520 Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination
exonerated from charges of using excessive force with a
Black defendant). Both explicit and implicit measures pre-
dicted attributions of responsibility for the causes of rioting
following the Rodney King verdict. Thus, implicit attitude
measures add an important, new, and separate dimension to
the conceptual and methodological toolbox that psycholo-
gists have to assess prejudice.
To summarize, both automatic and controlled cognitive
processing play an important role in the social psychology of
bigotry. Racial stimuli presented below or just above the
threshold of awareness operate as primes that influence
thinking and behavior by White persons toward members of
a stereotyped group such as Blacks. If the racial prime
includes only reference to the social category, automatic acti-
vation will activate stronger stereotypes among the more
highly prejudiced Whites than among the less prejudiced. If
the racial prime includes both categorical reference as well as
stereotypic trait information, differences on dependent mea-
sures (e.g., impression formation) between participants dif-
fering in levels of prejudice by Whites will usually no longer
be apparent.
An important development for automatic processing tech-
niques has been their utilization for assessing prejudice,
avoiding problems with standard attitude measures of preju-
dice such as social desirability, and deliberately masking
one’s negative feelings toward specific groups. These tech-
niques, such as the priming methodology as well as the IAT,
will undoubtedly be increasingly utilized to assess individu-
als’ nonconscious prejudices, with the resulting measures
being especially helpful in predicting behaviors and cogni-
tions toward out-group members that an individual cannot
easily monitor and censor.
Integrative Approaches
The rubric of integrative approaches includes perspectives on
prejudice that include the insights of multiple theoretical
viewpoints concerning the psychology of bigotry that their
advocates have organized into a single, coherent, explanatory
framework. By incorporating multiple perspectives, each in-
tegrative approach becomes a broad, comprehensive expla-
nation of prejudice. Social dominance theory, integrated
threat theory, and a multicomponent approach to intergroup
attitudes exemplify integrative approaches to prejudice.
Social Dominance Theory
Social dominance theory (SDT) assumes that societies are
structured as group-based social hierarchies, with one or a
small number of dominant or hegemonic groups at the top
of the social structure and at least one subordinate group
below them (Sidanius, Levin, Rabinowitz, & Federico, 1999;
Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). In general, dominant group mem-
bers disproportionately enjoy society’s goods and benefits
(i.e., wealth, status, and power), whereas subordinate group
members suffer a disproportionate share of society’s mis-
eries and inequities (i.e., poverty, low prestige, and relative
powerlessness).
In group-based social hierarchies, individual’s stations in
life are determined largely by their membership in socially
constructed groups defined by race, gender, age, religion, so-
cial class, and so on. Group-based hierarchies are assumed
to be highly stable, often reflecting consensus as to which
groups are dominant and subordinate, respectively. For ex-
ample, perceived social standing of U.S. ethnic groups in
1964 and later in 1989 correlated almost perfectly across
the quarter century (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). SDT defines
three types of social stratification systems: an age system
where adults and older individuals command more resources
and power than the younger, a gender system in which men
possess greater status and power than women, and an arbi-
trary set system in which socially constructed, arbitrarily de-
fined categories (e.g., races, occupations, social classes,
nationalities) enjoy disproportionately more status and power
over other socially constructed categories. SDT concentrates
especially on gender and arbitrary set systems of group-based
hierarchy.
Whereas age and gender systems of group hierarchy are
assumed by SDT to be universal across human societies,
arbitrary set hierarchies differ in several regards. First, they
display more definitional fluidity across time period and
countries. Sidanius and Pratto (1999), the principal architects
of SDT, claimed that arbitrary set hierarchies emerge only in
societies that produce an economic surplus. Arbitrary set
hierarchies tend to be dynastic with social status passing on
to one’s children. Finally, arbitrary set hierarchies are pre-
sumably maintained more by terror, violence, and brutality
than by age- and gender-based hierarchies.
Three basic assumptions of SDT are as follows: (a) Most
intergroup conflict and oppression reflect a predisposition
toward forming group-based social hierarchy; (b) social
systems are prone to hierarchy-enhancing (HE) forces
pushing toward greater inequality, and opposing effects of
hierarchy-attenuating (HA) forces toward greater equality;
and (c) conflict between HE and HA forces produces rela-
tively stable social systems.
From these assumptions SDT concerns itself with the
mechanisms that contribute to group-based social hierarchy
and with how hierarchies affect these mechanisms. Behav-
ioral asymmetry is one mechanism. The notion of behavioral