Abstract
Psychological research and theory have traditionally focused on bias and conflict between separate groups. Our central thesis is that the processes that shape hierarchical group relations within a society are distinctive and typically operate in ways that are frequently subtle rather than blatant. The challenges of detecting new subtle forms of bias are receiving considerable attention in the field of social psychology, internationally. Although explicit hostility toward minority groups seems to have faded in modern societies, cross-cultural data show that the status, resources, and the power of women and ethnic/racial minorities remain unequal. The present literature review integrates the findings of cross-cultural research showing the role of paternalistic legitimizing ideas and behavior for establishing, maintaining, and reinforcing group hierarchy and the disadvantage of members of traditionally underrepresented groups. Specifically, we explain how intergroup helping relations can be used as a mechanism to maintain social advantage in racial and gender relations. These theoretical and experimental insights help illuminate the dynamics of relations between socially linked groups and the nature of contemporary bias. We also highlight how this perspective suggests novel and productive directions for future research.
Prosocial behavior and subtle bias in racial and gender relations
Overt expressions of racial, ethnic, and gender prejudice have consistently declined internationally. Representative surveys in the United States and Europe have revealed that attitudes toward racial/ethnic minorities and women are becoming increasingly favorable across time (European Commission, 2012; Pearson, Dovidio, & Gaertner, 2009; Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). At the same time, gaps and disparities between groups continue to exist and demographics reflect that social outcomes remain unequal (Eurostat, 2017; U.S. Department of Labor, 2009). In the European Union (EU), Eurostat (2017) revealed a persistent gender wage gap, in which men make wages 16.3% greater than women on average, reaching a maximum of 27.7% for part-time workers in Portugal. In England, Blacks and Asians are disadvantaged relative to Whites in housing opportunities (Heath & Cheung, 2007), job opportunities, and health outcomes (Blackaby, Leslie, Murphy, & O’Leary, 2005; Modood et al., 1997). These disparities are rooted, in part, in group-based discrimination. In Ireland, for example, McGinnity and her colleagues (McGinnity, Nelson, Lunn, & Quinn, 2009) found that candidates with Irish names were more than twice as likely to be invited to interview for advertised jobs as minority group candidates with identifiably non-Irish names (e.g., Asian, African, and German names), even though they all submitted equivalent resumes.
In the present literature review, we explain how a focus on prejudice as antipathy in its blatant form (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995) can obscure many of the dynamics of contemporary bias and shows how, despite substantial declines in overt forms of racism and sexism, subtle biases may be expressed in indirect and ostensibly prosocial ways that contribute to perpetuating social inequality. This review draws on psychological theory and cross-cultural empirical data to integrate different perspectives about bias and concludes by identifying promising directions for future research.
Bias in contemporary societies
Psychological research and theory has traditionally focused on bias and conflict between separate groups. In this section, we briefly review these traditional perspectives on intergroup relations. However, relations between groups that are interdependent, often within an overarching collective identity, are also common and important—and potentially dynamically distinctive (Gaertner, Dovidio, Guerra, Hehman, & Saguy, 2016). Thus, in this section we also consider the particular nature of relations, and often bias, between subgroups connected by a shared identity or mutual interdependence. Our central thesis is that the processes that shape hierarchical group relations within a society are distinctive and typically operate in ways that are subtle rather than blatant, frequently involving strategically positive forms of behaviors and indirect influence rather than direct coercion or overt actions of control, and often cloaked by system-justifying ideologies that are endorsed by disadvantaged—as well as by advantaged groups.
Bias between separate groups
Three dominant strands of research within social psychology emphasize general processes in human social cognition and motivation as key dynamics in social bias and conflict between groups: (a) social cognition and categorization, (b) social identity, and (c) social functional relationships. Whereas earlier research in psychology emphasized the role of potentially psychopathological or maladaptive processes (e.g., authoritarianism; Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) as central contributors to intergroup bias and conflict, these three themes highlight the role of normal and potentially adaptive influences as a foundation for intergroup conflict. These influences operate in potentially complementary ways to create, maintain, and often exacerbate intergroup bias and conflict.
