Prototype Use in Perceptions of Prejudice in Interactions Between Whites and Latinos

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

10 COPYRIGHT 2012 BY PSI CHI, THE INTERNATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY IN PSYCHOLOGY (VOL. 17, NO. 1/ISSN 2164-8204) Prejudice is conceptualized as a negative evaluation of a person based on group membership, whereas discrimination is a negative action directed toward that individual (Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien, 2002). Though some discriminatory acts are obviously motivated by prejudice (e.g., racial slurs), many real life situations contain a certain amount of ambiguity regarding the motivation behind a behavior. Such instances are ambiguous because the motivation is unclear and details such as whether the behavior is typical of the person acting are unknown. These ambiguous situations may lead to different interpretations of the same act. For example, a hotel clerk may tell a customer via telephone that rooms are available for reservation that evening while, in the next moment, he informs a customer in person that there are no vacancies. One observer may think the clerk is unpleasant because of circumstance or personality, whereas another may see the behavior as prejudicial against the customer who inquired in person at the desk. Inman and Baron (1996) suggest that the degree to which individuals interpret a behavior as prejudicially motivated may depend on the extent to which they hold expectations regarding who will perpetrate and whom will be victimized. Such expectations develop as humans organize their experiences by comparing new events to existing mental ideals or schemas (Aosved, Long, & Voller, 2009; Baldwin, 1992; Cantor, Michel, & Swartz, 1982; Hayes-Roth & Hayes-Roth, 1977). These mental images of the “most likely” scenarios involving various types of intolerance—sexism, racism, religious intolerance, and ageism, for example—can be referred to as prototypes and may influence sensitivity in identifying discriminatory behavior perpetrated against a given group. These prototypes are most frequently used in situations that involve some ambiguity (Inman & Baron, 1996) and their use may lead to the inaccurate perception of a behavior as prejudicial or failing to recognize prejudice when prototypes are absent. Researchers have identified the human tendency to categorize, or use stereotypes, as part of normal cognitive processing, and individuals most often use these stereotypes when they are unable to give full attention to a situation. For instance, people use stereotypes more often when they are ABSTRACT. This study examined the use of prototypes in the perception of prejudice in interactions between White and Latino individuals. Participants were students at a small liberal arts college. Participants read vignettes portraying interactions where it was unclear whether the actor was demonstrating prejudicial behavior and then supplied words to describe the actor. Results indicated that participants were most likely to perceive prejudice when the perpetrator was White and the victim was Latino, confirming the hypothesis that participants would use expected prototypes to judge the presence of prejudice in ambiguous situations. Gender and intolerant beliefs did not play a primary role in the perception of prejudice in ambiguous situations. Data support previous research using a prototype model to explain how individuals perceive prejudice between Whites and Blacks and suggest that this model can be used to explain the perception of prejudice in interactions between Whites and Latinos.