PSYCH 614 Week 5 Groups, Prejudice and Intergroup Relations Example

Two Groups in One Welding Cohort: Prejudice Toward Returning Citizens, Intergroup Contact and Team Design at a Workforce Center

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/614: Social Psychology

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The workforce center, its welding cohort and the participants are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Groups shape how people think, feel and act, and the boundaries between groups can produce prejudice even among people with shared goals. This paper applies research on group processes and intergroup relations to a division that formed within a training cohort at my workforce center.

The Cohort

Our center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, runs a twelve-week welding certification in partnership with a local community college. The current cohort has eighteen participants. Seven are enrolled through a reentry program for people recently released from state prison, which pays their tuition and provides case management. The other eleven came through general enrollment.

By the third week, the instructor reported a problem. The two groups sat on opposite sides of the shop, general participants avoided pairing with reentry participants for practice welds and several made remarks about "the program guys." One instructor joked about locking up the tools. Two reentry participants told their case manager they felt watched and considered quitting. Employers were scheduled to visit the shop in week eight to meet potential hires, and the division would be visible.

Social Identity and the Formation of Groups

Social identity theory, from Tajfel and Turner, holds that the groups we belong to become part of who we think we are, so we want those groups to look good, and one easy way is to tilt in their favor. Even arbitrary categories can produce ingroup favoritism. In the cohort, the categories were not arbitrary: they were visible from the first day, when reentry participants arrived together with a case manager and wore ankle monitors in some cases. That visibility made "reentry" versus "regular" the most salient way to divide the group.

Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination

Stereotypes are beliefs about a group, prejudice is a negative attitude toward its members and discrimination is behavior that treats them unfairly. In the cohort, stereotypes that people with records are dangerous or untrustworthy fed prejudice, expressed as avoidance and jokes, and discrimination, expressed as exclusion from practice pairs.

These stereotypes have serious consequences beyond the shop. Pager (2003) conducted a field audit in Milwaukee in which matched pairs of young men, trained to present similar qualifications, applied for entry-level jobs. One member of each pair reported a drug conviction. White applicants with a record received callbacks about half as often as those without, and Black applicants with a record faced an even larger penalty, combining racial discrimination with the stigma of a record. The study demonstrates that the stigma our reentry participants face is not imagined and will follow them to job applications.

Does Contact Reduce Prejudice?

Allport's contact hypothesis held that meeting members of another group lowers prejudice only when the meeting is set up well: both sides stand as equals in that setting, chase the same aim, work together rather than against each other and see leaders backing the arrangement. Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) meta-analyzed 515 studies and found that intergroup contact reduced prejudice on average, that effects generalized to the whole outgroup and beyond the immediate situation and that contact meeting Allport's conditions produced larger effects, though the conditions were not strictly necessary.

In the cohort, contact had not reduced prejudice because the conditions were missing. The groups competed implicitly for instructor attention and job leads, the instructor's jokes undermined institutional support and participants worked separately.

Putting two groups in the same room is not contact; giving them a weld that neither can finish alone is.

What Works in Reducing Prejudice?

Paluck et al. (2021) reviewed hundreds of studies of prejudice-reduction interventions published over two decades. They found that many popular approaches, including many diversity trainings, had not been tested with rigorous designs, that effects were often small and short-lived and that few studies measured behavior rather than attitudes. Interventions grounded in contact and perspective taking had some of the more promising evidence, but the authors urged caution and better measurement. This review argues against assuming that a one-time sensitivity session would fix the cohort.

Effort in Groups

Group work raises a second concern: effort. Karau and Williams (1993) pooled the research on social loafing. People eased off in groups compared with working alone, and the slack grew when no one could tell who had done what, when the job felt trivial and when teammates were strangers. Loafing was reduced when individual contributions were evaluated, when tasks were meaningful and when people worked with valued group members.

Any team structure for the cohort therefore had to make each person's work visible and the shared goal meaningful, or mixed teams could produce resentment if some members appeared to coast.

The Restructured Cohort

With the instructor and the reentry case manager, I proposed four changes. First, mixed teams of three, each with at least one reentry and one general participant, assigned to fabricate a project together: a set of steel benches for a community park, a goal with real meaning. Second, individual accountability within teams: each member is responsible for specific welds, inspected and graded individually, while the team receives a shared grade for the finished bench. Third, equal status: roles rotate weekly, so every participant serves as lead, fitter and inspector. Fourth, institutional support: the center's director met the instructor to address the jokes, and the instructor opened the restructured weeks by stating that every participant was there to earn the same certification.

Anticipating Resistance

Not everyone welcomed the change. Two general participants objected that mixed teams would slow them down and that their grades should not depend on others. The individual inspection grades answer the first concern directly, since each person's welds are judged on their own. Three reentry participants worried that being assigned to mixed teams would single them out further. To address this, the teams were formed by drawing names after the instructor explained that every team would mix experience levels, prior training and backgrounds, not only reentry status. The instructor also met individually with the participant who had made the most remarks, framing the change around the employer visit and the shop's reputation rather than accusing him. Planning for resistance in this way follows the research on contact: authorities must visibly support the new structure, and the structure must feel fair to everyone in it.

Addressing Discrimination Beyond the Cohort

Because the stigma of a record follows participants into hiring, the employer visit was redesigned too. Employers will see team projects and individual weld inspections before learning which participants are in the reentry program, and we will share information about federal tax credits and bonding for hiring people with records.

Measuring Change

We will measure change through instructor observation of seating and pairing, a short anonymous survey on attitudes toward teammates at weeks four and ten, completion rates for both groups and employer interview offers after the site visit.

Limits

The cohort is small, and changes are introduced together, making it difficult to identify which helped. Survey answers may be influenced by social desirability. And twelve weeks may be too short to change deeply held stereotypes.

Conclusion

The split in the welding cohort reflected ordinary group processes: salient categories, stereotypes about people with records and contact that lacked the conditions for reducing prejudice. Research on contact, prejudice reduction and group effort points to a design with mixed teams, shared goals, individual accountability, equal roles and visible institutional support, along with attention to discrimination in hiring.

References

Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 681-706. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.681

Pager, D. (2003). The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology, 108(5), 937-975. https://doi.org/10.1086/374403

Paluck, E. L., Porat, R., Clark, C. S., & Green, D. P. (2021). Prejudice reduction: Progress and challenges. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, 533-560. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-071620-030619

Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751-783. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751