Right before Our Eyes: The Failure to Recognize Non-Prototypical Forms of Prejudice

Abstract

Two studies examined accessibility as the key construct in explaining people’s tendency to recognize prototypical forms of prejudice more than non-prototypical forms. Pilot studies suggested that for the present population, race and sex were highly accessible and age and weight were less accessible forms of prejudice. Both studies established that for the more accessible forms of prejudice, participants were more likely to label discriminatory actions as prejudice and were more likely to rate such prejudice as more severe than in cases of less accessible forms of prejudice. Study 1 indicated that explicitly priming participants to look for prejudice increased detection for less accessible forms of prejudice only. Increasing cognitive processing requirements in Study 2 significantly decreased participants’ ability to detect prejudice and this was most noticeable in cases of non-prototypical discrimination. The data support the notions that prototypical prejudice is more likely to be detected than non-prototypical prejudice and that accessibility is an important mediator of prejudice perception. The data are more equivocal regarding whether the perception of prototypical prejudice is an automatic process.