Infographic 15.3: Thinking About Other People

There are two main sections in the infographic. Text under the title reads “Attitudes are complex and only sometimes related to our behaviors. Like most attitudes, prejudicial attitudes can be connected with our cognitions about groups of people (also known as stereotypes), our negative attitudes and feelings about others (also referred to as prejudice), and our behaviors (discriminating against others). Understanding how and when these pieces connect to each other is an important goal of social psychology. Jane Elliott’s classic “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise helps demonstrate how stereotypes, discrimination, and prejudice may be connected.” Section 1 consists of three text boxes, each of which describe a type of prejudicial attitude towards others. Text box 1 is titled “cognitive component (beliefs and ideas)”, and reads “We tend to categorize people in terms of the in-group (the group to which we belong) and the out-group (people different from us in some way). Stereotypes are beliefs or assumptions we hold about people, based on perceived differences we think describe members of their group.” Text box 2 is titled “Affective component (emotional evaluation)”, and reads “Prejudice, or feelings of hostility, or discomfort toward members of out-groups.” Text box 3 is titled “Behavioral component (the way we respond)”, and reads “Discrimination, or treating others differently because of their affiliation with a group. Can include showing hostility or anger to others, or can be more subtle, such as different body language or tone of voice.” Text attached by dashed arrows to text box 2 and the section title “Prejudicial attitude towards others” reads “Social psychologists often use prejudice to refer to both these negative attitudes and the negative feelings tied to them.” Section 2 contains 3 subsections, which correspond to each of the three text boxes in section 1. For “Cognitive component”, Section 2 has subsection “Stereotype”. The illustration in the subsection shows one group of 11 illustrated pairs of brown eyes and another group of 17 illustrated pairs of blue eyes. Text attached to the brown eyes reads “Cleaner, more civilized, smarter”. Text attached to the blue eyes reads “When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968, a teacher named Jane Elliott gave her students a lesson about discrimination. Because no African Americans lived in their Iowa town, she knew students would have trouble understanding what motivated the terrible act. Elliott invited the class to join her in an exercise in which one set of students was segregated into a negatively stereotyped out-group: “Suppose we divided the class into blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people.... [B]rown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. They are cleaner . . . more civilized . . . smarter” (Peters, 1971, pp. 20–21).” For “affective component”, section 2 has subsection “prejudice”. An illustration under the title “Prejudice” shows a venn diagram, with one circle titled “prejudice” and another titled “discrimination”. Text inside the circle for prejudice reads “Brown eyes dislike blue eyes, but have to be nice while in class.” Text inside the circle for discrimination reads “Brown eyes, who are required to sit in the front of the room, do not sit with blue eyes, who must sit at the back.” Text inside the overlap between the two circles reads “Brown eyes dislike blue eyes and exclude them from games at recess.” Text attached to the illustration in subsection 2 reads “In her exercise, Elliott created a situation in which discrimination initially existed without the presence of actual feelings of hostility or anger. Although prejudice and discrimination often go hand in hand, either condition can exist independently.” For text box “Behavioral component”, section 2 has subsection “Discrimination”. Under the subsection title is a photograph of Jane Elliott’s classroom during her exercise. Text attached to the photograph reads “During the exercise, a list of rules governed behavior for both groups. For example, only children with brown eyes were allowed to sit at the front of the room near the teacher. The effect of this manufactured discrimination surprised even Elliott. The brown-eyed children quickly became openly hostile toward the blue-eyed children. And “[t]he blue-eyed children were miserable.... [T]heir entire attitudes were those of defeat. Their classroom work regressed sharply from that of the day before” (Peters, 1971, p. 25).”