The social cognitive perspective highlights the intra-individual processes that contribute to intergroup bias. According to the social cognitive approach, people have an inherent tendency to categorize others into groups to help manage a potentially overwhelming amount of social information they encounter and must process daily (see Hamilton, 1981). Categorizing people into groups, which often occurs rapidly and automatically, however, has important social consequences: it profoundly affects people’s perceptions, cognitions, feelings, and behavior. When people are seen as members of social categories, members of the same group are perceived to be more similar than before, and distinctions between members of different categories become exaggerated (Tajfel, 1969). Recognition of one’s membership in some groups (ingroups) but not others (outgroups) arouses further bias. For example, people spontaneously respond more positively toward ingroup than outgroup members (Otten & Moskowitz, 2000; Otten & Wentura, 1999) and are more cooperative with and trusting of ingroup than outgroup members (see Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000; Voci, 2006).
Whereas social cognitive and social categorization processes make group memberships and boundaries particularly salient and prompt differential treatment of ingroup and outgroup members, motivational processes initially identified by work on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) help explain why group conflict is so pervasive (see Abrams & Hogg, 2010). According to social identity theory, people have a basic need for positive self-esteem, and this need can be satisfied by membership in prestigious social groups. One way to achieve this end is to join social groups that are socially valued; another way is to increase the perceived worth of the social groups to which one already belongs—often by devaluing other groups (e.g., Fein & Spencer, 1997). Discrimination against members of another group is one common way to promote the positive distinctiveness of one’s group (Haslam & Reicher, 2007).
While social categorization and social identity shape intergroup orientations in ways that promote intergroup bias and conflict, research on social functional relationships illuminates the additional effects of intergroup competition on intergroup relations. In sociology as well as psychology, theories based on functional relations often point to competition as a fundamental cause of intergroup prejudice and conflict. Realistic group conflict theory (Bobo, 1999; Campbell, 1965; Sherif, 1966), for example, posits that perceived group competition for resources produces efforts to reduce the access of other groups to the resources. This process was illustrated in a classic work by Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), which demonstrated how competition increased prejudice and promoted acts of aggression between two groups of boys at a summer camp, whereas tasks that required both groups to cooperate to achieve a mutually desired goal ameliorated this conflict.
As we noted earlier, although the processes that shape intergroup relations between groups also apply to relations between groups that are interdependent or share an overarching identity, the dynamics of such relations between groups that coexist within a society are likely distinctive. We consider these dynamics in the next section.
Bias between interdependent groups
While these three psychological forces—social categorization, social identity, and intergroup competition—generally promote bias and conflict between distinct groups in which relations are often framed as zero-sum, they often operate in contexts that inhibit the open expression of bias between the groups. For example, in many cases, groups may be socially interdependent, representing subgroups within the same society (e.g., ethnic groups) or in daily relationships (e.g., people of various genders). Moreover, in such contexts of interdependence, overt bias and conflict may violate basic principles that bind the society together, and conflict between groups may undermine the society or relationship in ways that may commonly be viewed as detrimental to members of both groups.
Even when one group has more power and status within a society, overt expressions of bias, control, or competition may produce destabilizing relations that undermine the society. As French and Raven (1959) explained for interpersonal power relations and Scheepers, Spears, Doosje, and Manstead (2006) articulated in terms of power differences between groups, direct exertions of power create negative reactions among the targets of such behavior, which over time increases resistance and ultimately erodes the resources of those with more power to influence and control those with less power. Moreover, because fairness is a fundamental principle within societies (Dovidio, 2013; Tyler, 2011) that contributes to coordinated functions and stability, egalitarian social norms often develop across interdependent groups. These norms may further limit the blatant expression of prejudice. Thus, more subtle forms of social control that reinforce the hierarchical structure between groups that are interdependent within society may be preferred by members of high power, socially advantaged groups over blatant forms of bias and social control.
