Psychological perspectives on racism

In 1998 the APS position paper on ‘Racism and prejudice’ was published in the Australian Psychologist (Sanson et al., 1998). At that time, public debates about prejudice and racism had gained political salience in Australia, fuelled primarily by the emergence of Pauline Hanson and the One Nation party she founded. Despite the demise of One Nation in the intervening period, issues related to race and prejudice continue to loom large in the political and social landscape of Australia. Polarised national debates about Indigenous Native Title, the need for an apology to the Stolen Generations, and the Northern Territory Intervention brought to our attention the ongoing disadvantage and marginalisation of Indigenous Australians and forced us as a nation to come to terms with the injustices perpetrated against Australia’s Indigenous peoples during colonisation. Studies consistently show that racism in the wider community against Indigenous Australians remains high. For example, Dunn and his colleagues (2009) report that 63 per cent of Indigenous Australians experience name-calling, ridicule and abuse on a daily basis. The recent incidents of racial abuse against AFL Sydney Swans player Adam Goodes, and ABC journalist Jeremy Fernandez underscore the lived experience of everyday racism in Australia for Indigenous Australians and other minority group members.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia has also significantly increased, with the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales reporting that Muslim Australians have increasingly become the targets of prejudice (ADB NSW, 2003). Highly divisive and politicised debates about the mandatory detention of asylum seekers and, more recently, violence against international students in both Sydney and Melbourne, have also brought issues associated with race and prejudice to the fore.

Racism and psychology

Racism is a pernicious, pervasive and persistent social problem, so it is no surprise that it has been a central and defining topic in social psychology since the 1930s. As a complex social issue, multiple perspectives have been advanced to understand and theorise racism, ranging from accounts that locate the causes within the psychology of the individual to those that emphasise the political and structural determinants of intergroup hostility. In many ways, social psychology has assumed responsibility for understanding racism as the litmus test of its own value as a sub-discipline of psychology and on its practical value to solving real social problems.

There has been a tendency within psychology to use the terms prejudice and racism interchangeably. Prejudice is typically regarded as an individual phenomenon, whereas racism is a broader construct that links individual beliefs and behaviour to broader social and institutional norms and practices that systematically disadvantage particular groups. At an individual level, people can display prejudice, but this in itself does not necessarily constitute racism. Central to racism is the ability of dominant groups to systematically exercise power over out-groups. Importantly, the power one group has over another transforms prejudice into racism and links individual prejudice with broader social practices (Jones, 1997).

Central to most definitions of racism is the belief in a biological hierarchy between different social groups based on perceived racial differences. The belief that different racial groups reflect a natural evolutionary hierarchy, at the top of which are European (white) people, was central to scientific racism which was widely promoted between 1850 and 1910. During this period, European imperialism, slavery and colonial rule over Indigenous peoples created the ideal conditions for the proliferation of such Social Darwinist beliefs (Richards, 1997). Indeed some of psychology’s eminent founding fathers (e.g., Sir Francis Galton) were strong advocates of these views, leading many to argue that psychology as a discipline has contributed significantly to legitimating racist beliefs and practices (see boxed information). In Australia, scientific racism was widely used as a basis upon which government policies such as the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities (the Stolen Generations) were justified and legitimated. The enduring psychological consequences of such racialised practices – which were still in place as recently as the 1970s – continue to be felt today by Indigenous people.

Although psychology’s racist past is hard to deny, Richards’ (1997) detailed history of racism in psychology concludes that explicit racist theorising in the discipline has always been a minority position and that it was the failure of scientific racism as a paradigm in psychology that “enabled contemporary... psychologists to really begin to see racism... as a phenomenon to be recognized and articulated as a problem within and for Psychology” (Richards, 1997, p. 112). With this in mind, this article presents a brief overview of what psychology has contributed to our understanding of racism.

New racism

Although the notion of a biological hierarchy between groups is generally eschewed today and is associated with old-fashioned and blatant forms of racism, it has been replaced more recently with beliefs in a cultural hierarchy between groups where the dominant group’s social values, norms and practices are represented as superior to those of less dominant groups. This is generally referred to as ‘new racism’ or modern racism (Barker, 1981).

During the last 50 years, survey studies consistently show that blunt, hostile and supremacist beliefs are less openly acceptable to white majority group members in Western liberal democracies. In its place, however, a more subtle and covert variant of racism has emerged that justifies negative attitudes towards certain groups, based on moral feelings that they violate traditional values such as the work ethic, individualism, self-reliance and self-discipline. Social psychologists have shown how contemporary racial attitudes have become increasingly complex, multidimensional and even contradictory, wherein liberal-egalitarian values that emphasise equality and social justice coexist with a residue set of negative feelings and beliefs about particular groups (e.g., Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986).

