Exploring the psychology of the lesser privileged
Dr. Navin Kumar
Associate professor
Psychology
Bhim Rao Ambedkar college, Delhi University
E-mail- navinbrac@yahoo.co.in
Individual is genotype of social life and social field which acts upon him/her is phenotype.
Social conduct is a product of inter individual uniformities or dissimilarity which is algebra of individuals cognition and motivation.
Man as Rule-learning animal (Harre and peters) that leads to appropriateness of conduct to all social situations.
Equity theory of deprivation is concerned with individual’s relations with other individuals (berkowitz & walter 1976).
Rokeach (1966) theory of prejudice is based on inter-individual perceptions of belief similarity.
Bruner & Rodrigues (1953) described the notion of “Relative increase in over estimation” guided by interest.
Perception of accentuation in a perceived relationship is also an effect of inter-serial relationship.
Categorization is an important dimension of discrimination which is result of an interaction between information obtained from outside and its active internationalization by the person.
Attribution of differences is a fundamental feature of this internationalization.
Bruner (1957) described that most perceptual activities are perceived in terms of categories.
Why categorization? It helps us to perceive in simplicity and group differences of nationality, race, skin, color, height is transmuted to one.
The idea of notions about certain groups and autonomy of cognitive functioning in altitudes towards other groups is governed by learning of evaluations. (Preferences)
Man appears as exploring and rational animal from evolutionary point of view.
Discrimination or co-operative relations arise by the logic of the situations.
All port in his book prejudice describe five cognitive functions of stereotypes which is also a basis for discrimination
It forms large classes and clusters for guiding our daily adjustments
Categorization assimilates
Category enables us quickly to identify a defect or class of defects.
The category saturates all that it contains with same ideational and emotional flavor.
Categories may be or may not be rational.
Discrimination is also a result of certain generalizations reached by individuals.
Generalizations are both cognitive and social.
Cognitive is applied in process of categorization and social as it is shared by large scale social group or entities.
An interaction between contextual structuring and their role in the adaptation of individuals to social environments result in stereotypes and discrimination.
Discrimination is governed in terms of selecting, accentuating and interpreting the information in a biased or exaggerated manner.
Value differences play an important role in social categorization.
Extreme events or extreme individuals are more accessible to memory retrieval than are more average instances.
The concept of “illusory correlations” introduced by chapman (1967) is the process of report by observers of a correlation between two classes of events which in reality are-
a- Not correlated b- correlated to a lesser extent than reported.
Discrimination is not ‘out there’ rather it is constructed by in individuals by the social contexts in which they live.
Discrimination has cognitive (knowledge) evaluative (membership in a group may have positive or negative value connotations) and an emotional content (love/hatred, like/dislike).
The consensus about “who is who” is shared by many in a group socially categorized.
In the process of discrimination in-group and out-group social behavior is adopted.
Inter-personal is determined by personal relationships between the individuals on basis of individual characteristics and in case of inter-group behavior of two or more persons is determined by their membership of different social groups.
Discrimination may lead to social mobility for social movements which is aimed at promoting or resisting change in society at large.
Relative deprivation – (Gurr, 1970) in his book why men rebel defined relative deprivation as actor’s perception of discrepancy between their value expectations and value capabilities.
Value expectations are the goods and conditions they think they are capable of getting and keeping.
Deprivation is driven by social comparison and theory of reference groups.
Classic paper on aspiration level written by Chapman and Volkman (1939) ‘whatever change in aspiration level is induced by a change in the frame of reference may have enormous social consequences.
The new judgment may serve as catalyst for major social changes in which groups revise their ambitions and perhaps their status.
The failure of expectancies can have two possible dimensions personal & interpersonal.
The people may be deprived but not frustrated as it also depends on their realization of obtaining those hopes.
Donziger: the awareness of common group fate determined by race focused the school boy’s aspirations from individual goals of comparative success and towards the development of political ideologies expressed in terms of their group aspirations.
