Patricia G. Devine, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Before becoming Professor, she was a Visiting Fellow at Yale University and an Associate Professor at Wisconsin.
Dr. Devine received the Gordon
Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the
Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1990 and the APA
Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to
Psychology in 1994. She is the author or co-author of several journal
articles and is the coeditor of Social Cognition: Impact on Social
Psychology (Academic Press, 1994). Her research interests include
prejudice and intergroup relations, stereotyping, dissonance, and
resistance to persuasion. Dr. Devine received her PhD in Social
Psychology from Ohio State University in 1986.
Legal scholars, politicians,
legislators, social scientists, and lay people alike have puzzled
over the paradox of racism in a nation founded on the fundamental
principle of human equality. Legislators responded with landmark
legal decisions (e.g., Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation
and the Civil Rights laws) that made overt discrimination based on
race illegal. In the wake of the legislative changes, social
scientists examined the extent to which shifts in whites' attitudes
kept pace with the legal changes. The literature, however, reveals
conflicting findings. Whereas overt expressions of prejudice on
surveys declined (i.e., verbal reports), more subtle indicators
(i.e., nonverbal measures) continue to reveal prejudice even among
those who say they renounced prejudice. A central challenge presented
to contemporary prejudice researchers is to explain the disparity
between verbal reports and the more subtle measures.
Some reject the optimistic conclusion
suggested by survey research and argue that prejudice in America is
not declining; it is only changing form--becoming more subtle and
disguised. By this argument, most (if not all) Americans are assumed
to be racist, with only the type of racism differing between people.
Such conclusions are based on the belief that any response that
results in differential treatment between groups is taken as evidence
of prejudice. However, this definition fails to consider intent or
motive and is based on the assumption that nonthoughtful (e.g.,
nonverbal) responses are, by definition, more trustworthy than
thoughtful responses. Indeed, nonverbal measures are assumed to be
good indicators of prejudice precisely because they do not typically
involve careful thought and people do not control them in the same
way that they can control their verbally reported attitudes.
Rather than dismiss either response
as necessarily untrustworthy, my colleagues and I have tried to
understand the origin of both thoughtful and nonthoughtful responses.
By directly addressing the disparity between thoughtful and
nonthoughtful responses, our approach offers a more optimistic
analysis regarding prospects for prejudice reduction than the extant
formulations. To foreshadow, our program of research has been devoted
to understanding (a) how and why those who truly renounce prejudice
may continue to experience prejudice&endash;like thoughts and
feelings and (b) the nature of the rather formidable challenges and
obstacles that must be overcome before one can succeed in reducing
the disparity between thoughtful and nonthoughtful responses.
Automatic and Controlled Processes
in Prejudice
The distinction between automatic and
controlled cognitive processes has been central to our analysis in
prejudice reduction. Automatic processes occur unintentionally,
spontaneously, and unconsciously. We have evidence that both
low&endash; and high&endash;prejudiced people are vulnerable to
automatic stereotype activation. Once the stereotype is well learned,
its influence is hard to avoid because it so easily comes to mind.
Controlled processes, in contrast, are under the intentional control
of the individual. An important aspect of such processes is that
their initiation and use requires time and sufficient cognitive
capacity. Nonprejudiced responses require inhibiting the
spontaneously activated stereotypes and deliberately activating
personal beliefs to serve as the basis for responses. Without
sufficient time or cognitive capacity, responses may well be
stereotype-based and, therefore, appear prejudiced.
The important implication of the
automatic/controlled process distinction is that if one looks only at
nonthoughtful, automatic responses, one may well conclude that all
white Americans are prejudiced. We have found important differences
between low&endash; and high&endash;prejudiced people based on
the
personal beliefs that each hold, despite similar knowledge of and
vulnerability to the activation of cultural stereotypes. Furthermore,
low&endash;prejudiced people have established and internalized
nonprejudiced personal standards for how to treat members of
stereotyped groups. When given sufficient time,
low&endash;prejudiced
people censor responses based on the stereotype and, instead, respond
based on their beliefs. High&endash;prejudiced people, in contrast,
do not reject the stereotype and are not personally motivated to
overcome its effect on their behavior.
A strength of this approach is that
it delineates the role of both thoughtful and nonthoughtful processes
in response to stereotyped group members. Eliminating prejudice
requires overcoming a lifetime of socialization experiences, which,
unfortunately, promote prejudice. We have likened reducing prejudice
to the breaking of a habit in that people must first make a decision
to eliminate the habit and then learn to inhibit the habitual
(prejudiced) responses. Thus, the change from being prejudiced to
nonprejudiced is not viewed as an all or none event, but as a process
during which the low&endash;prejudiced person is especially
vulnerable to conflict between his or her enduring negative responses
and endorsed nonprejudiced beliefs. For those who renounce prejudice,
overcoming the "prejudice habit" presents a formidable task that is
likely to entail a great deal of internal conflict over a protracted
period of time.
