Prejudice and Motivations to Respond Without Prejudice

Over the last three decades, the category of low-prejudiced individuals has been revealed to be a diverse one.  An individual may have low levels of explicit prejudice and high levels of implicit prejudice, low levels of explicit and implicit prejudice, or, more rarely, higher levels of explicit and low levels of implicit prejudice (Petty and Brinol, 2009).  Further, in a society where both prejudice and egalitarian goals are common, individuals may seek to avoid acting on existing prejudices (Plant and Devine, 1998).  Some individuals may do so to avoid external censure and to conform to social norms, some individuals may do so because it is personally important to them to feel nonprejudiced, other individuals may do so for a combination of internal and external reasons.  Different motivations are correlated to different self-regulation strategies and each strategy can have different effects on levels of explicit and implicit prejudice (Devine, Amodio, Harmon-Jones, & Vance, 2002) and associated behaviors towards out-group members (Butz & Plant, 2009).   The self-regulation strategies themselves may directly influence processing of messages by stigmatized sources.

Participants that score high on Plant and Devine’s Internal Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale and low on their External Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale demonstrate lower levels of implicit and explicit prejudice.  Plant and Devine’s Internal Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale asks participants to report the extent to which they agree with the following statements:

• I attempt to act in nonprejudiced ways toward Black people because it is personally important to me.
• According to my personal values, using stereotypes about Black people is OK.
• I am personally motivated by my beliefs to be nonprejudiced toward Black people.
• Because of my personal values, I believe that using stereotypes about Black people is wrong.
• Being nonprejudiced toward Black people is important to my self-concept.

The External Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale asks participants to report the extent to which they agree with the following statements:  

• Because of today's PC (politically correct) standards I try to appear nonprejudiced toward Black people.
• I try to hide any negative thoughts about Black people in order to avoid negative reactions from others. 
• If I acted prejudiced toward Black people, I would be concerned that others would be angry with me.
• I attempt to appear nonprejudiced toward Black people in order to avoid disapproval from others. 
• I try to act nonprejudiced toward Black people because of pressure from others.

Solely internal motivation to respond without prejudice (IMS) is negatively correlated with both explicit, self-reported prejudice and implicitly measured prejudice.  Interestingly, the activation of egalitarian goals is a known mediator of the negative correlation between scoring high on the IMS alone and demonstrating lower levels of implicit prejudice, suggesting that this correlation occurs at least in part because of the moment to moment efforts of research participants.  Solely external motivation to respond without prejudice (EMS) is positively correlated with both explicitly measured and implicitly measured prejudice.

Individuals high in IMS alone, high in both EMS and IMS, and solely high in EMS have distinct motivations and abilities to regulate their prejudiced attitudes.  For example, individuals high in IMS may put less effort into regulating their automatic prejudiced attitudes out of the assumption that they are already doing so, that doing so should not require great effort, or out of a conscious concern for more deliberative attitudes.  However, when Fehr and Sassenberg (2010) informed their German participants that they had demonstrated implicit prejudice towards Arabs on an IAT test, their participants high in IMS alone learned to efficiently reduce this prejudice.  Other studies have demonstrated that individuals high in IMS alone will pursue opportunities to train themselves to reduce their prejudice but will not engage this training in an effortful way until informed of failure (Plant & Devine, 2009).  This suggests that unless individuals high in IMS alone believe that they will behave in a prejudiced way, they may either a) not elaborate messages attributed to a stigmatized source or b) not notice that they are elaborating these messages in a biased way.

Taking a more careful look at the motivations underlying self-regulation of prejudiced behavior may reveal patterns of motivation that moderate motivation to elaborate.   The items of the Internal Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale and the External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice Scale are correlated with another scale, created by Legault and colleagues, that describes six categories of motivation to be nonprejudiced.  Their Motivation to be Nonprejudiced Scale (MNPS) divides these motivations into the intrinsic, the integrated, the identified, the introjected, the external, and the amotivated (Legault, Green-Demers, Grant, & Chung, 2007).

Items in the intrinsic motivation category describe a motivation to act in a non-prejudiced way because it is “enjoyable or satisfying.”  Items related to intrinsic motivation on their Motivation to be Nonprejudiced Scale (MNPS) include:

• Enjoyment relating to other groups.
• Pleasure of being open-minded.
• For the joy I feel when learning about new people.
• For the interest I feel when discovering people/groups.

This measure correlates positively to the IMS at a p < .01.  It also marginally negatively correlates with the EMS.  It negatively correlates with both explicit and implicit measurements of racism and sexism (using p-values between .05 and .001).

Moving from intrinsic to external motivations for self-regulation, Legault and colleagues next describe those who demonstrate integrated regulation.  Integrated regulation “occurs when personally endorsed goals, values, and needs are fused with the self . . . that is, they align with other needs and values of the overarching value system.” Measures of this form of self-regulation include: 

• I appreciate what understanding adds to my life.
• Striving to understand others is part of who I am.
• Because I am tolerant and accepting of difference.
• Because I am an open-minded person.
• I place an importance on egalitarian beliefs.

