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What
can be done to make nonconformity and disobedience a viable behavioral option? Are
answers to this question likely to involve situational or dispositional changes? Why?
3. Discuss how aggression on television, in movies, and in other media influences
aggression in real life. What should, or could, be done about this well-established
relationship? Is censorship a viable response? Why or why not? What about self-
censorship? Discuss how students can use this knowledge to reduce the likelihood that
they themselves will be aggressive.
4. Discuss manipulation that might lead to increased altruism in society as a whole. Simply,
what could be done to make our world more helpful? Are dispositional or situational
manipulates likely to produce more significant change? Why? Which type of
manipulation would be easier to implement?
5. Discuss the promise that social psychology and psychology in general hold for
improving our world. One tremendous contribution of social psychology has been to
demonstrate that we do not need to change every single individual person. Situational
changes can be made that affect all of the people that enter them. This offers society a
cost-effective tool for addressing social problems. To what problems does the class feel
that social psychology has the most to offer? Why?
6. You might ask students to voluntarily discuss if they have ever been discriminated
against or treated in some other prejudiced manner. Often, those who engage in
discrimination do not care to think through the effects their behaviors have on the
individuals against whom they are discriminating. By having students talk about their
first-hand experiences of receiving such treatment, it can often help sensitize other
students to the impact of prejudice and discrimination. Racial, ethnic, and sexual
discrimination all take a heavy toll on their victims. As part of this discussion, you might
ask those who are sharing their experiences to discuss the emotional impact and the
effects on their self-image that resulted from their experiences.
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CHAPTER 18: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE
SUPPLEMENTAL LECTURE MATERIAL
Prejudice
Prejudice between people is often one consequence of normative processes occurring within
groups. Many groups exhibit an ethnocentric attitude that postulates: “My group, right or wrong;
your group, rarely right and probably wrong until proven otherwise.” Group membership gives
us security, status, a basis for reality testing, and much more that we need for both survival and
the flowering of the human spirit. Alternatively, being identified as a member of a certain group
can also bring us insecurity, loss of self-esteem, and a precarious existence if others with power
choose to label our group as inferior. The consequences of prejudice take many forms, but
common to all of them is a less humane reaction to other people and a diversion of psychological
energy from creative to destructive directions.
Prejudice may be defined as a cluster of learned beliefs, attitudes, and values held by one person
about others that:
. Is formed on the basis of incomplete information
. Is relatively immune to contradictory information
. Makes a categorical assignment of individuals to certain classes or groups that are
(typically) negatively valued
Prejudice is the internal state or psychological set to react in a biased way toward members of
certain groups. Discrimination is the constellation of behaviors that prejudice may give rise to.
Competency knowledge comes from observing the consequences of your actions, what you
achieve, and how your abilities, skills, and talents are realized. Legitimacy knowledge comes
from a variety of cultural sources by which your important group memberships-religious, racial,
ethnic, sexual, age group, and others-are recognized as acceptable and worthwhile. Denial of the
legitimacy of one’s significant group identification can isolate the individual from those who
control desired social and material reinforcers within a culture. In addition, the reasons given to
justify rejection of the group and the personal feelings of helplessness that result from arbitrary
discrimination can have a negative impact on performance, lowering even competency-based
esteem.
Our self-image and esteem depend on many variables. These inputs can be summarized as
coming from two sources:
. The individual’s appraisal of personal worth derived from social and physical
feedback about his or her competency
. Cultural feedback about the legitimacy of the person’s primary reference groups
To the extent one accepts and is dependent on the values of the reward structure of a cultural
group that denies the legitimacy of one’s own subgroup, one’s self-esteem is likely to suffer.
Legitimacy is often denied not through hostile, obvious acts of discrimination, but in subtle
patterns of prejudice that simply ignore one’s existence.
Once you adopt the derogatory stereotype about yourself as a valid indicator of your lack of
worth, you may want to dissociate yourself from the despised group, to “pass” on your own via a
name change, nose job, hair straightening, or other alteration of your appearance, as well as by
changing your friends and maybe even rejecting your family. Such a prejudice-induced reaction
is one of the most insidious effects of prejudice. It turns the individual not only against his or her
own group, but against the “self’ as well.
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PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE
Categorical rejection of the individual because of perceived membership in some unaccepted
group is a general phenomenon of prejudice. When you were a child, did friends of your parents
or even relatives ignore your presence after they said the usual, “My, how you have grown”?