Over time, social psychology has increasingly construed prejudice as an “attitude problem” in which individuals' negative views of out-groups are understood to constitute a major obstacle to social progress. Under this model, if attitudes improve, the problem goes away. Accordingly, since World War II, researchers' energies have focused on shaping policies and developing interventions that might bring about attitude change of this form.
To this comfortable state of affairs Dixon et al. admit an uncomfortable constellation of observations and questions. First, they note that the dominant prejudice reduction model (PRM) draws attention away from material realities of inequality and injustice. Second, they argue that progressive goals may be better served by bringing these realities into the open through a collective action model (CAM) that makes conflict salient as a focus for collective efforts (particularly by members of disadvantaged groups) to produce meaningful social change. This analysis uncovers an ironic prejudice embedded in the very definition of prejudice, which serves to prioritize psychological conciliation over political action. Indeed, more controversially, one can see striving for such conciliation as a reflection of the political priorities of privileged groups for whom inaction is advantageous (or at least unproblematic).
With a view to framing understanding of this debate and also channeling future research efforts, there are three points that can be superimposed on, and drawn out from, Dixon et al.'s analysis. In different ways, all are informed by work within the social identity tradition (after Tajfel & Turner Reference Tajfel, Turner, Austin and Worchel1979).
1. Prejudice is underpinned by shared social identity
Social identity theorizing draws attention to the fact that although psychologists routinely focus on prejudice as a problem of individual attitudes, socially potent forms of prejudice reflect collective understandings that are grounded in a particular model of social identity – a sense of “us” as different from and superior to “them” (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Turner, Oakes, McGarty and Reynolds1998; Oakes et al. Reference Oakes, Haslam and Turner1994). It is thus the fact that group members come to share particular beliefs about both in-group and out-group that gives those beliefs their force (Tajfel Reference Tajfel, Turner and Giles1981).
In highlighting the fact that intergroup relations are underpinned by an explicit sense of “us” and “them,” this is something that proponents of the CAM generally recognize. However, it is more easily overlooked within the PRM because this promotes, and draws strength from, collective beliefs that tend to downplay overt (or at least challenging) us–them distinctions. In this way, the greater part of the prejudice literature is founded upon an implicit sense that, in reality, “we're all individuals” and an ironic denial of the fact that such beliefs are themselves a reflection of collective identities.
In this regard, alongside problems identified by Dixon et al., a particular danger of prevailing approaches to prejudice (i.e., those that promote the PRM) is that they direct attention away from the socially structured nature of prejudice. By neglecting the motivated understandings of in-group and out-group that underpin coordinated social behaviour (even those that are seemingly “benign”), this model allows many researchers and commentators to persist in a belief that problems of prejudice reflect “misunderstandings” that can be remedied either through purely cognitive interventions or through social rearrangements that are blind to power and vested interests. They cannot.
2. Prejudice is promoted through identity-based leadership
A second problem with prevailing approaches to prejudice is that their psychological focus tends to position all parties as passive vessels rather than as active agents. In particular, the PRM tends to see both perpetrators and victims of prejudice as slaves to circumstance (e.g., the need to save time, to reduce uncertainty, or to belong) who can only be rescued from their sorry condition through the intervention of well-meaning third parties (e.g., researchers and the policy makers they instruct).
Prejudice, though, is never an accident of cognition, never an unintended by-product of neural architecture, never an unmediated expression of biological or evolutionary “primitives.” Instead – whether hostile or benign – it is an expression of valued social identities that are internalized, embraced, and enthusiastically promoted by group members. Importantly too, leaders (i.e., those who represent and therefore influence the group) play a key role in actively crafting the meanings of social identity and the interpretations of intergroup relations that give rise to various forms of prejudice (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Reicher and Platow2011).
Dixon et al.'s analysis suggests that this is as true for scientific leaders as it is for those in the political realm.
3. Prejudice is identified in out-groups, not in-groups
This leads to a third point – that leaders win followers to their cause because, in terms of the social identities they represent and promote, leaders are understood to be right. Phenomenologically, there is no such thing as “our prejudice.” The map of perceived prejudice is one that charts the contours of out-group identity, and it is the fact that it is invisible in a mirror that explains the influence of different prejudices for different groups at different points in time, including the powerful grip of benign forms of prejudice today.
Here again, an attraction of Dixon et al.'s analysis is that it promotes recognition of group members as collaborators in the making of their own world and encourages researchers to reflect on their own role as agents of influence who promote and embed particular instantiations of identity. Like the CAM, the PRM is itself an identity-management project whose success is structured by the identity-based relationship between its advocates and those they would influence.
In these same terms, progress in the study of prejudice needs to be seen as a political, not just a psychological, venture in which advocates of particular models of identity draw attention to perceived limitations in the collective views of others and seek to supplant these with their own. It was such progress – and the problematization of race psychology – that led to prejudice being identified as a research topic in the first place (Reynolds et al. Reference Reynolds, Haslam, Turner, Dixon and Levine2012). Likewise, the success of Dixon et al.'s own leadership will hinge on whether it motivates researchers to interrogate their own “attitude problem” or else cling to their prejudices (and the identities that underpin them) ever more strongly.
