudes on discrimination. Explicit attitudes shape deliberative, well-
considered responses (e.g., overt judgments) for which people have the
motivation and opportunity to weigh the costs and benefits of various
courses of action, whereas implicit attitudes shape responses that are more
difficult to monitor and control (e.g., some nonverbal behaviors). Thus,
the relative impact of implicit and explicit attitudes is a function of the
context in which the attitudinal object appears, the motivation and op­
portunity to engage in deliberative processes, and the nature of the be­
havioral response. We consider the role of the social context in the next
section.