Measures of Stereotyping and Prejudice: Barometers of Bias (original) (raw)

2014, Measures of Personality & Social Psychological Constructs

Social psychologists have measured racial and ethnic bias since the field’s origins (Fiske, 1998), assessing inter- group social distance (Bogardus, 1927) and stereotype contents (Katz & Braly, 1933). More specific measures soon followed. Sparked by the Holocaust, the Authoritarian Personality predicted anti-Semitism and other ethnocentrism (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), while surveys after World War II through the present have reported racial and ethnic attitudes (for reviews, see Kinder & Schuman, 2004; Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1985). With the rise of the civil rights movement, racial attitudes became more complicated than self-reports could always detect, so nonverbal indicators became useful (Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980). Confronting veiled forms of prejudice informed work on policy-oriented symbolic and modern racism (McConahay & Hough, 1976; Sears & Kinder, 1971). Modern forms pick up this thread; each measure best fits its sociocultural period. An earlier version of this volume (Robinson, Shaver, & Wrightsman, 1999) covered these new racisms (Biernat & Crandall, 1999), and another early version covered prior and then-current indicators of authoritarianism and related ethnocentrism con- structs (Christie, 1991; Robinson, Shaver, & Wrightsman, 1991). This review focuses on indirect, modern forms of racism and ethnocentrism, as well as other indirect forms of intergroup bias. Nonracial biases have been slower to elicit focused measures. Gender bias research began in earnest only after the 1970’s women’s movement, when gender-role measures emerged (Lenney, 1991). Early sexism measures were direct, assessing overt anti-female biases. Subsequently, measures of ageism, sexual-orientation prejudice, and classism have been even slower to develop, when each reaches public and scientific consciousness. This review covers indirect, modern forms of sexism and ageism.