Role incongruity explains prejudice without requiring hostility

Evidence

Our expanded treatment of prejudice rests upon the simple idea of role incongruity – that prejudice often results from the mismatch between beliefs about the attributes typically possessed by members of a social group (that is, their stereotype) and beliefs about the attributes that facilitate success in valued social roles. In this analysis, a member of a group whose stereotypical attributes are thought to facilitate performance in a role is ordinarily preferred over a member of a group whose stereotypical attributes are thought to impede performance, even in the absence of objective differences between the two individuals. Such incongruity between stereotypical characteristics and social roles does not necessarily lead to a generalized hostile attitude toward the mismatched individual but to a decline in evaluation relative to a matched individual in the context of the particular role. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 174

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the role-incongruity framework that reframes prejudice away from blanket antipathy toward context-specific evaluation gaps.
• XREF: Connects to existing vault claims on contact theory and prejudice, offering a competing mechanism for status differences that pure contact may not address.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 174