Prejudice With and Without
Compunction
In subsequent work, we examined the
nature and consequences of the internal conflict associated with
prejudice reduction. Specifically, we have focused on the challenges
faced by those individuals who have internalized nonprejudiced
personal standards and are trying to control their prejudiced
responses, but sometimes fail. We have shown that people high and low
in prejudice (as assessed by a self&endash;report technique) have
qualitatively different affective reactions to the conflict between
their verbal reports concerning how they should respond in situations
involving contact with members of stereotyped groups and how they say
they actually would respond. Low&endash;prejudiced people, for
example, believe that they should not feel uncomfortable sitting next
to an African American on a bus. High&endash;prejudiced people
disagree, indicating that it's acceptable to feel uncomfortable in
this situation. When actual responses violate personal standards,
low&endash;prejudiced people experience guilt or "prejudice with
compunction," but high&endash;prejudiced individuals do not. For
low&endash;prejudiced people, the coexistence of such conflicting
reactions threatens their nonprejudiced self&endash;concepts.
Moreover, these guilt feelings play a functional role in helping
people to "break the prejudice habit." That is, violations combined
with guilt have been shown to help low&endash;prejudiced people to
use controlled processes to inhibit the prejudiced responses and to
replace them with responses that are based on their personal
beliefs.
Interpersonal Dynamics of
Intergroup Contact
Until recently, our research has
focused rather exclusively on the nature of internal conflict
associated with prejudice reduction efforts. However, many of the
challenges associated with prejudice reduction are played out in the
interpersonal arena, and we believe it's important to explore the
relevance of our work to issues of intergroup tension. Thus, one of
our current lines of research is devoted to exploring the nature of
the challenges created by the intergroup contact when people's
standards are "put on the line."
In interpersonal intergroup contact
situations, we have found that although low&endash;prejudiced people
are highly motivated to respond without prejudice, there are few
guidelines for "how to do the intergroup thing well." As a result,
many experience doubt and uncertainty about how to express their
nonprejudiced attitudes in intergroup situations. Thus, for
low&endash;prejudiced people, their high motivation to respond
without prejudice may actually interfere with their efforts to convey
accurately their nonprejudiced intentions. Under these circumstances,
they become socially anxious; this anxiety disrupts the typically
smooth and coordinated aspects of social interaction. Their
interaction styles become awkward and strained resulting in nonverbal
behaviors such as decreased eye contact and awkward speech patterns.
These are exactly the types of subtle responses that have typically
been interpreted as signs of prejudice or antipathy. Indeed, it is
not possible to distinguish between the type of tension that arises
out of antipathy toward the group or social anxiety based on these
signs alone.
We argue that it may be important to
acknowledge that there are qualitatively distinct forms of intergroup
tension experienced by majority group members, which are
systematically related to their self&endash;reported level of
prejudice. For some, the tension can arise out of antipathy, as was
always thought in the prejudice literature, but for others, the
tension arises out of anxiety over trying to do the intergroup thing
well. Functionally then, we have different starting points for trying
to reduce intergroup tension. Strategies for attempting to reduce
intergroup tension differ when the problem is conceived as one of
improving skills rather than one of changing negative attitudes.
Conclusion
To sum up, although it is not easy
and clearly requires effort, time, and practice, prejudice appears to
be a habit that can be broken. In contrast to the prevailing,
pessimistic opinion that little progress is being made toward the
alleviation of prejudice, our program of research suggests that many
people appear to be embroiled in the difficult or arduous process of
overcoming their prejudices. During this process,
low&endash;prejudiced people are confronted with rather formidable
challenges from within, as people battle their spontaneous reactions,
and from the interpersonal settings in which people's standards are
put on the line. We are sanguine that by developing a realistic
analysis of the practical challenges faced by those who renounce
prejudice, we may be able to identify strategies that may facilitate
their prejudice reduction efforts.
It is important to recognize that we
are not claiming to have solved the problem of intergroup prejudice,
nor are we suggesting that prejudice has disappeared. The past
several years have witnessed a disturbing increase in the incidence
of hate crimes against minorities. And a sizable proportion of white
Americans continue to embrace old&endash;fashioned forms of bigotry.
Nevertheless, we hope that by developing an understanding of the
challenges associated with breaking the prejudice habit, we may gain
insight into the reasons low&endash;prejudiced people establish and
internalize nonprejudiced standards. Armed with this knowledge, we
may be able to encourage high&endash;prejudiced people to renounce
prejudice. And when they do, we will be in a better position to
understand their challenges and, perhaps, to assist them in their
efforts.
Published in Psychological Science
Agenda.
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