Prejudice is about collective values, not a biased psychological system

Michael J. Platow*, Dirk Van Rooy, Martha Augoustinos, Russell Spears, Daniel Bar-Tal, Diana M. Grace

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    7 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    What is striking, too, is that each respondent's own social category was clearly cognitively salient in each instance. [...]in Example 8, it is unclear why or how racial/ethnic background was relevant given the instance described; the author seems to suggest that it is only African American women (this was in the United States) - not women in general (presumably, White women), and clearly not African American men. [...]we did, of course, observe the "I'm not prejudiced, but..." claim noted by Billig (2012): Prejudice Example 13: I have a distinct memory of my mother saying "i'm not racist, but bloody Asians".. [...]when the interpretation was made by a medical doctor (an expert), participants saw the claim as relatively prejudiced when it was described as prejudice but as relatively true when it was described as truth. [...]we see our analysis as freeing both social psychologists and social change agents alike from the shackles of supposedly inherent biases permeating the psychological system.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)16-22
    Number of pages7
    JournalNew Zealand Journal of Psychology
    Volume48
    Issue number1
    Publication statusPublished - 2019

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