We propose that part of the problem in combatting prejudice lies in people's dynamic understandings of what prejudice is. To examine this, we asked participants to rate the degree to which they perceived specific group-relevant attitudes as prejudice. In Study 1, White participants perceived the attitudes as more prejudiced when the attitudes were targeted at Asian people than at White people and when expressed by an Anglo-European speaker than by an Asian speaker. Study 2 was a direct replication but expanded the sample to include Asian participants. The Study 1 results were partially replicated in Study 2, although the target main effect was stronger among White than Asian participants. Together, the data suggest a normative legitimacy process in which injunctive norms dictate appropriate and inappropriate speakers and targets of specific group-relevant attitudes. The data also confirm the original proposition of dynamic understandings of prejudice. Prejudice is understood by people not only by what is said but also by who is saying it and whom it is about. To the degree that these latter two variables are dynamic, then prejudice judgements themselves will remain so. We conclude by considering the implications of our data for both psychological theory and applications in prejudice-reduction efforts.
Although anti‐immigrant attitudes continue to be expressed around the world, identifying these attitudes as prejudice, truth or free speech remains contested. This contestation occurs, in part, because of the absence of consensually agreed‐upon understandings of what prejudice is. In this context, the current study sought to answer the question, “what do people understand to be prejudice?” Participants read an intergroup attitude expressed by a member of their own group (an “in‐group” member) or another group (an “out‐group” member). This was followed by an interpretation of the attitude as either “prejudiced” or “free speech.” This interpretation was also made by in‐group or an out‐group member. Subsequent prejudice judgements were influenced only by the group membership of the person expressing the initial attitude: the in‐group member's attitude was judged to be less prejudiced than the identical attitude expressed by an out‐group member. Participants' judgements of free speech, however, were more complex: in‐group attitudes were seen more as free speech than out‐group attitudes, except when an in‐group member interpreted those attitudes as prejudice. These data are consistent with the Social Identity Approach to intergroup relations, and have implications for the processes by which intergroup attitudes become legitimised as free speech instead of prejudice.
This research examined the hypothesis that people judge as true those claims aligned with the normative content of their salient social identities. In Experiment 1a, participants' social identities were manipulated by assigning them to 'inductive-thinker' and 'intuitive-thinker' groups. Participants subsequently made truth judgements about aphorisms randomly associated with 'science' and 'popular wisdom' . Those with salient inductive-thinker social identities judged science-based claims as more truthful than popular wisdom-based claims to a greater extent than those with salient intuitivethinker social identities. Experiment 1b was a preregistered replication, with additional conditions eliminating an alternative semantic-priming explanation. In Experiment 2, American Conservatives and Liberals judged as more true claims associated with the ideological content of their social identities. This difference was attenuated through a manipulation that framed participants as more moderate than they had originally indicated. Overall, these experiments suggest an identity-truth malleability, such that making salient specific social identities can lead to related perceptions of truth normatively aligned with those identities.
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