Internal motivation to suppress prejudice reflects conforming to a new group’s norms.

Evidence

Crandall et al. (2002) looked at University of Kansas students’ attempts to suppress their prejudices. Many of the students come to this relatively progressive university town from rural communities with more tolerance for racial, religious, and ethnic prejudices than their peers possess. Students are often surprised by the lack of tolerance for the racism, sexism, and other prejudices that they have grown up with quite comfortably. At first, their expressions of counternormative prejudice (e.g., too much prejudice toward women and Blacks, but also too little prejudice toward, say, date rapists) are met with argument, even derision and social rejection. … This is externally motivated conformity. In time, however, to the extent that students want to belong at the university, they must conform to norms about proper conduct. Crandall et al. (2002) found that as students became less identified with their hometowns and old high school, and more identified with the university, their internal motives to suppress prejudice increased. In this case, the “internal motives to suppress prejudice” function less like a personality variable and more as an indicator that people are trying to fit themselves into local group norms. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1924 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Plant and Devine (1998), for example, showed that people vary in the extent to which they are motivated to respond without prejudice for internal compared with external reasons. Further, internal motives to respond without prejudice are strongly and negatively correlated with self-report measures of prejudice, whereas external motives are much less correlated with selfreported prejudice (and neither measure correlates strongly with general measures of self-presentation or social evaluation). Interestingly, the internal and external motive measures are largely independent; that is, people can be motivated to respond without prejudice for primarily internal reasons, primarily external reasons, both reasons, or simply be unmotivated. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2122 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Specifically, people high in internal but low on external motivation to respond without prejudice are generally effective in responding without prejudice, whereas people high on both motives are much more prone to responding with prejudice (Devine et al., 2002). Key questions remain, however, concerning how or why the presence of external motivation interferes with effective control of prejudice (or why its absence leads to effective control). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2124 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enduring prejudice reduction requires internal motivation, not just external pressure. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2125; Internal egalitarian motives arise from conformity to new group norms, not personality — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1924; People suppressing prejudice conform most, even if the group is itself prejudiced. (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Internal egalitarian motives arise from conformity to new group norms, not personality #corroborates (0.95) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1924
• Internal and external motivations to avoid prejudice are independent dimensions #complicates (0.82) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2122
• Adding external motivation undermines those already internally motivated against prejudice. #complicates (0.72) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2124