Page 42 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

2. INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL DISCRIMINATION
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about the attitude object. With respect to intergroup attitudes, cognitive
processes include both the basic consequences of categorizing people into
ingroups and outgroups (e.g., the tendency to see members of another
group as similar to one another) and the types of generalizations that peo­
ple make about particular groups. The affective component of attitudes re­
lates to feelings and emotions associated with the attitude object. Although
cognitive and affective intergroup orientations are often consonant, they
may also be inconsistent. For instance, modern forms of prejudice have
been described as involving a disassociation between affect and cognition,
with feelings often being more negative than beliefs about members of
other groups (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1998). Moreover, the relative contribu­
tion of the affective and cognitive factors to discrimination may vary across
groups as a function of individual differences and group relations.
Prejudice is commonly defined as an unfair negative attitude toward a
social group or a person perceived to be a member of that group. Prejudice
serves fundamental functions. Like other attitudes, it provides a schema for
interpreting the environment by signaling whether others in the environ­
ment are good or bad, thereby preparing people to take appropriate action.
Prejudice may be reflected in general evaluative responses and may also
involve emotional reactions, such as anxiety or contempt. In this chapter,
we consider evaluative and affective aspects of prejudice separately.
A stereotype is a generalization of beliefs about a group or its members
that is unjustified because it reflects faulty thought processes or overgen­
eralizations, factual incorrectness, inordinate rigidity, misattributions, or
rationalizations for prejudiced attitudes or discriminatory behaviors (Do­
vidio, Brigham, Johnson, & Gaertner, 1996). Rather than representing an
overall orientation toward a group, a stereotype represents a particular con­
stellation of traits and roles associated with a group. Because stereotypes
operate as coherent cognitive schemas, they fundamentally influence how
information about a group or group member is acquired, processed, stored,
and recalled (von Hippel, Sekaquaptewa, & Vargas, 1995). The activation
of stereotypes typically produces an information processing advantage for
stereotypical traits or other associations (Mackie, Hamilton, Susskind, &
Rosselli, 1996). In addition, people do not typically attend to perceptual in­
formation that could disconfirm stereotypes (von Hippel et al., 1995), and
they tend to view group members who are nonstereotypic as exceptions
or representative of a subtype of the group. As a result of these processes,
stereotypes are highly resistant to change.
Despite the traditional distinction between prejudice and stereotyping,
researchers have also emphasized their commonalities and close relation­
ship. For instance, prejudices and stereotypes encompass affective and cog­
nitive responses. In addition, both prejudices and stereotypes do not have