The Bogus Pipeline

1398 Words6 Pages
Prejudice can be defined as being an attitude, such as dislike towards a given minority. The following essay aims to outline and evaluate research studies into prejudice. A piece of research done by Sigall and Page (1971, cited in Baron and Byrne, 2003, pg 203) looked at an approach known as the ‘bogus pipeline’. The aim of this research was to look at social pressure and whether attitudes towards minority groups are indeed affected by this. Prejudice is mostly assessed through self- report questionnaires, responses to questionnaires are influenced by social desirability Bias, which is the tendency to give socially approved answers, (Eyesnck, 2000). Sigall and Page designed a procedure to look whether the responses to questionnaires are…show more content…
A well documented piece of research done by Elliott (1977 cited in Gross et al. 2004 pg 204) aimed to prove this. She carried out an investigation in her classroom with 9 year old students where she was teaching. The investigation was carried out over several days. On the first day she told her students that brown- eyed people were better than blue- eyed people. The blue eyed people were then given rings to wear around their necks. In a short time the brown eyed pupils were achieving better marks that the blue-eyed students. The brown eyed-students were also making derogatory statements about the blue-eyed pupils. The following day she reversed the situation and found that a similar scenario occurred but with the blue-eyed pupils achieving better marks than the brow-eyed pupils. In a follow up to the investigation ten years later, Elliott found that the experience had made the participants more tolerant to differences between groups and that they were opposed to prejudice. The implications of Elliot’s informal study were investigated by Weiner and Wright (1973, cited in Eysenck, 2002 pg 194), by a similar study. They also found that exposing children to prejudice in a protected environment helped them to understand it and therefore reduced it. However, both the investigations were carried out in school environments…show more content…
Brown, R. (1965) Social Psychology, London: Collier McMillan Baron, R. A. & Byrne, D. (1991) Social psychology: Understanding human interaction (6th Edn). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Elliott, J. (1977)’The power and pathology of prejudice’ in P.G. Zimbardo and F.L Ruch, Psychology and Life (9th edn), Diamond printing, Gelenview, IL:Scott, Forseman. Jones, E.E & Sigall, H (1971) 'The Bogus Pipeline: A New paragim for measuring affect and attitude', Psychological Bulletin, 76, pp. 349-364. Pettigrew T.F. (1959). Regional differences in anti-Negro prejudice. Journal of Abnormal and Social psychology, 59, 28-56. Weiner, M. J & Wright F.E (1973) affects of underlying arbitory discrimination upon subsequent attitudes, towards a minority group. Journal of experimental social psychology 3, 94-102 Bibliography Cardwell, M, Clark, L & Meldrum, C (2004) Pyschology. 3rd edn. Hammmersmith: HarperCollins Publishers LTD. Eyesnck, M (2000) Psychology A Student's Handbook, East Sussex: Psychology Press LTD. Eysenck, M (2002) Simply Psychology. 2nd edn. East Sussex: Psychology Press

More about The Bogus Pipeline

Open Document