Like blatant bias, these forms of social control also restrict the opportunities for social advancement of members of traditionally disadvantaged groups, but in ways that may be less recognizable as unfair bias (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004). This bias is often cloaked in rationalizations or system-justifying ideologies that appear to legitimize the advantages that some groups experience over others (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Jost & Van der Toorn, 2012). Subtle bias may be particularly pernicious because it often operates without recognition or intervention and, as a consequence, tends to elicit less social resistance and may often be endorsed by members of disadvantaged groups (Kay et al., 2009), which perpetuates their lower status and social mobility.
System-justification theory (Jost, Gaucher, & Stern, 2015; Jost & Van der Toorn, 2012) illuminates the dynamics of one such hierarchy-justifying process. According to system justification theory, people not only want to hold favorable attitudes about themselves and their own groups, but they also want to hold favorable attitudes about the overarching social order (system justification). To do so, members of groups lower and higher in status often both adopt system-justifying ideologies that rationalize, and thus reinforce and perpetuate, the hierarchical structure and corresponding disparities in society. Southern Italians, who have been traditionally poorer and viewed less favorably than Northern Italians, frequently endorse negative stereotypes of their group (Jost et al., 2010). Moreover, the more dependent people feel on the society for their welfare, the more motivated they are to view the statuses of different groups within the society as legitimate and to see the way society is as the way it should be (Kay et al., 2009).
Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) proposes that broadly shared cultural ideologies operate in the form of legitimizing myths that provide the moral and intellectual justification for the maintenance of group-based inequalities (see Foels & Pratto, 2015). Examples of such group-serving ideologies are the protestant work ethic and meritocracy. The protestant work ethic asserts that humans control their own fate and emphasizes that people should work hard as the means to success (Mirels & Garrett, 1971); whereas meritocracy focuses more strongly on the value of a person’s input than on the effort expended by the person in their input. From these perspectives, people who are disadvantaged socioeconomically are often assumed to have “earned” their lower status through lack of motivation or ability (Major, Kaiser, O’Brien, & McCoy, 2007).
These mechanisms underlying subtle bias may be particularly pernicious because they maintain an imbalance of resources and opportunities between groups in society while avoiding recognition of unfair treatment and often inducing the cooperation of members of disadvantaged groups through actions that appear positive and seemingly promote harmony but have longer-term negative implications by reinforcing hierarchical relations (Jackman, 1994; Saguy, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2008; Scheepers et al., 2006). Paternalism, which involves actions that limit the freedom of members of a group with the justification that it is “for their own good,” seems to be a powerful instrument to persuade members of particular groups to accept a subordinate position in the group hierarchy, allowing the group showing paternalism dominance.
Glick and Fiske (2001a) argued that paternalism (benevolent sexism) reflects a desire to domesticate and exploit a low-status group while it serves as an ideological trend that legitimates the status inequality favoring the dominant group. Thus, the development of bonds of affection in a form of parental protection while exercising absolute authority over the low-status group shapes intergroup relations in a way that molds the low-status group’s behavior into the acceptance of stable disparities between them and the dominant group (Jackman, 1994). In gender relations, paternalism may lead to women’s acceptance of sexist ideologies, and therefore to reduce the likelihood that women will challenge the status quo by seeking greater independence and higher status. For example, Rudman and Heppen (2003) found that college women who implicitly associated male romantic partners with gentlemanly portraits had less ambitious career goals, probably because they were relying on a future protector and husband to provide for them (Glick & Fiske, 2001a). Thus, in contemporary societies unequal social relations “are driven not by hostility but by the desire to control subordinates” (Dovidio, Glick, & Rudman, 2005, p. 101). One important mechanism related to paternalism is the influence of helping behavior.
Helping and intergroup relations
Helping relations are a complex phenomenon involving multiple causes and multifaceted human interaction. Social psychological research has examined helping relations as an expression of solidarity and genuine caring for others in need (e.g., Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroeder, 2005), which reinforces individuals’ common connection (Caprara & Steca, 2005; Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner, 2006; Reicher & Haslam, 2010).
