In this hour, we explore the topic of Prejudice. Why do human beings so often divide the world into "us" and "them?" Whether it's black or white, young or old, gay or straight, people often make irrational presumptions about others. This week, we explore the psychology of prejudice with social psychologists Dr. Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University, Dr. Susan Fiske of Princeton University and Dr. Gregory Herek of the University of California at Davis. And we talk to writer Esmeralda Santiago, journalist Ellis Cose, and filmmakers Marco Williams and Whitney Dow about the psychological effects of prejudice.
Host Dr. Fred Goodwin begins with an essay in which he says we define prejudice as irrational assumptions (usually negative) about an individual or group. But social science teaches us to be careful here. In our daily lives we all have to make decisions, often snap judgments, based on probabilities. He offers an example. Is there a reason for airport security to give greater attention to young men who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent? Well, if you have limited security resources, you want to focus them where they're likely to have the greatest chance of impact. That involves a kind of prejudging - in this case, making an assumption based on recent events. But is it fair to the great majority of Middle Easterners who are not hijackers? No, it's not. So, on the one hand, airport security may be erring on the side of caution. But, on the other hand, they are penalizing the vast majority of Middle-Easterners who are not hijackers. Not only can they be unreasonably delayed or denied access to flights, they must live with the psychological burden of encountering behavior that implies they're dangerous and support terrorism. So what can we learn from this? Yes, some prejudgments may be based in statistical reality. But generalizations tell us nothing about individuals. We must strive to learn as much as we can about our fellow human beings as quickly as we can so that each of us can be judged as an individual.
Next, we hear from filmmakers Marco Williams and Whitney Dow. Their documentary film, Two Towns of Jasper, looks at the aftermath of the murder of James Byrd, Jr., an African-American man who was chained to a truck and dragged to death by three white men in Jasper, Texas in 1998. To document the town's reactions to the crime and the three trials that followed, Marco Williams led an all-black film crew to film black residents and Whitney Dow led an all-white film crew to film white residents.
Mr. Dow says that he was surprised that although people in the white community expressed outrage over the killing of James Byrd, they also expressed anger at and contempt for him, as if his character somehow played into his murder. Mr. Williams was not surprised by the racism in the white community; in the black community, many people felt that the murder was not an isolated incident, merely an extreme, overt example of the prejudice surrounding them.
To contact Mr. Williams or Mr. Dow, or to learn more about Two Towns of Jasper, please write to: Two Tone Productions, Inc., 428 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013. Or visit www.twotownsofjasper.com.
Then, Dr. Goodwin is joined by two psychologists who have devoted themselves to the study of prejudice -- Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and Dr. Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology at Princeton University.
Dr. Fiske begins by defining prejudice as feelings or attitudes, generally negative, which people hold about another group (an out-group). She distinguishes prejudice from stereotypes, which are beliefs or cognitions, and discrimination, which is action or behavior. She says the great failing of stereotypes is that they only describe one person in a group, but people, even within groups, are variable.
Dr. Banaji then describes her work with what she calls implicit associations. She explains that if two things co-occur -- for example, "Jesse Helms" and "Republican" or "Ted Kennedy" and "Democrat" -- it's easy for us to hold those concepts together in our minds. She uses this idea to look at the strength of associations people hold between a group and qualities that capture an attitude or prejudice toward that group. For example, on implicit associations tests, white people are more likely to associate black faces with words that mean "bad" than they are white faces.
Neuro-imaging has shown that the emotional structure of the brain -- the amygdala -- is activated when people make these associations. On the one hand, that might indicate that these judgments are automatic and hard-wired. On the other hand, according to Dr. Fiske, studies show that even the activation of the amygdala is variable depending on the context in which an out-group member is viewed. For example, if a white person is asked to sort faces as under 21 and over 21, and therefore is in a categorical, "us-them" mindset, you often see the amygdala reaction to black faces. But if the same person is looking at the faces to answer the question, "Does this person like broccoli?" you generally do not observe the amygdala reaction. Thus, she believes these prejudices are not immutable, but rather are socially constructed and malleable.
To contact Dr. Banaji, please write to: Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, The Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics and The Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Radcliffe, Harvard University, William James 1520, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Or visit: www.harvard.edu.
To find out more about implicit associations or to take an implicit associations test, please visit http://buster.cs.yale.edu/implicit.
To contact Dr. Fiske, please write to: Dr. Susan T. Fiske, Professor, Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1010. Or visit: www.princeton.edu.
Next, Sharon Lerner reports on the rise in complaints of anti-Muslim discrimination in the workplace since September 11th. Ms. Lerner details two of the 326 suits involving religious discrimination against Muslims in the workplace filed with EEOC between September 11 and February 20. The EEOC has seen an increase of more than 300 percent in these complaints over the same period last year. The agency has received so many complaints specifically related to the terrorist attacks, it's created a separate category to track them. Ms. Lerner also speaks with Hodan Hassan, who handles discrimination complaints for the Council on American Islamic Relations. She says, "Before 9/11, most of the workplace discrimination cases that CAIR dealt with had to do with religious accommodation. Whether it was someone who felt they weren't allowed to pray when they were on the job or accommodation wearing headscarves or beards. After 9/11, we found that a lot more workplace discrimination actually dealt with people who felt they were terminated unfairly. There was more termination or harassment on the job or harassment from their coworkers or from their supervisors."
To contact the Council on American-Islamic Relations, please write to: The Council on American-Islamic Relations, 453 New Jersey Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003-4034. Or visit: www.cair-net.org.
After a short break, The Infinite Mind's Marit Haahr interviews author Esmeralda Santiago. In two memoirs, When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost A Woman, Ms. Santiago describes her life before and after moving with her family from rural Puerto Rico to New York City at age thirteen.
Ms. Santiago says that the first time it really hit her that she was viewed differently because of her ethnicity and economic status was when she was a young teenager and accompanied her mother to help translate at the welfare office. Over time she has come to realize that some people will always smirk or look down on her, and there's nothing she can do to change that. Still, she says it's a difficult battle to prevent other people's prejudices from affecting one's own self worth.
