Perceived consensus legitimizes people’s expression of prejudice

Evidence

Perceiving (at least local) social consensus validates people’s beliefs and encourages them to translate their attitudes into action. Sechrist and Stangor (2001) manipulated perceived consensus to explore the extent to which it can create consistency between people’s attitudes and behaviors. They found that highly prejudiced college students who were provided with information that their anti-Black beliefs were shared by other students at their university subsequently sat farther away from an African American target than participants who were informed that their beliefs were not shared. That the correspondence between scores on a prejudice questionnaire and seating distance was greater when people believed that most other students shared their beliefs, suggests that knowing that others share one’s prejudices gives social permission for those prejudices to be acted upon. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1913

In sum, conformity creates prejudice; social norms and prevailing cultural values play a strong role in determining people’s internal values, beliefs, and prejudices. The same pathway can be used to undermine, reduce, and eliminate prejudices. Moreover, people who believe that others support their prejudices tend to persist steadfastly in their views, whereas people who do not feel that support are more easily swayed. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1918

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how perceived consensus, not actual norms, converts private attitudes into discriminatory behavior — relevant to designing anti-prejudice interventions that target perceived rather than real norms.
• XREF: Resonates with the moral-panics material and with the social-consensus mechanisms in the law-merchant chapters — norms as infrastructure. — connects to: Perceived scientific consensus is a central gateway to related climate beliefs. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 665
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1913; John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1918