Prejudice for me but not for thee

This is consistent with other research I have seen but is notable by having a somewhat more robust sample size than normal (n=5,914). Cognitive ability varies, but prejudice is universal by Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Analyzing the results, the researchers found that people with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias, but towards different sets of groups. People with low cognitive ability tended to express prejudice towards groups perceived as liberal and unconventional (e.g., atheists, gays and lesbians), as well as groups of people perceived as having low choice over group membership (e.g., ethnic minorities). People with high cognitive ability showed the reverse pattern. They tended to express prejudice towards groups perceived as conservative and conventional (e.g., Christians, the military, big business).

“There are a variety of belief systems and personality traits that people often think protect them from expressing prejudice,” says Brandt. “In our prior work we found that people high and low in the personality trait of openness to experience show very consistent links between seeing a group as ‘different from us’ and expressing prejudice towards that group. The same appears to be true for cognitive ability.”

The inclination to target out-groups with prejudicial thinking is equally prevalent among low and high cognitive populations, the only difference being that they are directed towards different groups.

Well, not the only difference. The cognitive elite, by dominating power centers, media and academia, are able to normalize their prejudices in a fashion not available to the lower cognitive groups. The cognitive elite have easily normalized directing their scorn at those whom they stereotype as ignorant, bitter, gun clingers, overly zealous in their religion, harboring antipathy towards immigrants and those who are not like them. That is the high cognitive prejudice and they carry it lightly. Among the non-elite, opinions that are just as prejudicial are deemed unacceptable and out-of-bounds by the elite.

You can see this at work in this very research. Prejudice against minorities is usually directed at perceived patterns of behavior within those minority groups, not necessarily the ethnicity per se. Respondents often draw a distinction, when given the chance, to distinguish between good and bad minority groups based on stereotypes of behavior ("good" Nigerians, for example, versus "bad" Somalis). The carrying of prejudice is the offensive sin, not the validity or the merits of the target. But instead of acknowledging that the prejudice is towards those who demonstrate patterns of behavior different from the reference group, look at how the researchers (presumably high cognitives) choose to characterize low cognitive prejudices as directed towards ethnic minorities when in fact it is reasonably well documented that the prejudices are towards those with different behavior patterns. High cognitives want to believe that lower cognitives are racist and that is exactly how the higher cognitives of this research have expressed that acceptable prejudice of theirs without even batting an eye.

The prejudice is just as strong and just as obnoxious, but the elite suckle their prejudice while ostracizing everyone else's.