However, recent research on helping and intergroup relations also examines helping interactions as an expression of inequality in social relations (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Abad-Merino, 2017). Much of this research has been influenced by the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002; see also Nadler, 2016). This model has received considerable, converging empirical support over the past decade (e.g., Cunningham & Platow, 2007; Halabi, Dovidio, & Nadler, 2008; Nadler & Halabi, 2006; van Leeuwen, Täuber, & Sassenberg, 2011).
The intergroup helping as status relations model explains the ways that groups use intergroup helping relations as a mechanism to maintain or challenge hierarchy and social advantage. Indeed, the model, depicted in Figure 1, suggests that helping outgroup members, at least in particular ways, contributes to maintaining the ingroup’s positive distinctiveness, and that being willing to receive help from the outgroup implicates the acceptance of the receiving group’s lower status. Both cases describe a general picture of the mechanisms that underlie the perpetuation of social inequity.
The intergroup helping as status relations model. Reprinted from Nadler (2002), p.493.
By contrast, low-status group members can challenge the existing social hierarchy by refusing to seek or receive help from the outgroup. These helping dynamics are presented in Figure 1, identifying the principal factors that are involved in intergroup helping relations: (a) nature of intergroup power relations (high perceived legitimacy and stability vs. low perceived legitimacy and stability) and (b) type of help that is offered (independent vs. dependent help). Nadler’s model considers both the type of assistance offered by members of high-status groups and the responses of members of low-status groups to this help.
The intergroup helping as status relations model builds directly on the fundamental tenet of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) that a critical factor shaping intergroup relations is the nature of power relations, particularly the security of hierarchical status relations between groups. Secure status relations are perceived as stable and legitimate, whereas insecure relations are perceived as illegitimate and/or unstable. When the status hierarchy is perceived as secure, neither high-status group members nor low-status group members are motivated to challenge inequality. However, when the status hierarchy is perceived as insecure, high-status group members are motivated to preserve the status quo by strengthening the low-status group’s dependence on them (Nadler, Harpaz-Gorodeisky, & Ben-David, 2009). Low-status group members, by contrast, exhibit greater motivation to initiate social change when status relations between the groups are more insecure (Nadler & Halabi, 2006). For example, in a series of experiments, van Leeuwen and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that under conditions of social conflict between groups, participants were (a) less willing to seek help from the other group in general and (b) less willing to seek help that increased their dependency on the other group in particular.
According to the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002, 2016), these motivations are reflected in the type of assistance offered by members of high-status groups to members of low-status groups and in reciprocal responses of members of low status groups to offers of assistance by high-status groups (see Figure 1). In terms of assistance offered, Nadler (2002) distinguished between dependency-oriented and autonomy-oriented help. Dependency-oriented help offers an immediate solution to the problem and it assumes that the recipient of the help does not have the knowledge or the resources to solve the problem by him/herself. Autonomy-oriented help provides the appropriate tools to solve a problem. This kind of help preserves the independence of the recipient of the help in dealing with the problem in future. Thus, when intergroup relations are perceived as less secure, members of high-status groups are more likely to offer dependency-oriented, relative to autonomy-oriented, help to members of low-status groups.
Experimental research on the subject has demonstrated the validity of the intergroup helping as status relations model and its consideration of helping as a social mechanism to ensure the helper’s prestige and power. Nadler et al. (2009) used the term defensive helping to describe how the advantaged group can use helping strategically to defend against threats to their social identity and protect their privileged position in society. Ostensibly on the basis of a dot estimation task (but actually randomly), these researchers assigned participants to a group of “global” or “specific” perceivers. Nadler et al. (Study 1) found that participants who identified more strongly with their group were more likely to offer assistance to the other group in order to enhance the status of their group, particularly when they felt that status was threatened. In addition, in a second study, in which the stability of the status between high schools was portrayed as less stable (Nadler et al., 2009, Study 2 and Study 3), students from a high-status high school offered more patronizing assistance (help on an easy task, in Study 2) and more dependency-oriented help (in Study 3) but not empowering help (help on a difficult task, in Study 2) or autonomy-oriented help (in Study 3) to students from a low-status high school.
