Because we need to feel we are better than somebody. By understanding prejudice as our self-justifying servant, we can better see why some prejudices are so hard to eradicate: They allow people to justify and defend their most important social identities—their “white” race, their religion, their gender, their sexuality—while reducing the dissonance between “I am a good person” and “I really don’t like those people.” Fortunately, we can also better understand the conditions under which prejudices diminish: when the economic competition subsides, when the truce is signed, when the profession is
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