Realistic Conflict Theory
The view that direct competition for valuable but limited resources breeds hostility between groups is called realistic conflict theory. As a simple matter of economics, one group may fare better in the struggle for land, jobs, or power than another group. The losing group becomes frustrated and resentful, the winning group feels threatened and protective, and, before long, conflict heats to a rapid boil. A good deal of prejudice in the world is driven by the realities of competition.
Marcel Coenders and others (2008), for example found that when the unemployment rates in the Netherlands rose, so too did support for discrimination against ethnic minority groups. Similarly, David Butz and Kuma Yogeeswaran (2011) found that students in the United States indicated more prejudice against Asian Americans if they had just read information about serious economic prob- lems and growing competition for scarce resources.
But there is much more to prejudice than real competition. “Realistic” competition for resources may in fact be imagined—a perception in the mind of an individual who is not engaged in any real conflict. In addition, people may become resentful of other groups not because of their conviction that their own security or resources are threat- ened by these groups but because of their sense of relative deprivation, the belief that they fare poorly compared with others. What matters to the prover- bial Smiths is not the size of their house per se but whether it is larger than that of the Joneses next door.
