The nature of prejudice and bigotry have changed in recent decades. In most communities it is unacceptable to be openly racist, sexist, or homophobic. Norms against prejudice have certainly changed. It is true that prejudice directed toward many groups has decreased; however, individual attitudes have not necessarily caught up with changing norms. As a result, some people hide their prejudices, attempting to mask their discrimination in neutral-seeming behavior. Others truly believe they are not prejudiced, even when they are. Social psychologists have spent recent decades measuring and mapping the nature of subtle, covert, and implicit forms of contemporary prejudice. Benign Bigotry critically examines seven contemporary myths and assumptions that reflect prejudice that appears common sense, even harmless, but actually reveal the perniciousness and insidiousness of contemporary prejudice. Benign Bigotry critically analyzes: (1) the assumption that prejudice is an individual-only problem; (2) that people in outgroups are all alike; (3) that those accused of a crime are likely guilty of something; (4) that feminists are manhaters; (5) that LGBTQ+ people flaunt their sexuality; (6) that those who claim racial colorblindness are not racists; and (7) that affirmative action amounts to reverse racism.

This chapter describes the origin, development, and subsequent conceptualization of native-speakerism, as well as profiling relevant research on it. Importantly, it also offers my own understanding and interpretation about the notion. To do this, the chapter presents a selection of previous discussions and empirical research into native-speakerism and documents some of the most deleterious effects that native-speakerism has had on the lives and identities of both NESTs and NNESTs worldwide – specifically the effects on NNES teachers and researchers in Japan, who are the focal points of this book. I commence this chapter with a theoretical overview of the ways in which native-speakerism came to be recognized and defined. I then introduce my own analysis of what native-speakerism entails at this moment in time within the ELT field. Afterward, I provide an overview of germane conceptual and empirical studies on native-speakerism while offering my own critiques of them as I do so. With the key points and positionings of the discussion established, I conclude this chapter by positing my case for the originality and significance of this endeavor and by presenting the focal research questions which the research within this volume attempts to answer.

When we witness another person experiencing pain, be it emotional or physical, we have an empathic reaction. And even if we commit a harmful action against another person, we most of the time experience guilt in the aftermath, which prevents us from performing the same action in the future. Guilt and empathy are critical moral emotions that together usually prevent us from harming others. However, as this chapter shows, systematic processes of classification and dehumanization at play before a genocide can alter moral emotions towards another part of the population. Activity in empathy-related brain regions is generally reduced towards individuals that we consider as outgroup or towards dehumanized individuals. Neuroscience studies have further shown that when obeying orders to hurt another person, neural activity in empathy- and guilt-related brain regions is reduced compared to acting freely. Such results show how obeying orders diminishes our aversion to harming others.

Today, bitch is one of the handiest words in the English language. It’s used to express a multitude of emotions – anger, horror, fear, frustration, despair, envy, resentment, shock, surprise, pain, and pity. But on the other hand, it can also express happiness, excitement, and endearment. Bitch is invoked to offend people, but also to compliment them, to complain, or to show camaraderie. Bitch is complicated. It can mean so many things at once, and yet, it has still retained its original humble meaning. It’s been quite a journey for “bitch.” But one thing’s for sure – bitch is still on its journey.

This chapter is a broad account of the experiences of the printmaker’s family home-cum-workshop in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, focusing on the role and status of women within these families and spaces. Weaving key examples throughout, it highlights the centrality of the family workshop in framing and encouraging women’s printed productions. However, it also exposes the gendered mechanisms at play within these overlapping commercial and domestic spaces.

Despite the degree to which the printmaking family facilitated and often encouraged women’s work, the small body of literature specifically focusing on printmaking families in the eighteenth century has often obscured the role of women within these workshops. Printmaking apprenticeships were largely closed to women in this period, and this chapter reveals that the family workshop gave many women an invaluable social and economic opportunity to work, to earn money, to create prints, and to forge an artistic identity. In turn, their labour was often crucial for the running of the family workshop, providing income but also enabling other relatives to fashion their own artistic identities in turn.

This chapter discusses the growing body of research that examines the social cognitive processes of jurors used when making verdict or sentencing decisions. This includes the empirical findings related to priming ideas and attitudes and impression formation. The chapter then discusses heuristics, or cognitive “shortcuts,” that jurors employ during their decision-making processes in trials and deliberations. For instance, there is a tendency for jurors to over-rely on dispositional attributions, stereotypes, and schemas. Cognitive biases that jurors are prone to, such as the hindsight bias, the outcome bias, and counterfactual thinking, will also be discussed in the context of evaluating evidence and making verdict decisions, along with the potential of debiasing techniques. Finally, jurors’ biases and prejudices regarding factors, such as race, gender, and religion, and how they relate to decision-making are examined. The chapter also addresses areas of social cognition that have not yet been explored in current research and provides recommendations for future directions.

