Favoritism, not hostility, causes most discrimination, says UW psychology professor

http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/05/19/favoritism-not-hostility-causes-most-discrimination-says-uw-psychology-professor/

May 19, 2014
Doree Armstrong

Most discrimination in the U.S. is not caused by intention to harm people different from us, but by ordinary favoritism directed at helping people similar to us, according to a theoretical review published online in American Psychologist.

“We can produce discrimination without having any intent to discriminate or any dislike for those who end up being disadvantaged by our behavior,” said University of Washington psychologist Tony Greenwald, who co-authored the review with Thomas Pettigrew of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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That makes sense, Greenwald said, because most people think of discrimination as the result of hostility: a white person spouting anti-black rhetoric, or a homophobe yelling slurs at a gay couple. But, he argues, it’s more subtle acts, ones people don’t even recognize as causing disadvantage to anyone, that are likely to be much more significant.

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“Your ‘ingroup’ involves people that you feel comfortable with, people you identify with,” Greenwald explained. “We usually think first of demographic characteristics like age, race, sex, religion and ethnicity as establishing an ingroup, but there are also ingroups based on occupation, neighborhood and schools attended, among other things. Outgroups are those with whom you don’t identify.”

Greenwald and Pettigrew propose that unequal treatment in the form of doing favors for those like you, rather than inflicting harm on those unlike you, causes the majority of discrimination in the U.S.

“This is not to say that prejudice and hostility are not related to outgroup discrimination,” Pettigrew said. “But they are not as central to most discrimination as ingroup favoritism.”

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