Perceived threat, not just difference, drives stigma toward varied outgroups
Evidence
Tangible or symbolic threats create prejudice against people who are different (see Crandall & Stangor, ch. 18 this volume). These include (a) resource conflict (with outgroups or with ingroup traitors), (b) dangers to physical health (from someone who is contagious), (c) symbolic threat to bodily integrity or mortality (from someone physically deformed or dying), (d) violations of a just world (from apparent innocents who suffer), and (e) moral undermining (from deviants). Tangible or symbolic threat stigmatizes people with leprosy, facial damage, terminal illness, accidental disability, and homosexual orientation (see also Blascovich et al., 2001). These new lines of work characterize the evolution of social cognitions about stigma as a form of social control over the ingroup’s outcomes (see also Neuberg, Smith, & Asher, 2000). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 337
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the vault’s prejudice-psychology cluster — threat-based accounts of stigma complementing and potentially updating Allport-era contact-theory claims. — connects to: Perceived outgroup threats damage intergroup relations even without hostility — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 38; Negative stereotypes both accompany intergroup threats and independently predict outgroup attitudes — Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup…, 127; Four threat types explain 36 percent of variance in outgroup attitudes — Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup…, 105 (+1 more)
- DEFINE: Lays out five distinct threat types that function as the modern taxonomy of stigma-generating triggers.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 337