Over time, social psychology has increasingly construed prejudice as an “attitude problem” in which individuals' negative views of out-groups are understood to constitute a major obstacle to social progress. Under this model, if attitudes improve, the problem goes away. Accordingly, since World War II, researchers' energies have focused on shaping policies and developing interventions that might bring about attitude change of this form.
To this comfortable state of affairs Dixon et al. admit an uncomfortable constellation of observations and questions. First, they note that the dominant prejudice reduction model (PRM) draws attention away from material realities of inequality and injustice. Second, they argue that progressive goals may be better served by bringing these realities into the open through a collective action model (CAM) that makes conflict salient as a focus for collective efforts (particularly by members of disadvantaged groups) to produce meaningful social change. This analysis uncovers an ironic prejudice embedded in the very definition of prejudice, which serves to prioritize psychological conciliation over political action. Indeed, more controversially, one can see striving for such conciliation as a reflection of the political priorities of privileged groups for whom inaction is advantageous (or at least unproblematic).
With a view to framing understanding of this debate and also channeling future research efforts, there are three points that can be superimposed on, and drawn out from, Dixon et al.'s analysis. In different ways, all are informed by work within the social identity tradition (after Tajfel & Turner Reference Tajfel, Turner, Austin and Worchel1979).
1. Prejudice is underpinned by shared social identity
Social identity theorizing draws attention to the fact that although psychologists routinely focus on prejudice as a problem of individual attitudes, socially potent forms of prejudice reflect collective understandings that are grounded in a particular model of social identity – a sense of “us” as different from and superior to “them” (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Turner, Oakes, McGarty and Reynolds1998; Oakes et al. Reference Oakes, Haslam and Turner1994). It is thus the fact that group members come to share particular beliefs about both in-group and out-group that gives those beliefs their force (Tajfel Reference Tajfel, Turner and Giles1981).
In highlighting the fact that intergroup relations are underpinned by an explicit sense of “us” and “them,” this is something that proponents of the CAM generally recognize. However, it is more easily overlooked within the PRM because this promotes, and draws strength from, collective beliefs that tend to downplay overt (or at least challenging) us–them distinctions. In this way, the greater part of the prejudice literature is founded upon an implicit sense that, in reality, “we're all individuals” and an ironic denial of the fact that such beliefs are themselves a reflection of collective identities.
In this regard, alongside problems identified by Dixon et al., a particular danger of prevailing approaches to prejudice (i.e., those that promote the PRM) is that they direct attention away from the socially structured nature of prejudice. By neglecting the motivated understandings of in-group and out-group that underpin coordinated social behaviour (even those that are seemingly “benign”), this model allows many researchers and commentators to persist in a belief that problems of prejudice reflect “misunderstandings” that can be remedied either through purely cognitive interventions or through social rearrangements that are blind to power and vested interests. They cannot.
2. Prejudice is promoted through identity-based leadership
A second problem with prevailing approaches to prejudice is that their psychological focus tends to position all parties as passive vessels rather than as active agents. In particular, the PRM tends to see both perpetrators and victims of prejudice as slaves to circumstance (e.g., the need to save time, to reduce uncertainty, or to belong) who can only be rescued from their sorry condition through the intervention of well-meaning third parties (e.g., researchers and the policy makers they instruct).
Prejudice, though, is never an accident of cognition, never an unintended by-product of neural architecture, never an unmediated expression of biological or evolutionary “primitives.” Instead – whether hostile or benign – it is an expression of valued social identities that are internalized, embraced, and enthusiastically promoted by group members. Importantly too, leaders (i.e., those who represent and therefore influence the group) play a key role in actively crafting the meanings of social identity and the interpretations of intergroup relations that give rise to various forms of prejudice (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Reicher and Platow2011).
Dixon et al.'s analysis suggests that this is as true for scientific leaders as it is for those in the political realm.
3. Prejudice is identified in out-groups, not in-groups
This leads to a third point – that leaders win followers to their cause because, in terms of the social identities they represent and promote, leaders are understood to be right. Phenomenologically, there is no such thing as “our prejudice.” The map of perceived prejudice is one that charts the contours of out-group identity, and it is the fact that it is invisible in a mirror that explains the influence of different prejudices for different groups at different points in time, including the powerful grip of benign forms of prejudice today.
Here again, an attraction of Dixon et al.'s analysis is that it promotes recognition of group members as collaborators in the making of their own world and encourages researchers to reflect on their own role as agents of influence who promote and embed particular instantiations of identity. Like the CAM, the PRM is itself an identity-management project whose success is structured by the identity-based relationship between its advocates and those they would influence.
In these same terms, progress in the study of prejudice needs to be seen as a political, not just a psychological, venture in which advocates of particular models of identity draw attention to perceived limitations in the collective views of others and seek to supplant these with their own. It was such progress – and the problematization of race psychology – that led to prejudice being identified as a research topic in the first place (Reynolds et al. Reference Reynolds, Haslam, Turner, Dixon and Levine2012). Likewise, the success of Dixon et al.'s own leadership will hinge on whether it motivates researchers to interrogate their own “attitude problem” or else cling to their prejudices (and the identities that underpin them) ever more strongly.