What drives the perceived prejudice asymmetry among advantaged group members? The mediating role of social group power and moral obligations

Abstract

AbstractThe present study investigated the psychological foundations of the perceived prejudice asymmetry, that is, the observation that members of privileged groups are more likely to consider ‘downward’ bias—advantaged group members displaying ambiguous intolerant behaviour towards disadvantaged groups—as instances of prejudice than ‘upward’ bias—disadvantaged group members behaving negatively towards advantaged groups. Specifically, we tested whether a higher moral obligations account could explain these divergent judgements of prejudice. We hypothesised that advantaged witnesses implicitly ascribe higher social power—and hence, elevated moral obligations—to advantaged (compared to disadvantaged) groups. The resulting differential morality judgements, in turn, lead to divergent attributions of prejudice. Five experiments (total N = 1063) provided converging evidence for our predictions, although we also obtained evidence for a reverse causal pathway in which perceived prejudice determines morality judgements. Challenges for other accounts of the perceived prejudice asymmetry are discussed.