The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate?

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1999 by Marilynn B. Brewer

Perceived Threat

In line with Realistic Conflict Theory of intergroup relations (LeVine & Campbell, 1972: Sherif & Sherif, 1953), the reciprocal relationship between ingroup cohesion and outgroup hostility may be limited to conditions in which groups are in competition over physical resources or political power. Whether actual or imagined, the perception that an outgroup constitutes a threat to ingroup interests or survival creates a circumstance in which identification and interdependence with the ingroup is directly associated with fear and hostility toward the threatening outgroup and vice versa. To the extent that threat is a factor, members of disadvantaged or subordinate groups should show a stronger correlation between ingroup identification and prejudice against the dominant outgroup specifically. In accord with this prediction, Duckitt and Mphuthing (1998) found a substantial interrelationship between ingroup identification and negative attitudes toward Afrikaners among Black Africans in South Africa. However, there was no correlation between ingroup identification and attitudes toward English Whites, nor toward Whites in general. These findings led Duckitt and Mphuthing (1998) to conclude that there are two different types of prejudice involved in anti-White attitudes among Black Africans. One type is rooted in perceived conflict and entails a reciprocal relationship between ingroup identification and outgroup hostility. When intergroup attitudes are not conflict-based, attitudes toward the ingroup and prejudice toward the outgroup are essentially independent.

Common Goals

In contrast to conditions of intergroup competition and threat, the existence of superordinate goals (or the presence of a shared threat) is widely believed to provide the conditions necessary for intergroup cooperation and reduction of conflict (e.g., Sherif, 1966). This belief is an extrapolation of the general finding that intragroup solidarity is increased in the face of shared threat or common challenge. It may be true that loosely knit ingroups become more cohesive and less subject to internal factioning when they can be rallied to the demands of achieving a common goal. The dynamics of interdependence are quite different, however, in the case of highly differentiated social groups. Among members of the same ingroup, engaging the sense of trust necessary for cooperative collective action is essentially nonproblematic. In an intergroup context, however, perceived interdependence and the need for cooperative interaction make salient the absence of mutual trust. Without the mechanism of depersonalized tru st based on common identity, the risk of exploited cooperation looms large and distrust dominates over trust in the decision structure. It is for this reason that I have argued elsewhere (Brewer, in press) that the anticipation of positive interdependence with an outgroup, brought on by perceptions of common goals or common threat, actually promotes intergroup conflict and hostility. When negative evaluations of the outgroup such as contempt or fear are also already present, common threat in particular may promote scapegoating and blame rather than mutual cooperation.