South Africa represents an extreme example of groups whose members are not able to move individually.
How discriminated groups construe their social outcomes-
Ego defensive perspective (Jost & Banaji, 1994)- Member of discriminated groups construe their social outcomes in ways that will enable them to buffer their personal or social self-esteem from threat.
System justification perspective-
Discriminated people have tendency to perceive that status quo as just or legitimate and they start perceiving their social outcome in ways that justify and legitimize their disadvantaged position.
Social ideologies, attitudes, beliefs and values that are consensually held within society often help to sustain the perception of social system as just and fair.
Because of their impact on construal processes legitimacy appraisals are thought to influence affective reactions to disadvantage such as resentment, discontent and anger.
Discriminated group members may reflect a spectrum of bhehavior-
Inaction
Individual normative actions socially accepted behavior directed at improving personal status.
Individual non-normative action-such as criminal behavior
Collective non-normative actions.
Behavioral framework may involve feelings of injustice, resignation, frustration, anger.
Gramsci’s (1947/71) central concept is hegemony: is a mix of co-ercive repression and control of ideological leadership and persuasion.
Hence, consent the balance between them varying historically.
Consent is not automatic rather it is produced through a machinery of ideological domination.
The relationship between base and super structure (i.e. sates civil society) is subtle and complex.
The state apparatus (of govt. courts, police) and civil society (schools, media, church) together constitutes the mechanism of engineering consent through producing and transmitting ideas.
Like Machiavelli Marx & Gramsci Habermas assumes that a façade of legitimacy is a functional prerequisite of a state social order.
The contradiction between liberal ideology and monopoly capitalism causes a deficit in legitimacy.
Beliefs once externalized, because they are reality, and therefore in the nature of things are capable of justifying action in accord with belief (Spears etal).
Effects of reality considerations on the acceptance of stereotypes-
Stigma individuals can have their social identity, their humanity and their membership in the group questioned by others.
They can be devalued, have their social identity spoiled on be treated as if they were flawed (Jones Etal 1984).
Crockers Etal suggest “Stigma is a devaluing social identity (p-505) linked to the groups to which person belongs.
The author goes on to agree that people of higher status may stigmatize those of lower status to justify their advantage (p-509).
Political sociologists and psychologists have long-argued that social ideologists attitudes, beliefs and values that held consensually within society often help to sustain the perception of social system as just and fair and justify the hierarchical and unequal relationships among groups in society.
The legitimizing ideologies tendency lead to members of disadvantaged groups to construe their social outcome in ways that justify and legitimize their disadvantaged portion; system legitimizing ideologies [such as the belief that status system is permeable] substantiate the inferiority of low status groups and superiority of high status groups.
System justification theories indicate the potential vulnerability of the self-esteem of members of socially deprived groups of social devaluations.
In a research Crocker etal (1993) found that overweight women who were rejected as dating attributed the rejection to their weight, but not the biases of male evaluations. The term “Queen Bee syndrome” was coined to describe the phenomenon that women who have been successful in male dominated environments are at times particularly likely to oppose women’s movement.
Tokenism, Ambiguity and the tolerance of injustice:
Tokenism is an intergroup context in which boundaries between the advantaged and disadvantaged are not entirely closed, but where there are severe restrictions on access to advantaged positions on the basis of group membership.
The social identity theory [Tajfel & Turner] presents boundary permeability – the perceived possibility of individual upward mobility as primary determinant of disadvantaged group behavior.
Lesser privileged group member’s discriminatory social structure is primarily dependent on perception, emotional reactions and their actions. This lesser privileged discriminatory social structure may lead to inaction, individual normative actions, individual non-normative actions such criminal behavior, collective normative & non-normative actions such as protests and strikes. The dynamics of everyday life activities result into long-term indicators of self-efficacy, happiness or complexity.
