Study Shows Anger Can Create Prejudice

Feb. 19 -- All it takes is a feeling of anger to make us instantly prejudiced against people who are not members of our own social group, new research shows. We can create prejudice "out of thin air."

The other person doesn't have to do anything to us to induce that prejudice. We don't have to know who that person is, or anything about him or her, except for the fact that he or she is in some way different from ourselves.

Anger, perhaps against a friend over a spat earlier in the day, or at another motorist who cut us off on the way home, makes us more likely to react negatively towards someone who is not part of our inner circle.

That prejudice, according to researchers, is created spontaneously because our brains are predisposed to be angry at anything that might threaten us, and threats most often come from sources outside our inner circle. Thus if you're angry, over just about anything, and have some immediate conflict with someone from another culture, or race, or religion, you're more likely to deal with that person in a prejudicial way.

Wide Implications

The findings, according to the researchers, have implications for such fields as law enforcement and national security where decisions must sometimes be made instantly in the face of great danger.

"To our knowledge, the present findings stand as the first evidence that specific emotions are capable of shaping people's automatic evaluations toward social groups," psychology professors David DeSteno of Northeastern University in Boston and Nilanjana Dasgupta of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, say in their study published in the May issue of Psychological Science.

"We believe that anger, due to its basic association with intergroup competition and conflict, evoked a psychological readiness to evaluate outgroups (or groups that are different from whatever group we belong to,) thus creating an automatic prejudice against the outgroup from thin air," the researchers conclude.