Contemporary psychology views prejudice’s harms as contingent rather than inevitable

Evidence

Another development is the application of stress and coping frameworks to understand targets’ psychological responses to prejudice (see Major, Quinton, & McCoy, 2002, for a review). According to these frameworks, being a target of prejudice is a stressful predicament. How individuals respond and adapt to this stressor differs depending on their cognitive appraisals (e.g., how threatening they perceive an event to be) and the coping strategies they employ in response to events appraised as stressful. Coping refers to volitional efforts to manage stress, and can be distinguished from nonvolitional responses to prejudice (e.g., stress responses). Within stress and coping frameworks it is theoretically possible for people to be exposed to prejudice but not perceive it, as well as to perceive themselves as targets of prejudice but not experience this as stressful. In sum, contemporary approaches view the psychological effects of prejudice as less permanent, less internalized, less inevitable, and less universal than did Allport. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 939

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes volitional coping from nonvolitional stress responses, and separates exposure from perception from stress appraisal.