Fear and cultural background drive sexual orientation prejudice in France

Sexual stereotyping and its negative consequences remain major issues in Western societies. Sexual prejudice is often nurtured by the socio-cultural background in which individuals grow up, making differences in sexual prejudice especially visible in multicultural societies. In France, one example of such a multicultural society with a high number of French citizens with recent migratory background from Maghreb, the socio-cultural basis of sexual prejudice has largely remained unexplored. Here, we report results from an experimental study investigating sexual stereotyping in France. We base our analyses on an elicited corpus of spontaneous speech samples. We consider in particular the effects of the participants’ cultural background (France vs. Maghreb), age and gender on the expression of prejudicial attitudes. Specifically, we tested in a context-sensitive sentiment analysis approach which attitudes (negative vs. positive) and emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) were voiced. We find strong effects of cultural background and gender both on the frequency of negative vs. positive attitudes expressed and on associated emotion categories, namely that male Maghrebian participants were more negative and conveyed more fear in their speech samples. The results are discussed in the context of current diversity approaches in France and their implications for potential prejudice regulation strategies.

From Diversity Ideologies to the Expression of Stereotypes: Insights Into the Cognitive Regulation of Prejudice Within the Cultural-Ecological Context of French Laïcité

This theoretical paper examines the context-sensitivity of the impact of cultural norms on prejudice regulation. Granting the importance of understanding intergroup dynamics in cultural-ecological contexts, we focus on the peculiarities of the French diversity approach. Indeed, the major cultural norm, the Laïcité (i.e., French secularism) is declined today in two main variants: The Historic Laïcité, a longstanding egalitarian norm coexisting with its amended form: The New Laïcité, an assimilationist norm. In fact, these co-encapsulated Laïcité variants constitute a fruitful ground to cast light on the processes underlying prejudice regulation. Indeed, it is documented that the assimilationist New Laïcité is linked to higher levels of prejudice as compared to the egalitarian Historic Laïcité. To this day, research mainly explored interindividual determinants of Laïcité endorsements and specified how these endorsements shape prejudice. Crucially, this “indirect-endorsement path” does not account for the more straightforward causal relationship between Laïcité and prejudice. Moreover, recent experimental evidence suggests that the normative salience of both Laïcité norms shape intergroup attitudes beyond personal endorsement. Therefore, in this contribution, we complement previous work by investigating the possible socio-cognitive processes driving this “direct-contextual path.” In doing so, we seek to bridge the gap of causality by investigating how the Laïcité norms can set the stage for specific regulatory strategies. Our reasoning derives from an application of the Justification-Suppression Model bolstered by classical work on mental control, modern racism and diversity ideology. From this, we sketch out the operative functioning of two distinct regulation processes: (a) one that prevents prejudicial attitudes but which can have unexpected consequences on stereotyping within the Historic Laïcité context (i.e., suppression) and (b) one that helps realize prejudice within the New Laïcité context (i.e., justification). From this analysis, we discuss the consequences for intergroup relations within and beyond the French context. In particular, we outline the importance of an adequate framing of egalitarian ideologies so that they achieve their goal to foster harmonious intergroup relations.

Self-Regulation and Social Pressure Reduce Prejudiced Responding and Increase Motivation to be Non-Prejudiced

Self-regulation constrains the expression of prejudice, but when self-regulation falters, the immediate environment can act as an external source of prejudice regulation. This hypothesis derives from work demonstrating that external controls and internal self-regulation can prompt goal pursuit in the absence of self-imposed controls. Across four studies we found support for this complementary model of prejudice regulation. In Study 1, self-regulatory fatigue resulted in less motivation to be non-prejudiced, compared to a non-fatigued control. In Study 2, strong (vs. weak) perceived social pressure was related to greater motivation to be non-prejudiced. In Study 3, dispositional self-regulation predicted non-prejudice motivation when perceived social pressure was weak or moderate, but not when it was strong. Finally, in Study 4 self-regulatory fatigue increased prejudice when social pressure was weak but not when it was strong.