As such, contemporary racism is seen as more insidious and difficult to identify because of its subtle and covert nature. This has led to the proliferation of implicit measures to identify and quantify this more subtle racial bias (Greenwald, Nosek & Banaji, 2003). For example the Implicit Association Test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit), is a response latency measure using subliminal primes to test the strength of association between social categories (e.g., ‘Black’ or ‘White’) and positive and negative trait characteristics. Slower responses to inconsistent associations (Black and positive traits, and White and negative traits) than consistent associations (Black and negative traits, and White and positive traits) is treated as evidence for an implicit bias or prejudice towards coloured people. Indeed the distinction between implicit and explicit racial bias is now so ubiquitous in social psychology that it is sometimes (erroneously) assumed that implicit measures reflect people’s true or real attitudes whereas explicit measures merely reflect social desirability norms. Criticising this view, some have argued that implicit measures do not tap racial attitudes or beliefs per se, but rather identify deeply ingrained stereotypes strongly associated with particular groups.

For instance, Devine’s (1989) dissociation model of prejudice argues that stereotypes are cognitive structures learned early in life that can be automatically activated, whereas racial attitudes (prejudice) are learned later in life and can be either inconsistent or consistent with these stereotypes. The fact that negative stereotypes can be unconsciously activated even amongst people with low levels of explicit prejudice should not however, be taken as evidence that prejudice is an inevitable and natural cognitive tendency in everyone.

Theories of racism

A variety of explanations for prejudice and racism have been advanced by social psychologists throughout the last 100 years. The prevalence of particular kinds of explanations has shifted during this time depending on wider historical and social factors and the dominance of specific paradigmatic frameworks within the discipline. Four current approaches to racism are described briefly below: personality theories; social cognitive models; intergroup theories; and critical psychological approaches.

Personality theories

Freudian psychodynamic accounts of prejudice and racism were prevalent between 1930 and 1960 and located the causes of prejudice in the intra-psychic unconscious conflicts of the person. The most influential of these was The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno et al. (1950). As with much of social psychology in the post-war period, the notion of an authoritarian personality attempted to account for the widespread support for fascism in Nazi Germany and in particular the atrocities associated with the Holocaust. Adorno et al. argued that parent-child relationships with severe and punitive parental discipline produced children with an authoritarian personality. This personality was characterised by: a rigid adherence to conventional social values; an unquestioning subservience to one's superiors; and a hostile rejection of those who violate conventional social values and mores.

Despite the extensive use of the F-scale to measure authoritarianism, by the 1960s the notion of an authoritarian personality began to wane but was revived in 1981 with Altemeyer’s theory of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). Unlike Adorno et al., Altemeyer theorised RWA as an individual personality characteristic that was predominantly shaped by social learning experiences. Altmeyer therefore shifted the focus away from unconscious psychological conflicts to socialisation practices that shaped and conditioned authoritarianism.

The most recent personality approach to prejudice is that of social dominance orientation or SDO (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). SDO is purported to be a stable individual difference that refers to a person’s level of support for group-based hierarchies in society, such as racial/ethnic, gender and socioeconomic hierarchies. Like RWA, SDO is strongly correlated with prejudice. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of SDO is the claim that group-based hierarchies and the legitimating beliefs that support them have an evolutionary basis. Like social cognition models (see below) the implication is that out-group prejudice is inherent in our human nature and is therefore an inevitable feature of most societies.

Social cognitive theories

Since the 1980s, social cognitive models have remained the most dominant and influential accounts of racial bias. These have their origins in Gordon Allport’s seminal work, The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Allport’s definition of prejudice as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” (1954, p. 9) about a social group and its members, emphasises the role that social categorisation and stereotyping play as perceptual-cognitive processes that underlie racial bias.

Categorising people into their respective group memberships (such as race, gender, age) is seen to be driven primarily by our limited cognitive capacity and thereby our need to simplify the overwhelming amount of stimulus information we receive and need to process quickly and efficiently. This group-based or category-based perception is seen as distorting reality because people are not viewed as individuals in their own right but rather as prototypical group members. In turn, this leads to stereotyping, which recent social cognition research suggests can occur automatically and outside conscious awareness (Nosek, Hawkins & Frazier 2011). Stereotyping of course is just one step away from prejudice – literally pre-judging someone based solely on their group membership. This inextricable relationship between categorisation, stereotyping and prejudice therefore is central to social cognition models of prejudice.

Social cognition models have been criticised for normalising prejudice and racism as inevitable products of our cognitive hard-wiring. Critics have also argued that by treating racial categories and racial categorisation as natural rather than social and ideological constructs, social cognition models themselves reproduce subtle and implicit racism in psychology (Hopkins, Levine & Reicher, 1997).

Intergroup theories

Intergroup approaches to racism in social psychology, such as realistic group conflict theory (RCT) and social identity theory (SIT), emphasise the role that relations of power and dominance between different social groups play in determining patterns of intergroup hostility. As the name suggests, RCT views intergroup hostility as arising from competition between social groups for economic, social and cultural resources, that is, from ‘real’ group-based interests. During times of economic hardship when unemployment and competition for resources is high, intergroup hostilities are more likely to occur. Moreover, it is particularly during such times when intergroup tensions can be exploited politically and when scapegoating particular groups for social problems is most likely to take place.