Because accepting assistance reinforces the subordinate status of the recipient to the donor of helping (see Nadler & Halabi, 2006), members of low-status groups tend to respond negatively to offers of assistance from high-status groups (Deelstra et al., 2003). However, these negative responses are particularly likely to occur when status relations are insecure and members of low-status groups are particularly motivated to improve the position of their group and the type of help offered is dependency-oriented.
Recent findings on intergroup helping also demonstrate that help seeking has different meanings and different implications for members of high-status groups versus members of low-status groups. Following a pattern of “a stigma-consistent behavior,” high-status group members that seek help are considered to be competent individuals who are highly motivated to overcome an obstacle, resulting in autonomy-oriented help. However, the seeking help behavior of low-status group members is viewed as lack of ability, which is a confirming stereotype of weakness that results in dependency-oriented help (Nadler & Chernyak-Hai, 2014).
Although Nadler’s (2002) intergroup helping as status relations model encompasses responses of both helpers and recipients of help in intergroup contexts, this review focuses on the helper and the type of help that is offered. That is, our emphasis is on the helper. This theoretical analysis extends previous work by integrating principles and paradigms from the intergroup helping as status relations model with research on intergroup relations between members of different ethnic and racial groups and with work on patronizing forms of sexism (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005a, 2005b; Dardenne, Dumont, & Bollier, 2007; Glick & Fiske, 1996, 2001b). In addition, the model considers individual differences that can moderate the relationship between intergroup status relations and the type of help that is offered to ethnic minorities.
Ethnicity, race, status relations, and helping
Research guided by the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002) has examined various forms of relations between racial and ethnic groups, representing different social statuses. Intergroup helping relations are complex, involving varied motives to give help and subsequent reactions to receiving help. For example, when members of the dominant group feel responsible for the disadvantaged position of the members of the low-status group, and feel guilty for it, they become involved in prosocial actions to compensate for the damage of institutionalized inequities. Iyer, Leach, and Crosby (2003) and Leach, Bilali, and Pagliaro (2015) found that White Americans who felt guilty for their supremacy position over Black Americans were more likely to help them in order to relieve feelings of collective guilt.
Consistent with the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002), the ways people help members of other groups are shaped by motives to maintain or achieve higher status for their group. Halabi et al. (2008) found, for example, that Israeli Jews offered Israeli Arabs less help, and particularly less autonomy-oriented help, than they did to other Israeli Jews across a variety of problem-solving situations. Moreover, when status relations were perceived as threatened by the educational progress made by Israeli Arabs, Israeli Jews offered more dependency-oriented, relative to autonomy-oriented, assistance to Israeli Arabs. Members of other dominant ethnic groups, residents of host countries, also dispense more dependency-oriented help than autonomy-oriented help to immigrants when they are perceived as a threat (Jackson & Esses, 2000) and give them more dependency-oriented help compared to ingroup members when the status relations are perceived as unstable (Cunningham & Platow, 2007).
Opposition to affirmative action programs that are designed to promote autonomy and independence among low-status members may be a socially acceptable expression of racial prejudice in societies where more blatant types of discrimination are seen as illegitimate (McConahay, 1986), and this objection to affirmative action programs is a way to maintain social hierarchy and ingroup advantage (Augoustinos, Ahrens, & Innes, 1994).
Because maintaining status hierarchy appears to be involved in both gender and racial/ethnic intergroup relations (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), different forms of helping behavior can also affect the processes of gender-based group hierarchy, contributing to the perpetuation of structural disparities.
