Prejudice research

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Scientific prejudice research deals with the critical investigation of prejudices including the possibilities for their reduction, which due to the social and cultural totality can affect not only private interaction and public, but also scientific discourse . She makes use of sociological, psychological, historical, cultural and other academic methods.

Although prejudice research is fundamentally concerned with prejudices against all possible foreign groups , its main research fields are differentiating features such as gender, ethnic affiliation, sexual orientation and religion. To related areas and the sub areas of research on prejudice therefore include research on racism , whiteness studies , queer theory , gender studies and feminism .

The various approaches to prejudice research include

Prejudice research does not have to be limited to the humanities alone - in the conflict between essentialism and constructivism , a detailed study of the current state of scientific research in the human sciences is often necessary, about the self- and external view of social groups , which often opposes research as a fixed social identity to be able to break down them concretely and break them down into their constituent parts of unchangeable nature and learned culture. It is equally important to recognize and name an ideologically influenced scientific-experimental starting position or the ideologically colored interpretation of scientific data as such.

The least that can be changed are those perceptions that relate to the philosophical foundations of the respective worldview. Every ideological conviction leads to an influence on the content of perception, ideas, thinking and behavior.

Different approaches to prejudice research

Learning theory approach (1934)

In the learning theory approach it is assumed that people learn prejudices through their socialization or through observation of group differences. The two most important concepts of the learning theory approach are the labeling approach ) and social learning ).

The mechanism behind the easy spread of prejudices is that of what is actually vital social learning , in which authorities and peers impart knowledge, attitudes and behaviors to the individual that are learned using the classic pattern of imitation through identification from earliest childhood and thus long before the individual himself is capable of critically questioning what has been conveyed to him. Later, much of what was conveyed early on through social learning is so automated in the individual's thought and emotional processes that it happens unconsciously and can be activated quickly.

Psychodynamic Approach (1939)

The psychodynamic approach emphasizes that prejudices have their roots in inner-psychological processes. A distinction is made between:

  • the deterministic-essentialist frustration-aggression hypothesis (Dollard, Miller et al. 1939; Miller, Barker et al. 1941; Berkowitz 1969), which assumes general, natural and thus independent of culture and education basic human characteristics,

as well as the two deconstructivist , socially critical approaches, which put the changeable educational and socio-cultural character of the individual personality in the foreground:

Cognitive Approach (1958)

The cognitive approach ( Broadbent 1958; Chomsky 1959; Neisser 1967) is based on the knowledge that learning is generally essential for survival and that the natural, endogenous neuronal structure therefore increasingly dictated the individual to the individual in the course of evolution, which was accompanied by an increased reduction in instincts in favor of the learning process . In the cognitive sciences , humans are considered to be beings who construct a useful picture of the world, with which they can cope in their immediate frame of reference and who actively try to pass on the ideas they create to their peers. Cognitive psychologists assume that people's personal processing of information is limited, which is why they have to rely on what their social environment tells them to do. Therefore, among other things, people are also sorted into given categories. However, due to the limitation of the personal frame of reference, which in the course of human history has faced an increasingly complex and thus more confusing social network, there are often incorrect categorizations, which are then expressed as stereotypes .

Conflict Theory Approach (1979)

The conflict- theoretical approach explains the emergence of prejudices and stereotypes from the dynamics of group conflicts. The two most important concepts include the theory of social identity ( Tajfel & Turner 1979) and its further development, the self-categorization theory (Turner et al. 1987).

Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's synthesis (1978, 1989)

overview

In two of her publications - Tabu Homosexualität (1978) and Fear and Prejudice (1989) - the German sociologist Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg offers a fundamental analysis of social prejudices and their social dynamics by merging the older individual approaches in an interdisciplinary, cross-school synthesis. Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg relies on her original research on prejudices of hostility to the body, i. H. towards supposedly or actually deviating sexuality based on the assumption of traditionally rigid given gender roles, but basically relates her findings to general prejudice research.