This chapter will examine complex decisions relevant to family law. Decisions shaped by bias can lead to outcomes that place certain people and groups at an unfair disadvantage while placing others at an unjustified advantage. Implicit bias can have significant implications for outcomes in the legal system, including in family court. Although decision-makers might view themselves as free of bias, decades of research indicates that this is simply not the case. Though it is not possible to completely remove bias from decision-making, awareness can partially mitigate the harm of unconscious bias. In particular, the chapter will address family law decisions and decision-making bias in various domains, including bias in (1) credibility determinations, (2) gender, (3) sexual orientation and gender identity, (4) socioeconomic status, (5) intimate partner violence, and (6) substance use. The chapter will consider both psychological research and legal principles and identify areas where additional research needs to be conducted. Future research and/or policy implications will be discussed.

This chapter dwells at the intersection of the social psychology of knowledge resistance and epistemic normativity to offer the first full taxonomy of resistance to evidence. It first individuates the phenomenon via paradigmatic instances, and then it taxonomises it according to two parameters: (1) paradigmatic triggering conditions and (2) epistemic normative status. I argue that the phenomenon of resistance to evidence is epistemologically narrower but psychologically broader than is assumed in the extant literature in social psychology. This, in turn, gives us reason to believe that addressing this phenomenon in policy and practice will be a much more complex endeavour than is currently assumed. In the remainder of the book, I examine the extant literature on evidence, defeat, justification, permissible suspension, and epistemic responsibility in search of the normative resources required to fully accommodate the psychological breadth and epistemic normative status of the phenomenon of resistance to evidence.

This chapter focuses on the kind of writing that takes shape as story, writing that is made up in the sense of being composed. It argues that this kind of writing matters to us because it is an expression of narrative consciousness. It is important, and has a distinctive quality, drawing us in, entertaining and instructing us. And sometimes it has a particular kind of magic that is both compelling and immersive, enticing us into the written. To a greater or lesser extent, this sort of writing is crafted. This is because writing a narrative involves a range of different kinds of decisions – decisions about what to focus on, what things to emphasise, what to hint at or to leave out, the order of telling and more subtle effects like the relationship of the narrator to the events described. Although this chapter focuses on literature, it also includes a consideration of micronarratives on social media. It concludes with a consideration of more problematic literature – writing in which unhelpful attitudes and prejudices are rehearsed and spread.

Appearance Prejudice and Discrimination against Black Women discusses Black women’s substantive experiences of discrimination based on their appearance. Black women experience biases around body features, skin color, hair, personal grooming choices, and other appearance-related variables. Black women also receive constant messages about how they do not meet mainstream beauty standards. These messages may cause women to internalize negative self-images. We offer therapists strategies to support Black women to deconstruct beauty stereotypes and foster cultural beauty ideals to help manage and reject societal invalidations.

Children are prosocial from a young age onward, but their prosocial actions are not necessarily egalitarian. From around 4 years of age children tend to help and share more with in-group members compared with out-group members. However, a growing body of findings also suggest that sometimes children act more prosocially toward out-group members. How can we reconcile such seemingly contradicting behaviors? Here, the author describes how the salience of group stereotypes might shed light on these inconsistent findings. Specifically, different helping contexts can activate different group stereotypes. These different stereotypes could lead children to sometimes act more prosocially toward in-group peers, but sometimes show out-group bias in their helping or sharing behavior. Taking into account group stereotypes in children’s prosocial behavior will provide a deeper understanding of the underlying motivations that lead to selective prosociality in children and, in the long run, contribute to combating discrimination and prejudice early in life.

Stigma is a socially constructed phenomenon that occurs on multiple levels and has broad implications for both individuals with mental illness and society as a whole. Theoretical orientations provide a framework for organizing and advancing research on the stigma of mental illness. This chapter describes theoretical perspectives on types of mental illness stigma, including public stigma, self-stigma, associative stigma, and structural stigma. In terms of public stigma (stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination directed at people with mental illness), we discuss five theories: (1) modified labeling theory, (2) social-cognitive model, (3) stereotype content model, (4) implicit stigma, and (5) attribution theory. In terms of self-stigma (the internalization of public stigma), we describe the progressive model of self-stigma, stigma resistance, and two theoretical approaches to understand disclosure of mental illness: the disclosure process model and the disclosure decision-making model. While theoretical models to guide research on associative and structural stigma are limited, we review these concepts and suggest areas for future scholarship. Finally, we describe and critique several multi-level models of stigma including the Mental Illness Stigma Framework and the Health and Stigma Discrimination Framework.