Gender, status relations, and helping
The perceived legitimacy and stability of the dominance of men over women has substantially changed over the years. In the past, gender hierarchy was viewed as a stable and legitimate social phenomenon. However, women are now more prevalent in the labor force (Cotter, England, & Hermsen, 2008) and involved in social spheres beyond domestic relations and traditional “female” occupations (Cotter, Hermsen, & Vanneman, 2004, pp. 10–14; England & Folbre, 2005). Thus, men’s social advantage over women is no longer considered stable or legitimate; gender hierarchical relations have evolved into an insecure and changeable condition (Diekman, Goodfriend, & Goodwin, 2004; Nadler, 2002).
In these circumstances of recent instability of the male dominant group’s hegemony, the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002) predicts that the dominant group will defend its social advantage by reinforcing the low-status group’s dependence on them. Providing dependency-oriented help to women contributes to institutionalizing women’s chronic dependency and social disadvantage, while still being consistent with general social norms of being gracious and supportive to women in need. Compatible with research on benevolent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996; see also Lee, Fiske, & Glick, 2010), it establishes an environment of caring and support for women that endorses the valuable “feminine” qualities while their social roles remain restricted compared to those of men.
Moreover, Jackman (1994) and Biernat and Vescio (2002) showed that women also supported paternalistic biases against women. In particular, Biernat and Vescio (2002) found that women, as much as men, engaged in patronizing forms of praise while still discriminating against competent women. Also, in a series of studies, Kay et al. (2009) demonstrated that people’s motivations to justify and preserve the status quo, which are equally strong for women and men, lead women to support policies and take actions that ultimately perpetuate gender inequality. Specifically, Kay et al. (2009) found that women who felt dependent on the social system were as likely as men to support the status quo rather than endorse affirmative action policies that would benefit the social advancement of women. Furthermore, after being presented with information that women were underrepresented in politics or in business, under conditions designed to elicit greater system justification needs, participants of both genders engaged in actions that would reinforce the underrepresentation of women in these domains (e.g., rating a “deviating” woman’s competence and likeability poorly). Thus, because of prevalent motivations for system justification (Jost et al., 2004; Jost & Van der Toorn, 2012) and to preserve the status quo (Kay et al., 2009), both men and women would support women who displayed prosocial characteristics in a seemingly positive way through dependency-oriented helping. This pattern would maintain and reinforce the traditional gender hierarchy (Vescio, Gervais, Snyder, & Hoover, 2005).
Individual differences, status relations, and helping
Individual differences play a general role in helping behavior. People who are higher in empathy and in feelings of efficacy are typically more helpful (Dovidio et al., 2006). However, with respect to helping as a way to establish or attain status (Nadler, 2002), the two most influential individual differences have been ingroup identification and Social Dominance Orientation, which represents individual differences in support of group-based hierarchy ideologies. Ingroup identification refers to the degree to which a group membership is a valued and central element in one’s identity (Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999; Leach, Mosquera, Vliek, & Hirt, 2010). Individuals with a higher level of ingroup identification are more likely to use helping relations as a way to preserve or promote their group’s social position. Nadler and Halabi (2006) found that high identifiers were less willing to accept help from the high-status outgroup than low identifiers, and that this reaction was more pronounced when status relations were perceived as unstable and help was dependency-oriented.
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) also systematically influences the ways people choose to help members of another group. In general, because people higher in SDO tend to see intergroup relations as more zero-sum and are motivated to support their group’s status, they tend to give less autonomy-oriented relative to dependency-oriented help across group lines. Higher SDO Canadians were less likely to give autonomy-oriented forms of help to immigrants (Jackson & Esses, 2000) and, similarly, higher SDO Israeli Jews were less likely to support giving autonomy-oriented help to Israeli Arabs (Halabi et al., 2008).
