Chapter 11: Prejudice

Question 1

Prejudice: Groups

Answer 1

• Religion
• Obesity
• Age
• Immigration
• Politics

Question 2

Prejudice

Answer 2

• Negative assumptions about a group and its members

Question 3

Where Prejudice Comes From: Stereotypes

Answer 3

Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people - often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and confirmation biased

Question 4

Results of Prejudice: Discrimination

Answer 4

Unjustifiable behavior toward a group or its members because of their belonging to that group

Question 5

Discrimination: Racism & Sexism

Answer 5

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)

Question 6

Prejudice: Implicit/Explicit

Answer 6

• IATs reveal implicit prejudice that we may not be consciously (explicit) aware of
• Prejudiced and stereotypic evaluations can occur outside of people’s awareness

Question 7

Racial Prejudice

Answer 7

• Dramatic changes in recent years, but still prevalent
• Modern prejudice is mostly implicit (preference for familiarity)

Question 8

Racial Prejudice: Biased Behaviours

Answer 8

• Employment discrimination
• Favouritism of employers
• Traffic stops (police violence)
• Patronization (overcompensating for prejudice resulting in mistreatment)

Question 9

Automatic Racial Prejudice

Answer 9

• Implicit bias can leak into behavior
• Especially when distressed, our implicit biases can affect our decision making, allowing our biased instincts to take over

Question 10

Gender Prejudice: Stereotypes

Answer 10

• 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

Question 11

Gender Prejudice: Sexism - Benevolent & Hostile

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

Gender Prejudice: Discrimination

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Prejudice: LGTBQ+

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Social Sources of Prejudice: Social Inequalities & SDO

Answer 14

• Unequal status BREEDS prejudice (not the other way around)
• SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION: A motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups

Question 15

Social Sources of Prejudice: Socialization

Answer 15

• 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

Question 16

Social Sources of Prejudice: Institutional Supports

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

Motivational Sources of Prejudice: The Scapegoat Theory

Answer 17

• 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)

Question 18

Social Sources of Prejudice: Social Identity Theory

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

Social Identity Theory: In-Group Bias

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

In-Group Bias: Terror Management

Answer 20

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)

Question 21

Motivation to Avoid Prejudice

Answer 21

• 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

Question 22

Cognitive Prejudice: Categorization

Answer 22

• Energy-saving schemes for quick judgements and predictions
• We judge out-group people more quickly (evolutionary)

Question 23

Cognitive Prejudice: Spontaneous Categorization

Answer 23

It is easier to rely on stereotypes when:
- Pressed for time
- Preoccupied
- Tired
- Emotionally aroused

Question 24

Cognitive Prejudice: Out-group Homogeneity Effect

Answer 24

We perceive out-group members as more similar than in-group members (they are alike, we are diverse - maintain feelings of individuality)

Question 25

Cognitive Prejudice: Own-race Bias

Answer 25

We tend to more accurately identify people of our own race

Question 26

Distinctiveness: People

Answer 26

• Those who stand out are perceived as having more exaggerated qualities
• People define others by their distinctive traits and behaviours (someone who owns a snake & a dog - snake owner)

Question 27

Distinctiveness: Self-consciousness

Answer 27

• We tend to misperceive others as reacting to our distinctiveness due to our heightened awareness of our differences
• Our perceptions of how other’s perceive us, therefore, can shape how we behave toward them, possibly causing them to feel how we assume they do

Question 28

Distinctiveness: Vivid Cases

Answer 28

• When experience with a certain group is limited, we tend to generalize based on our limited experiences
• Experiencing those who stand out (out-group members) we tend to overestimate their presence within society

Question 29

Distinctiveness: Illusory Correlations

Answer 29

• Because we are sensitive to distinctive events, we tend to correlate them when they occur together
• When a minority group (distinct) does distinct things, even if they are done at the same rate as the majority group does them, the combination of distinctness makes them appear correlated
• When reporting events, we often mention distinct traits along with the action (a (black/gay/satanist,) person murdered a child)

Question 30

Attributions: Group-serving Bias

Answer 30

• Explaining away positive behaviours of out-group members (outlier, outside influence, etc.)
• Attributing negative behaviours to their dispositions (excusing such behaviour in their own group)

Question 31

Just-World Phenomenon

Answer 31

• The tendency to believe that the world is just - people get what they deserve and deserve what they get
• Those who are discriminated against are therefore seen as less deserving (they asked for it
• We judge losers to be less competent even if the role of luck is obvious (may contribute to our perfectionism?)

Question 32

Consequences of Prejudice: Self-Perpetuating Prejudgements

Answer 32

Prejudgements:
- guide our attention and memories (misremembering in accordance with our stereotypes)
- are self-perpetuating (explaining away behaviors that don’t fit our expectations)

Question 33

Self-Perpetuating Prejudgements: Subtyping

Answer 33

Accommodating groups of people who deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as a special category (atypical exceptions)

Question 34

Self-Perpetuating Prejudgements: Subgrouping

Answer 34

Accommodating groups who deviate from one’s stereotype be forming a new stereotype for this subgroup (young hispanics are all nice, especially compared to the rest of hispanics)

Question 35

Consequences of Prejudice: Discrimination

Answer 35

• Attitudes may align with a social system not only to rationalize it, but also because discriminatory attitudes affect those discriminated against
• Discrimination is self-fulfilling (discrimination may lead to results that are used to justify further discrimination)

Question 36

Consequences of Prejudice: Stereotype Threat

Answer 36

• A disruptive concern that one (who is often negatively stereotyped) will be evaluated based on this stereotype rather than their actions
• This can result in increased self-consciousness in those who are subject to such stereotypes
• Stereotype threat can undermine performance through; stress, self-monitoring, and suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions

Question 37

Consequences of Prejudice: Do Stereotypes Bias Our Judgements?

Answer 37

Positive ways
- They reflect and will change with increased multiculturalism
- We often evaluate individuals more positively than groups)

Question 38

Do Stereotypes Bias Our Judgements: Strong Stereotypes Matter

Answer 38

• Even when a strong stereotype is known to be irrelevant, it has an irresistible force (men who endorse sexism treat their wives worse)

Question 39

Do Stereotypes Bias Our Judgements: Bias of Interpretations

Answer 39

• We interpret ambiguous information based on our own stereotypes of the provided information
• With little else to go on (unknown event) we rely on our expectations (stereotypes)
• This is adaptive, but harmful, especially when stereotypes are informed by things outside of genuine experiences
• We evaluate people more extremely if their actions violate our expected stereotypes (a woman who tells someone off is more assertive than a man who does the same)