We know however, that intergroup hostility and conflict can occur in the absence of competition for scarce resources. SIT sheds light on how varying patterns of intergroup discrimination and prejudice are generated during different social and political conditions, by emphasising the psychological significance of perceiving oneself as a group member (social categorisation) and the motivation to differentiate one’s in-group positively from other groups through social comparison (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Many psychologists have concluded erroneously from the minimal group experiments upon which SIT was built, that the mere categorisation of people into in-groups and out-groups is sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination and prejudice. Although SIT stresses the psychological importance of intergroup differentiation, this does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with in-group enhancement and out-group derogation, though regrettably these are all too frequent occurrences. Groups can maintain a positive social identity without threatening the social identity of others.

SIT posits that groups and their members strive to achieve positive differentiation from other groups, in ways that are shaped by the nature of the intergroup context and on dimensions of importance to them. Sometimes those dimensions of importance emphasise tolerance, generosity and inclusiveness, but all too often these dimensions emphasise superiority, dominance and preserving in-group privilege (Ellemers & Haslam, 2012).

Critical psychological approaches

Critical psychological approaches have examined prejudice and racism as interactive and shared discursive practices that justify and legitimate relations of power, dominance and exploitation in both formal discourse, such as political rhetoric, and in everyday informal talk. This approach has identified how linguistic resources are combined flexibly to reproduce and justify racist outcomes in modern liberal democracies. In some instances, existing relations of power, dominance and privilege are maintained through overt racism. However, given the increasing opprobrium against the expression of such views, social inequalities are typically legitimated through the flexible and contradictory use of liberal egalitarian arguments that draw on principles such as freedom, individual rights and equality. Discursive studies locate these shared discursive practices or ‘ways of talking’ as products of an inequitable society rather than as individual psychological or cognitive products. The analytic site therefore is not the prejudiced or racist individual, but the discursive and linguistic resources that are available within a society structured by social inequalities (Wetherell & Potter, 1992).

Critical discursive research has also demonstrated the varied ways in which the category of racism is highly contested in everyday life to manage the moral accountability and identity of an individual or group. van Dijk (1992) documents the ubiquitous nature of denials of racism through the use of disclaimers such as “I’m not racist but ...” or “I have nothing against migrants but ...”. A large body of work has demonstrated how both formal and informal talk about issues pertaining to race, immigration and asylum seekers is strategically organised to deny prejudice and racism. Unlike traditional psychological research utilising quantitative methods, this qualitative approach insists on using naturalistic data that captures the ongoing nature of racism in everyday life (Augoustinos & Every, 2007).

These language practices are forms of power that are products of particular historical, hierarchical relationships between groups, in which some people have unjustly and unfoundedly claimed dominance over others. Understood as power relationships, racism shapes the lives of everyone within these hierarchies, both the oppressed and the oppressors. In this sense, ‘race’ is a form of categorisation that reflects particular forms of power relations between groups, rather than reflecting the actual attributes (whether physical or behavioural) of any particular group of people. Recent research on white privilege is another critical approach that is primarily concerned with how white people’s identities are shaped by broader institutionalised forms of racism, and brings to the fore both the benefits that the dominant majority accrue because of their privileged position in society and the responsibilities they have for addressing racism (Moreton-Robinson, 2004).

Integrating multiple perspectives

Duckitt (1992) argues that these multiple social psychological perspectives are not necessarily competing paradigms, but rather should be seen as valid and potentially compatible approaches to different aspects of this social phenomenon. He proposes an integrative framework that identifies four primary causal processes of prejudice: internal psychological processes; social and intergroup dynamics; social transmission; and individual differences. He argues that each of these causal processes provides a partial but essential contribution to the explanation of prejudice – psychological processes build a human propensity for prejudice; social and intergroup dynamics elaborate this propensity into socially shared patterns of interaction; these patterns are socially transmitted throughout social groups; and individual differences in susceptibility to prejudice modify these social norms.

Concluding comments

The literature on prejudice and racism is enormous and this brief overview is by no means exhaustive nor does justice to the diversity of work in this field. Despite these caveats it can be concluded that social psychology has conceptualised racism to be a normative, often invisible system of social practices, cognitions, emotions and discourses that are perpetuated through all levels (individual, interpersonal, intergroup, institutional) that privilege one social group and disadvantage and marginalise other social groups. These practices can be overt assertions of biological difference, but in today’s social and political climate, are more likely to be covert and implicit. As academics and practitioners it is incumbent on us to critically interrogate psychological knowledge and practice to eradicate the covert and subtle vestiges of racism that remain and periodically resurface in our profession.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is to confront our discipline’s tendency to naturalise or normalise prejudice and racism as inevitable features of our human nature, cognitive hard-wiring or evolutionary survival. This ignores the fact that our survival and the emergence of complex and socially diverse societies that we live in today have required cooperation, trust and reconciliation. It is therefore possible to move beyond reductionist categorisations such as ‘us’ versus ‘them’ to inclusive and representative forms of social identity.

The author can be contacted at [email protected]