Chapter 11: Prejudice Flashcards
(39 cards)
Prejudice: Groups
- Religion
- Obesity
- Age
- Immigration
- Politics
Prejudice
- Negative assumptions about a group and its members
Where Prejudice Comes From: Stereotypes
Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people - often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and confirmation biased
Results of Prejudice: Discrimination
Unjustifiable behavior toward a group or its members because of their belonging to that group
Discrimination: Racism & Sexism
1) Prejudicial attitudes or discriminatory behavior toward people of a certain race/sex
2) Institutional practices that subordinate based on race/sex (not always motivated by prejudice)
Prejudice: Implicit/Explicit
- IATs reveal implicit prejudice that we may not be consciously (explicit) aware of
- Prejudiced and stereotypic evaluations can occur outside of people’s awareness
Racial Prejudice
- Dramatic changes in recent years, but still prevalent
- Modern prejudice is mostly implicit (preference for familiarity)
Racial Prejudice: Biased Behaviours
- Employment discrimination
- Favouritism of employers
- Traffic stops (police violence)
- Patronization (overcompensating for prejudice resulting in mistreatment)
Automatic Racial Prejudice
- Implicit bias can leak into behavior
- Especially when distressed, our implicit biases can affect our decision making, allowing our biased instincts to take over
Gender Prejudice: Stereotypes
- Assumptions about essential differences between genders are prevalent
- While stereotypes contain some truth, they are not accurate representations of individuals
- Stereotypes do exist across cultures (innate?)
- Stereotypes (beliefs) are not prejudices (attitudes)
- One may hold stereotypes but believe in equality
Gender Prejudice: Sexism - Benevolent & Hostile
- Most people like women more than men
- Gender attitudes often mix benevolence with hostility (women are nice, but not to their husbands)
- Hostile sexist beliefs predict inequality
Gender Prejudice: Discrimination
- Men are 3x more likely to die of suicide or murder
- Attitudes are changing - no devaluation of work based on gender is seen
- People may be ridiculed when going against gender-norms
- Gender discrimination is much more prominent worldwide
- The largest form of gender discrimination occurs in fetuses
Prejudice: LGTBQ+
- Job discrimination
- Marriage support is mixed
- Harassment
- Rejection - community attitudes predict health (suicide rates and heart failure)
- In states that banned same-sex marriage, mental health issues and substance abuse went up in these groups - In states where it was legal, there was no such increase
Social Sources of Prejudice: Social Inequalities & SDO
- Unequal status BREEDS prejudice (not the other way around)
- SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION: A motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups
Social Sources of Prejudice: Socialization
- The Authoritarian Personality: disposed to favour obedience and intolerance of groups with lower social status
- Ethnocentrism: Belief in the superiority of one’s own cultural & ethnic group along with a disdain for all other groups
- Religion: Used both in the maintenance and justification of prejudice & in the undoing of prejudice
- Conformity: When prejudice is socially accepted, most people will conform to these norms
Social Sources of Prejudice: Institutional Supports
- Social institutions will often reflect prejudice to the extent that it is accepted within a society
- May be through overt policies or passive reinforcement
- Schools, government, media
Motivational Sources of Prejudice: The Scapegoat Theory
- Frustration, especially when sources are unknown, can often result in displaced aggression (scapegoating)
- Realistic Group Conflict Theory: Prejudices arise from competition between groups for scarce resources
- Lack of resources often leads to blaming another group of people (unemployment rates)
Social Sources of Prejudice: Social Identity Theory
- The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “who am I?” that comes from our membership in groups
- IN-GROUPS: “Us” - groups who share a sense of belonging, a feeling of common identity
- OUT-GROUPS: “Them - groups perceived as distinctly apart from their group
- Social division is natural and our self-evaluations are influenced by group membership
Social Identity Theory: In-Group Bias
- We have a tendency to favour our own group
- Expresses and supports a positive self-concept - we often choose to identify ourselves within a group when that group is perceived positively (‘my team’ won VS ‘they’ lost)
- Breeds favouritism: “We are better than they” (even when randomly assigned)
- In-group bias does not always foster out-group prejudice
In-Group Bias: Terror Management
When confronted with reminders of mortality, our self-protective emotional responses often cause an increased adherence to cultural worldviews and prejudices (returning to what is safe)
Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
- Majority people often continue to feel uncomfortable around minority people no matter what their attitudes are
- Self-conscious people will often feel guilty and try to inhibit prejudicial responses
- Internal (belief that prejudice is wrong) rather than external (want to appear unprejudiced) motivation is more likely to result in change
Cognitive Prejudice: Categorization
- Energy-saving schemes for quick judgements and predictions
- We judge out-group people more quickly (evolutionary)
Cognitive Prejudice: Spontaneous Categorization
It is easier to rely on stereotypes when:
- Pressed for time
- Preoccupied
- Tired
- Emotionally aroused
Cognitive Prejudice: Out-group Homogeneity Effect
We perceive out-group members as more similar than in-group members (they are alike, we are diverse - maintain feelings of individuality)