The distinction between lesser privileged and the privileged social groups needs to be understood in the micro-sociology of our living of everyday life as process reality rather than product reality. In education field technology and exposure play a vital role and the lesser privileged are left behind in the modern life clock due to lack of these factors. Categorization is an important feature of group process which is result of an interaction between the information obtained from outside and its active internal organization by human beings. Categorization helps us to perceive in terms of simplicity and group differences are transmuted to one and even new differences are created which does not exist at all.
Allporet described stereotypes in terms of selecting, accentuating and interpreting the information obtained from environment which increases the gap between lesser privileged and the privileged. It is an exaggerated belief associated with a category.
Impressions of group of people are also affected by the way in which data are organized in memory.
Illusory correlations are made about people on the basis of class affiliation which in reality are not correlated or are correlated to a lesser extent.
The consensus about who is who is shared by many by the group socially categorized. Social reality is not out there rather it is constructed by individuals through their inter-individual behavior which in turn becomes intergroup behavior.
Purely interpersonal behaviors are also affected by membership of social groups or categories.
Social mobility initiated through education and awareness consists of a subjective structuring of a social system in which permeability and flexibility assumptions and free movement of one group to another takes place.
Gurr in his book why Men rebel defined relative deprivation as the actor’s perception of discrepancy between their value expectations and value capabilities. Education can intensify the hopes change in the aspiration level and frame of reference in which lesser privileged can revise their ambitions and perhaps their status for equitable life.
Qualitative research methods of ethno methodology in which contribution of interaction and context both are important, discursive psychology- everyday conversations, interpretive repertoires descriptions, images and metaphors can become building blocks for creating positive social actions.
Knowledge of equitable social order can vastly improve the way we organize our experiential world. Jerome Bruner proposed folk-psychology every account of why people act as they do.
Folk-beliefs are carried within the mind as narratives that are we understand others by thinking in narratives. Indeed the very shape of our lives the rough and perpetually changing draft of our autobiography that we carry in our minds is understandable to ourselves and to others only by virtue of [our] cultural system of interpretation. Thomas Kuhn [1962] historian of science rightly emphasized the difference what researchers are supposed to do and what they actually do our academics should allow more space for subjective interpretations.
Structural conditions for status beliefs
Since max Weber social theorists have observed that development of structural inequality between social groups is a precondition for the development of status beliefs about the groups. A structural inequality is an inequality in the distribution of a valued resource such as wealth, information technology that brings social power.
Status construction theory begins by assuming that a structural inequality has developed between the distribution of a valued resource and a cognitively recognized distinction among the population about which there is not yet any consensual evaluation.
Paternalistic prejudice reflects a desire to domesticate and exploit a low status group.
The most extreme expressions of paternalistic prejudice is slavery. This kind of prejudice is couched as benevolent by the dominant group and can be accompanied by affection and emotional closeness with low status group members (Jackman, 1994). Paternalistic affection nevertheless co exists with a lack of respect for the subordinate group, which is stereotyped as incompetent and discrimination (often disguised as benevolent concern) aimed at keeping the lower status group safely “in its place”. For example many affluent and higher caste children are raised by lower caste aayas whom they develop lose emotional and physical relation but strict role segregation maintain status differences. In the case of ‘benevolent sexism’ – a set of beliefs that are subjectively benevolent because they idealize women’s warmth, but sexist in that they cast women as subordinates in need of paternalistic protection is a cross cultural phenomena . Legitimizing the system is an ambivalent manner is crucial for maintenance of status discriminations.
This ambivalent attitude of hostile and benevolent sexism helps to maintain gender discrimination.
In an individual base social hierarchy individuals enjoy power, prestige and wealth by virtue of their own valued characteristics whereas in group based hierarchies individuals enjoy power prestige and privilege by virtues of their membership in ascribed social groups such as sex, age, race, caste, class and soon orientation.
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is an attempt at identifying the specific processes responsible for the creation, maintenance and recreation of group level social hierarchies and the manner in which these processes affect on another (sidanius and pratto 1999).