Like the previous measures of intrinsic regulation, this measure positively correlates with the IMS at p < .001 and is marginally negatively correlated with the EMS.  It is also significantly negatively correlated with explicit measures of racism and sexism in different studies conducted by Legault and colleagues.  It is negatively correlated with scores on a Race IAT at p < .01.  

Identified regulation is defined as having “goals that are sought because they are valued or seen as important” and demonstrates similar correlations with the IMS and EMS scales as well as with implicit and explicit measures of prejudice.  Its items include:

• Because I value nonprejudice.
• Because I admire people who are egalitarian.
• I place an importance on egalitarian beliefs.
• Because tolerance is important to me. 

It is also possible that identified individuals may exhibit a moral credentialing effect, feeling less-motivated to control prejudice if they feel that they normally act without prejudice.  Moral credentialing can increase prejudiced behaviors for individuals with both internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice (Monin, 2001).

Introjected regulation is defined by “[e]xternal incentives . . . [that] have been turned inward but not truly accepts as one’s own.”  “[T]his type of self-regulation feels quite controlling.  Introjected behaviors are ego involved and performed to avoid guilt or to enhance contingent self-worth” (Legault et al., 2007).  In 2002, Devine et al. suggested that individuals that are high in both internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice would fall into the introjected category.  This statement is not supported by Legault and colleagues’ research.  Only marginal positive correlations to the IMS and EMS were found.  In addition, Legault and Green found that introjected regulation was marginally negatively correlated with implicit racial prejudice as measured by the IAT.

It is possible that their measures correspond to a different set of motivations that those held by high EMS and IMS participants.  Their measures of introjected regulation included:

• Because I feel like I should avoid prejudice.
• Because I would feel guilty if I were prejudiced.
• Because I would feel ashamed if I were prejudiced.

Monteith, Mark, and Ashburn-Nardo (2010) found that participants who were more focused on the possibility of behaving badly reported both more frequent experiences with acting in a prejudiced way and less effort to act in less-prejudiced ways in the future.

  

Describing their participants high in IMS and EMS, Plant and Devine (2009) found that, when given the opportunity to engage in training to reduce their level of prejudice, these participants put forth more effort than participants that were high in IMS alone.  In contrast, Amodio, Devine, and Harmon Jones (2008) demonstrated that participants high in both IMS and EMS are less effective at regulating implicit prejudice than individuals high in IMS alone, as measured by neural activity in response to a variety of race-based primes.  They further argue that conflict monitoring, awareness of conflict measured at the level of neural activity, accounts for these differences, with high IMS individuals being more likely to notice the conflict between a prejudiced reaction and their egalitarian values.  This research suggests that high IMS individuals are better at self-monitoring their implicit attitudes, at least in certain contexts.  Individuals high in both EMS and IMS, however, may still experience sufficient conflict to prompt prejudice-reduction strategies.

The next category on Legault and colleagues’ scale is “external regulation” (2007).  Individuals that demonstrate external regulation do so because they wish to avoid social reprimand or to earn praise.  Items in this category of the scale include:

• So that people will admire me for being tolerant.
• Because I don’t want people to think I’m narrow-minded.
• Because biased people are not well-liked.
• Because I get more respect/acceptance when I act unbiased.

Surprisingly, these measures correlated positively with both the IMS and the EMS.  The former correlates only marginally and the latter correlates when p < .01.  This category marginally correlates positively with explicit and implicit racial measures, although it correlates negatively for explicit measures of sexism.  Only one significant correlation was found.  Explicit racism and external motivation correlated at p < .05.  There is no evidence that these individuals would elaborate messages attributed to a stigmatized message author, but the lack of significant correlations with the IMS and EMS was puzzling.

It could be that high EMS participants may include individuals that would fall into Legault and colleagues’ last category, amotivated individuals. Amotivated individuals “cannot perceive a relationship between their behavior and that behavior’s subsequent outcome.” Measures include:

• I don’t know; it’s not a priority.
• I don’t know; I don’t really bother trying to avoid it. 
• I don’t know why; I think it’s pointless.
• I don’t know, it’s not very important to me.

This significantly positively correlates with explicit and implicit prejudice. It does not significantly correlate with either the IMS or the EMS, but it does show a marginal positive correlation with the EMS and a marginal negative correlation with the IMS.  

Both individuals solely high in EMS and high in both EMS and IMS are less able to regulate their implicit prejudices.  When asked to suppress their stereotypes, high EMS individuals exhibit a rebound effect and subsequent depletion of their ability to suppress stereotypes that is not experienced by high IMS individuals (Butz and Plant, 2009).   This suggests that even individuals that are high in either external or both internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice may lack the ability to do so.