12. Stereotypes II

Question 1

How are stereotypes maintained?

Answer 1

Stereotype transmission (Lyons & Kashima, 2001)

Question 2

How does stereotype transmission work?

Answer 2

• Stereotypes are communicated
• As time goes on, (stereotype) inconsistent information disappears but consistent remains intact

Question 3

Why does stereotype transmission happen?

Answer 3

Cognitive processes

• we remember schema-consistent info easier & pay more attention to it

Social processes

• desire to establish common ground with others so we share expected info

Question 4

Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB) (Maas et al., 1989)

Answer 4

• More abstract language is used for positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviours
• Example: negative ingroup behaviours are described factually (e.g. burglar) but negative outgroup behaviours are explained abstractly (e.g. menace to society)

Question 5

Consequences Of LIB (Maas et al., 1989)

Answer 5

Increasing level of abstraction:

• people believed the action was more informative about the actor
• people believed the action was more likely to be repeated.

Question 6

What is stereotype threat?

Answer 6

The knowledge that you are being stereotyped that then affects your performance

Question 7

Who experiences stereotype threat?

Answer 7

• Women and maths
• Ethnic minorities and academic performance
• Straight men and emotionality
• Social class and intelligence testing

Question 8

Stereotype Threat Evidence

Answer 8

Black people and IQ (Steele & Aronson, 1995)

• When ethnicity was made salient (participants asked to disclose ethnicity), there was worse performance in black participants and better in white participants

Women in STEM (Spencer et al, 1999)

• Male and female participants selected with the same maths ability
• They took a maths test which was either described as being diagnostic in gender differences in maths, or not
• Poorer female performance on ‘gender differences’ test

Question 9

How do we prevent stereotype threat?

Answer 9

(Spencer et al. 1999)

• Individuating
• Making multiple identities salient
• Perceptions of stereotyped qualities as malleable
• Creating identity-safe environments:
• Role models
• Single-group environments
• Strengthening coping: Self-affirmation & Mindfulness