What We Know Now About Bias and Intergroup Conflict, the Problem of the Century
Abstract
After nearly a century's study, what do psychologists now know about intergroup bias and conflict? Most people reveal unconscious, subtle biases, which are relatively automatic, cool, indirect, ambiguous, and ambivalent. Subtle biases underlie ordinary discrimination: comfort with one's own in–group, plus exclusion and avoidance of out–groups. Such biases result from internal conflict between cultural ideals and cultural biases. A small minority of people, extremists, do harbor blatant biases that are more conscious, hot, direct, and unambiguous. Blatant biases underlie aggression, including hate crimes. Such biases result from perceived intergroup conflict over economics and values, in a world perceived to be hierarchical and dangerous. Reduction of both subtle and blatant bias results from education, economic opportunity, and constructive intergroup contact.
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Whether people perceive another as a partner on the same team (i.e., as part of the same group, the ingroup) or as a member of a different group (outgroup) has profound implications on their reactions to the other.
“Whether people perceive another as a partner on the “same team” (i.e., as part of the same group, the “ingroup”) or as a member of a different groups (“outgroup”) has profound implications on their reactions to the other.42,98–101”
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- Authors
- Fiske, S. T.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Fiske, Susan T.
- ORCID
- Fiske, Susan T.
- Venue
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2002-08
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 123-128
- ISSN
- 0963-7214 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8721
- OpenAlex
- W2097087195
- Cited by
- 384
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 43.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Current Directions in Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
- Keywords
- intergroup bias, intergroup conflict, discrimination, in-group favoritism, cultural ideals, extremism, hate crimes, aggression, intergroup contact, prejudice reduction, economic opportunities
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