Social dominance theory suggests that legitimizing ideologies rationalize group level social inequality (hierarchy enhancing legitimizing myths) and also serving to justify greater group based social equality (i.e. hierarchy attenuating legitimizing myths).
Finally SDO indicates the group based social hierarchies are produced and maintained social hierarchies are produced and maintained by various forms of behavioral asymmetry (i.e. by systematic behavioral differences between dominants and subordinates).
Recent studies also support the hypotheses that stereotypes of group warmth and competence are predictable from social structural relations between groups, with status determining ascriptions of warmth to groups. These trait attributions are particularly effective in legitimizing myths of difference between lesser privileged and the privileged.
It becomes difficult for the lesser privileged to refute the taxonomy of prejudice existing in a given socio cultural context.
Social systems impose themselves through the medium of norms that that requires justification (Habermas).
The potential psychological conflict and challenges a professionally successful women have to face has been aptly described by Valian(1988p20)
The potential psychological conflict and challenges a professionally successful women have to face has been aptly described by Valian(1988p20)
A man’s success and Masculinity reinforce each other. If a woman is professionally, successful, she must see herself as having masculine traits- and thereby run the risk mof seeming unfeminine to her and others or as having compensated in some way through luck or extraordinary effort for a lack of masculine characteristics. Unlike a successful man, a woman has to loose something from success- her gender identity or belief in herself of the capabilities. Conversely failure and feminity reinforce each other-For men then, there is complete congruence between professional goals and the need to feel like like a good example of their gender; for women there is a potential conflict. The same applies to other disadvantaged groups..
Studies also demonstrate that low status groups members may opt to misidentify with at least certain attributes that they agree are the characteristic of their own group and to perceive themselves as more similar to the out group.
Under the umbrella of research of social identity, social dominance and system justification perspective people acquire strong motives to legitimize the self. Legitimize the group and social system.
Naive realism and the search for social change and perceived legitimacy:-
The social cognitive approach to group conflict has assumed that both sides in social conflicts are equally prone to social misperception.
Asch (1952) and Ichheiser (1970) proposed that opposing partisans follow a straight inferential path to reach conclusions about their opponent’s attitudes and preferences, this process is referred to as “naive realism” [Robinson, Keltner, Ward, Ross 1995]
Theories of naive realism have three tenets. First, people assume that they see the world objectively, thereby underestimating the subjective forces that shape their own perception and judgment (Asch, 1952). Second people assume that others leave their judgments on this same “objective” reality a projective tendency known as the “false consensus effect” (Ross, Green and House 1977).Third, Partisans attribute the origins of judgments that deviate from their own, such as those of opposing groups, to ideological bias.
It is also a complexity of the social phenomena of the lesser privileged groups that so many deprived individuals do not protest their status. Behavioral manifestations of resentment are lacking at certain social arrangements which are highly unequal in terms of distribution of resources.
Perceptions of deservingness are central to the feeling of resentment. Self-blame or believing that one is responsible for causing one’s plight reduces feelings of entitlement and thereby reduces resentment about deprivation.
[Bernstein and Crosby, (1980) Bulman and Wartman, (1977)]
It is also the imagination, vision and the thinking of deprived individuals thinking of the ways that better outcome could have occurred, they are likely to feel resentful. It is also important to highlight the term motivation to believe that the world is a just and fair place, tendency for lesser privileged to have relatively little personal experience with discrimination and social undesirability of bing resentful add to the tolerance of injustice.
Lerner (1970, 1977) proposed that people want to believe that the world is fair. In his just world theory, lerner suggested that we are all motivated to believe that the world is just, because believing otherwise would imply hat we might be treated unfairly ourselves. Lerner’s theory is best known for its application to few perceivers respond to the suffering of other people. Studies indicate that whwen compensation to victims character’s either blaming them for their suffering or concluding that they are bad people who deserve to suffer.
(Lerner 1980, Lerner and Miller 1978).
This belief in a just world also predicts the tolerance and it becomes an important determinant of low rates of protest and acceptance of low status quo.
References:-
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