Intergroup prejudices are also a potentially important, but less examined, individual difference within the context of Nadler’s (2002) model. Nevertheless, the limited evidence is supportive of the model. Abad-Merino, Newheiser, Dovidio, Tabernero, and González (2013) investigated the relation between prejudice against Latinos and the degree to which people offer autonomy-oriented relative to dependency-oriented assistance in terms of social policies. These researchers found that participants higher in prejudice against Latinos were less likely to offer autonomy-oriented relative to dependency-oriented help specifically to a Latina woman, distinctive from their response to an African American or White woman. These group-specific prejudices affect the way subtle bias influences helping toward the targets of prejudice in ways above and beyond general intergroup orientations (assessed by SDO). Opposition to affirmative action programs that are designed to promote autonomy and independence among members of low-status groups may be a socially acceptable expression of racial prejudice in societies where more blatant discrimination is deemed illegitimate (McConahay, 1986). This objection to affirmative action programs that provide autonomy-oriented help may thus be a way to maintain social hierarchy and ingroup advantage (Augoustinos et al., 1994). The link between dependency-oriented help and the promotion of chronic dependency is a vicious cycle that has been examined in the educational field. D’Errico, Leone, and Mastrovito (2011) found that children in the low-status group to behave less autonomously than Italian children in their interactions with teachers while solving a puzzle task, and it subsequently reinforced their lower status and potentially contributed to chronic dependency.
Summary and implications
Whereas research on intergroup bias has traditionally focused on direct and overtly negative manifestations, the objective of the current review of the literature was to illuminate how ostensibly prosocial behavior can subtly shape intergroup relations to perpetuate inequitable outcomes between groups. Specifically, our examination, drawing on the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002), focused on how subtle forms of bias related to prosocial behavior operate in racial and ethnic relations. We extended this framework by integrating it with theoretical perspectives on paternalism and benevolent sexism in gender relations. These subtle biases are most likely to operate to enhance social control over racial/ethnic minorities and women in a climate in which there is widespread support for egalitarian values.
Our review and analysis suggests at least two novel, concrete directions for future research. First, most current measures of prejudice focus on prejudice as antipathy and/or overt expressions of support for hierarchical relations between groups (e.g., SDO). We propose that hostile forms of prejudice may be supplanted in current societies by more sophisticated subtle forms of bias. As a consequence, new measures of prejudice may need to be developed to capture these subtle, and potentially changing, forms of bias to further illuminate the ways seemingly positive actions maintain group hierarchy and perpetuate unfair advantages and disadvantages to groups and their members. Current measures of symbolic racism (Henry & Sears, 2002), modern sexism (Swim, Aikin, Hall, & Hunter, 1995), and benevolent and hostile sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996, 2001b) capture many elements of subtle bias, but it may be possible to create a measure of subtle bias that, like SDO, may be applicable across a range of biases based on race, ethnicity, and gender that may share the function of maintaining hierarchy involving socially or legally protected groups through prosocial actions.
Second, future research might consider further the conditions that promote benevolent versus hostile expressions to maintain and reinforce intergroup hierarchy. For example, intergroup biases may be more direct and overtly negative when groups are seen as distinct and potentially competitive. Perceiving groups as potentially competitors in zero-sum relationships arouses intergroup threat (Esses, Dovidio, Jackson, & Armstrong, 2001) that justifies direct exploitation of the other group (Insko et al., 2001; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). By contrast, when groups perceive themselves as interdependent within a larger community and as sharing a common identity, they are more sensitive to issues of procedural fairness (Tyler & Blader, 2003) and recognize the potential for reactance that can produce collective action by members of socially disadvantaged groups (van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008), which threatens the stability of the status quo (Scheepers et al., 2006). Thus, under conditions of such interdependence, prosocial mechanisms for social control such as those identified in Nadler’s (2002) model, may operate more effectively.
In conclusion, prosocial as well as antisocial behavior can, when used strategically, represent a powerful mechanism for social control. These processes not only have implications for relatively spontaneous behaviors between individuals from different groups, as identified in the intergroup helping as status relations model (Nadler, 2002), but also for support for social policies that can enhance the autonomy or dependency of members of lower-status groups and affect groups collectively (Jackson & Esses, 2000). Understanding why, how, and when people and groups use ostensibly prosocial behavior as a mechanism for social control can draw attention to subtle processes that promote inequity and suggest new interventions for achieving truly fair and just societies.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.