Tabu homosexuality is fundamentally concerned with the historical anthropological consideration of the historical origins and the development of ethnocentric prejudices in the West over large periods of time. Fear and prejudice, on the other hand, despite the addition of the previous storyline, focuses more than its predecessor on the more abstract socio-psychological structural analysis of the social totality of Western culture that has emerged from history and the associated social dynamics and prejudice mechanisms. In doing so, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg does not lose sight of the necessary examination of the basic anthropological and scientific characteristics of human beings, which in the course of Western development have been integrated into the formation of prejudices and the social conflicts based on them in such a way that they support the creation and dissemination of prejudices . In Tabu Homosexuality , Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg developed the implicit thesis, based on the development of Western culture and the prejudices inherent in it, that basically all typical Western prejudices tend to - often suppressed or culturally rationalized or coded - prejudices of body hostility (also, albeit not necessarily central, in the form of repressed sexual envy) and z. Partly based on rigid, conservative western gender roles.

Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's most important research methodologies and instruments include - in addition to the approaches listed above, including identity , ideology and cultural criticism of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and especially its theoretical approach of the authoritarian personality (see also its further development Right-Wing Authoritarianism ) - the labeling approach of George Herbert Mead and Howard S. Becker and the frustration-aggression hypothesis by Dollard and Miller, but also the dispositive and discourse analysis by Michel Foucault .

In-group and out-group : prejudice, enemy image and group cohesion

Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg emphasizes that the main function of prejudices is to serve social group cohesion; The ruling in-group differentiates itself from an out-group defined in this way by means of its own social authority to interpret (the demarcation made by the in-group on partly fictitious, partly actual, but always negatively assessed characteristics of the out-group defined in this way from the outside In order to find their own identity and the resulting group cohesion only in this demarcation and exclusion and the associated devaluation of out-group minorities in the sense of identity-creating enemy images .

The fundamental constituent element of the in-group identity is thus that it has nothing in common with or to do with the out-group , the supposed or actual properties that have been made into features as disturbing, frightening, disgusting, or even basically as to be combated is defined. These traits can be physical, emotional, mental, behavioral, or a combination of them. Especially with out-groups that are not primarily by physical characteristics are defined, was in Western history often a visible physical stigma (of lat. Stigma , "stigma") or branding for the identification and often dehumanization of out-group - Members resorted to (including mutilation, tars and feathers, certain clothing, etc.), whereby the transition to punishing an alleged or actual criminal was fluid due to the frequent criminalization of out-groups .

The identification by visible stigmata serves to align the out-group with those beings to whom the avoidant to aggressive behavior shown towards out-groups in the course of the incarnation originally applied: (predatory) animals (dehumanization) and mutilated conspecifics. To the extent that this label becomes a social norm, the uncritical equation of social norms with laws of nature also means that external features are perceived as supposedly natural properties of out-groups . Their properties, which are viewed as negative, are often considered to be contagious even through simple handling, which means that the step towards perception as a disease and thus towards pathologization is already taken (see also the sections on the origin of the word and the historical under the historical disease term addiction , which Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg discussed , the original emphasized the supposed connections between illness on the one hand and supposed or actual social abnormalities on the other). The result is a social tendency, out-group minorities, whose characteristics are not primarily visible, as defined as written on the forehead, to want such a label from the outset “on the neck”, which in turn is the basis of the winged word I could do it to him don't look at it! is as soon as a person's membership of a shunned or despised out-group becomes known.

Labeling approach and self-stabilization of prejudice

However, since this process as the learned social identity of the out-group determined by the interpretative authority of the ruling from the outside in-group defined and - often stigmatizing - pathologised, is often even criminalized, is found in the learned external social identity - even in the case of the negative propagandistic caricature - one of the reasons for the preceding motto of the book fear and prejudice , according to which the protection of minorities is synonymous with protection of the majority .

Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg warns of the danger of a possible self-fulfilling prophecy , according to which members of negatively assessed out-group minorities can consciously and unconsciously - also through ignorance of other ways of interpreting and identifying their actual and fictitious group characteristics - be driven to do so to accept negative judgment of the ruling in-group about themselves. They then actually develop the behavior that is harmful to themselves and sometimes others that is said to them. Because, according to Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, the individual also learns their own identity mostly through social learning : any identity, no matter how negative, is more likely to be accepted than the complete loss of one's own identity . Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg also speaks of a permanent self - stabilization of the prejudice , since every small apparent or actual sign of adaptation to the given, once established out-group identity is immediately taken by members of the ruling in-group as evidence confirming the prejudice. These alleged proofs work in the sense of numinous and thus an archaic-magical , at the same time specifically occidental- authoritarian thinking, as the registered doubt is punished with the immediate expulsion from the in-group ; the skeptic is perceived as the enemy that ostensibly needs to be fought. The prejudice is nomic (ie prescribed as a norm) to the extent that it determines the in-group's view of social reality in the form of a social consensus prescribed by society for the individual ; to the members of the in-group , the fictitious characteristics ascribed to out-group members appear just as real as their actual ones. Anyone who does not follow this discursive-normatively prescribed consensus, which is often presented as a non-questionable minimum consensus of a civilized society, is perceived as part of the enemy image.

Taboo and projection

Due to the extremely negatively burdened verbal and action dealings with members of the out-group , but also in view of their actual or supposed characteristics, there is often a strong social taboo on the corresponding topic complexes. This discursive fearful and hateful avoidance behavior is internalized by the individual in-group member due to the high group pressure as a psychological repression of the negative connotations in their own person, in order to enable an adaptation to the in-group identity required of them. This repression in turn enables the self-repressed properties to be projected onto the members of the out-group provided for this purpose on the individual level , so that the masochistic repression can turn into aggressive hatred and can be acted out accordingly in sadistic interaction. In doing so, the discriminating person, due to his repression and a specifically distorted perception that Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg explicitly interprets as pathological in the sense of an obsessive-compulsive disorder , always perceives his own actions as an appropriate and proportionate, quasi-reasonable reaction and himself as a corrective or corrective response due to the perceived threat -healing instance. The prejudice is presented as a recurrent, manifest obsession from which discrimination as an obsessive act can follow. According to Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, however, a distinction should be made between a so-called lightning rod - like a scapegoat - that the out-group assumes in the perception of the discriminating party, whereby the decisive question is whether the corresponding prejudices can be overcome through appropriate education or not - and then the case is pathological.

The properties projected in the individual case do not even have to be the propagated main features of the out-group , since the strong taboo results in a diffuse, fundamentally disreputable vagueness of the avoided to hated topic complex, so that a wide range of associations quickly appears how objectively develops socially harmful properties and impulses that are sufficiently tailored to the individual situation of the individual in-group member. For example, not every homophobic Westerner inevitably has to feel a sexual desire for people of his own gender; It is enough if he thinks he cannot correspond to internalized conservative dichotomous gender roles, such as strength and weakness or a specific gesture and habitus, and, typically ethnocentric, western cultural tradition, irrationally mixes the gender roles he has learned with specific sexuality. In addition to the aforementioned authoritarian personality from Critical Theory, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg refers to the frustration-aggression hypothesis , according to which aggression follows from the frustration of one's own (basic) needs, but in addition to repressed physical, psychological impulse and / or behavioral characteristics a conscious need for security and the perceived or actual threat to it also count: Fear makes you evil.

Levels of escalation and false laws

In connection with the negatively influenced by the in-group construction of a given out-group identity (which assigns socially harmful to criminal characteristics to the out-group ), which is conveyed to the individual out-group member as the only possible self-image through social learning and group pressure can, but just as in the case of supposed defensive measures (the range of which can increase from simple passive avoidance behavior to active discrimination , structural (= state, legal) violence to open physical violence , see also the original Allport scale from 1954) of the ruling, In-group who feel threatened compared to the weaker out-group , another, repeatedly cited tenet of Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg gains importance: false laws lead to real crimes. Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg also relates this tenet to what they believe to be the most diverse, but to this day mainly supposed or actual sexual minorities discriminatory, which has been in force in industrialized western countries and its implementation, which has been influenced by the spread of HIV, since the eighties of the twentieth century .

Possible solutions

Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg rejects the approach previously represented in social research of countering prejudices through simple closeness and enabling personal exchange between individual group members of one side, referring, among other things, to the exemplary social position of Jews in Austria-Hungary before the First World War ; Due to the tendency towards self-stabilization of the prejudice , the greater proximity to the objects of one's own prejudices alone did not enable the prejudices to be reduced . Instead, until the war, anti-Semitism was more widespread and far more radical in the Danube Monarchy than in Germany, which had a far lower percentage of Jews in its own population.

Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg sees the following approaches to solving the problem of prejudice:

  • Reduction of prejudices through appropriate, sober clarification , also by means of de-emotionalization and de-scandalization,
  • Reduction of prejudices by building and conveying a positive (more) socially integrative identity for the out-group, whose members are more likely to be encouraged to act responsibly towards themselves and others
  • as well as breaking down prejudices by conveying common, connecting goals between the “out-group” and “in-group” .

Institute for Prejudice Research

See also

Portal: Discrimination  - Overview of Wikipedia content on the subject of discrimination

literature

  • Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, Gisela (1978): Tabu Homosexuality - The story of a prejudice , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main. ISBN 3-10-007302-9
  • Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, Gisela (1981): Homosexuality - The story of a prejudice , 2nd edition unchanged except for the title
  • Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, Gisela (1989): Fear and Prejudice - AIDS Fears as the Subject of Prejudice Research , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg. ISBN 3-499-18247-5
  • Jens Förster, A Little Introduction to Pigeonhole Thinking , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-04254-5
  • Scott Plous, Ed. (2003). Understanding prejudice and discrimination. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0072554434

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Social psychological prejudice research . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  2. ^ Yvonne Kneubühler; Motivation and behavior of German "men on the spot" in the African colonies; in: Dominik J. Schaller et al., expropriated, expelled, murdered - contributions to genocide research, Chronos, Zurich, 2004
  3. ↑ Susanne Lin: The learning theory approach . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  4. ↑ Mead, Goerge Herbert (1934; posthumously): Mind, Self, and Society , University of Chicago Press (German Spirit, Identity and Society from the Perspective of Social Behaviorism , Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1968, ISBN 0-226- 51668-7 )
  5. ↑ Becker, Howard S. (1963): Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance (German outsider - to the sociology of deviating behavior , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1971, ISBN 3-10-805301-9 )
  6. ^ Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, Sheila A. Ross: Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models . In: Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology . tape 63 , no. 3 , 1961, pp. 575-582 , PMID 13864605 ( semanticscholar.org [PDF]).
  7. ↑ Susanne Lin: The psychodynamic approach . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  8. ^ Dollard, Miller et al. (1939): Frustration and Aggression , Yale University Press, New Haven
  9. ↑ Miller, Barker et al. (1941): Symposium on the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis , Psychological Review , No. 48, pp. 337-366
  10. ^ Leonard Berkowitz (1969): The frustration-aggression hypothesis revisited , in: ders. (Ed.), Roots of aggression , Atherton Press, New York
  11. ↑ Coser, Lewis (1964): Sociological Theory: A book of readings (German theory of social conflicts , Luchterhand, 1965)
  12. ^ Adorno et al. (1950): Studies in Prejudice Series, Volume 1: The Authoritarian Personality , Harper & Row, New York 1950, German: Studies on the authoritarian character , Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1973
  13. ↑ Altemeyer, Bob (1981): Right-Wing Authoritarianism , University of Manitoba Press
  14. ↑ Broadbent, Donald E. (1958): Perception and Communication , Pergamon Press, London
  15. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1959): A Review of BF Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" ( Reprinted 1967 in: Jakobovits & Miron (Eds.), Readings in the Psychology of Language , Prentice-Hall)
  16. ^ Neisser, Ulrich (1967): Cognitive Psychology , Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York (German: Kognitive Psychologie , Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-12-926230-X )
  17. ↑ Susanne Lin: The cognitive theories . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  18. ↑ Susanne Lin: The Conflict Theoretical Approach . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  19. ^ Tajfel & Turner (1979): An integrative theory of intergroup conflict , in: Austin & Worchel (eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations , Brooks-Cole, Monterey
  20. Jump up ↑ JC Turner, MA Hogg, PJ Oakes, SD Reicher & MS Wetherell (1987): Rediscovering the social group: A Self-Categorization Theory , Basil Blackwell, New York
  21. ↑ Foucault, Michel: (1971): L'ordre du discours , Gallimard, Paris, ISBN 2-07-027774-7 (German: The order of discourse , Hanser Verlag, Munich 1974)