Outer social pressure against prejudice may outperforform inner conviction as a brake

Evidence

Another matter ripe for future research concerns an issue Allport largely overlooked. That is, although the bulk of Allport’s chapter focused on the personal or internal reasons for renouncing prejudice and deploying mechanisms to address the attendant inner conflict, in a number of instances, Allport also alluded to the effect others’ views may have in discouraging expressions of prejudice. Though Allport clearly recognized the power of both inner (personal) and outer (normative) forces discouraging the expression of prejudice as alternative types of cues for “putting the brakes on prejudice,” he did not consider outer forces in any depth. Time, however, has revealed that the presence of others who discourage prejudice may be among the strongest cues for engaging controlled processes to prevent expressions of prejudice (see Crandall & Stangor, ch. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2120

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on normative vs personal motivation for prejudice regulation, and to Milton Rokeach’s belief vs value change work.

Related

• Others’ disapproval can rival inner conviction in constraining prejudice (similarity 0.93)
• External social norms may be the strongest cues suppressing prejudiced expression (similarity 0.90)
• Enduring prejudice reduction requires internal motivation, not just external pressure. (similarity 0.85)
• Normative pressure changes prejudice’s expression, not its underlying strength. (similarity 0.85)
• Adding external motivation undermines those already internally motivated against prejudice. (similarity 0.84)
• Subtle modern prejudice is changed expression, not genuine reduction (similarity 0.84)
• Allport’s 1954 theory of prejudice inner conflict proved prescient to later research. (similarity 0.84)
• Modern anti-prejudice norms only drive prejudice underground, not reduce it (similarity 0.83)
• Allport already saw prejudice as driven by internal development, not only learned imitation (similarity 0.83)
• External and internal motives to avoid prejudice produce different emotions as control cues (similarity 0.83)
• Allport’s pre-empirical intuitions anticipated modern prejudice research remarkably well (similarity 0.83)
• Expression of prejudice diverges from private belief depending on perceived social norms. (similarity 0.83)
• External pressure to avoid prejudice can backfire and worsen it. (similarity 0.83)
• Allport saw prejudice as ordinary yet unacceptable, creating inner conflict (similarity 0.82)
• True prejudice reduction requires awareness of the values-action conflict (similarity 0.82)