External pressure to suppress prejudice breeds resentment and backlash

Evidence

Finally, Allport took for granted that social norms would be influential in cuing the need to “put the brakes on prejudice.” And, while these cues can be effective, they are not completely without costs. For example, Plant and Devine (2001) showed that people who are not privately motivated to respond without prejudice but who are sensitive to external mandates proscribing prejudice (i.e., low internal/high external), comply with pressure from others to respond without prejudice but do not do so happily. That is, their compliance is accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment, and sadly, this anger fuels their prejudice and their tendency to show a backlash against the pressure. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2125

Categorization

• XREF: Relates directly to the article ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — moral panics imposed as external mandates produce resistance rather than genuine conversion. — connects to: Post-1964 social proscription of racism allows measurement of social-pressure effects on prejudice. — Deborah L. Hall and David C. Matz and Wendy Wood, Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A…, 11; Honest anger catharsis must precede interracial feminist alliance building — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 205
• SEED: Article angle: why anti-racism training that relies on external mandates (HR policies, diversity quotas) may breed the very backlash it aims to prevent.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2125