Close intergroup contact breeds paternalistic reward of compliant subordinates

Evidence

In long-term expropriative relations structured with frequent one-onone contact across group lines (as in contemporary gender relations, and in race relations in America in the antebellum South and Jim Crow South), social distance mechanisms prevail and dominant group members exploit their close access to subordinates’ daily lives to establish a paternalistic regime ( Jackman, 1994). Dominants define the needs and interests of subordinates in relation to their position in the status hierarchy and division of labor, and then claim to supply those needs. Subordinates are praised and rewarded for manifesting the attributes that have been categorically assigned to them, and punished for lapsing into behaviors deemed inappropriate. The rewards and punishments are primarily social: compliant subordinates are rewarded with social inclusion, admiration, friendship, affection, or even love, while subordinates who flaunt the rules face social exclusion, ridicule, humiliation, or stigmatization. Human self-interest, sociability, and rationality ensure that most subordinates comply readily with expectations. The costs of noncompliance are bitter, while compliance offers individuals their best prospects for social success. Under these crushing constraints, the vast majority of subordinates take it upon themselves to meet or exceed the demands made by dominants, even competing with each other to excel in their designated duties and attributes. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 671 (#expands, via linked claim)

Allport, however, felt that social interventions, drawing on these same principles, held great promise for reducing prejudice. He proposed, building on the earlier work of Williams (1947), that appropriately structured intergroup contact could effectively decrease bias at the individual level. … Prejudice … may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom, or local atmosphere), and provided it is of the sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 129 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Given the embedded nature of racial processes in the contemporary environment, it is unsurprising that subordinate groups may invoke difference to mystify, to deny knowledge of themselves to the dominant groups, to confuse and neutralize those who attempt to control or “help” them, or to reduce them to research objects. They may use difference to stress their own separateness, and to authorize their own representations. They may seek to legitimize their own definitions of cultural difference, including those against others from within their own collectivity. … This can lead at times, as we shall see later, to a strange convergence in the language of the racist right and of black or ethnic nationalists, as both infuse the racial or ethnic category with essentialist, and supposedly naturally inherited, characteristics. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 115 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Repeated interaction among courtroom workgroup members promotes cooperative plea bargaining — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1784; Social inclusion and affection enforce subordinate compliance in paternalistic regimes; Spatial segregation weakens paternalism’s coercive power over subordinates (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Close intergroup contact can sustain inequality through paternalistic affection rather than reduce it #expands (0.93) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 671
• Structured equal-status intergroup contact reduces prejudice when institutionally supported #complicates (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 129
• Subordinate groups strategically deploy difference to resist dominant control and revalue themselves #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 115
• Intergroup contact benefits high-power groups more than low-power groups #complicates (0.72) — Johanna Ray Vollhardt and Michelle Sinayobye Twali, Emotion-Based Reconciliation Requires…, 48