Chapter 11: Prejudice

Question 1

What’s the difference between a stereotype, a prejudice, and discrimination?

Answer 1

• Stereotype - A belief about the personal attributes of a group of people
• Prejudice - attitudinal and affective response to a group and its individual members
• Discrimination - negative behaviour toward a group or its members

Question 2

What’s the difference between explicit and implicit prejudice?

Answer 2

• Explicit - conscious evaluations that are deliberately formed and are easy to self-report
• Implicit - Evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self

Question 3

What’s the purpose of the Implicit Association Test (IAT)?

Answer 3

• The objective is to measure the strength of implicit associations in your mind
• Based on individuals reaction times

Question 4

What’s the Police Officer’s Dilemma?

Answer 4

• A game based on the IAT
• The player is a police officer and they have to decide in a short amount of time whether to shoot the individual
• Could have been a white or black target, and they either could have been armed or unarmed.

Question 5

What were some of the major findings from the Police Officer’s Dilemma study?

Answer 5

• Individuals took a longer time to decide when it was an unarmed black target to not shoot versus when it was an armed black target
• More errors were also made towards unarmed black men, so they were shot more accidentally

Question 6

What’s the just world theory?

Answer 6

• Belief that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get
• Not generally true
• People apply this theory to help ward off the existentialism that comes with dealing with the randomness of the world
• Ties into the idea of how social inequalities can lead to prejudice

Question 7

What’s system justification theory?

Answer 7

• The tendency to defend and rationalize existing social, economic, and political arrangements
• “There’s a reason why things are the way they are”
• Psychological benefit as it helps disadvantaged individuals cope with bad circumstances (ex. black women voting for Trump)
• Can also be observed in stereotypes like “they’re poor but happy”

Question 8

What’s the social dominance orientation?

Answer 8

• Can be considered a personality orientation
• A belief in a natural hierarchy among groups
• Does not cause prejudice but can contribute to it

Question 9

What’s the authoritarian personality?

Answer 9

• An individual who values obedience to authority and a disdain for weakness

Question 10

What are other potential sources of prejudice?

Answer 10

• Personality
• Socialization (from parents, role-models, peers)

Question 11

T/F: Humans love categorizing things

Answer 11

• TRUE
• Categorization tends to exaggerate the differences between groups and the similarities within groups

Question 12

What does the term outgroup homogeneity imply?

Answer 12

• Those who are “outside” our group of interest all tend to appear the same

Question 13

What did Takfel’s (1970) Minimal group paradigm discover?

Answer 13

• Individuals were assigned to groups based on a trivial categorization task (ex. underestimating vs. overestimating how many marbles there are)
• This led to a random assignment into groups
• Groups then had to perform a resource allocation task
• Main finding: People always favour group membership (even if the groups are arbitrary
• Trivial membership also spills over into real life (ex. hockey teams)

Question 14

What are three major observations regarding social identity?

Answer 14

1) Social categorization - we all categorize our social world
2) Social identification - some group memberships are important (this can change)
3) Social comparisons - we evaluate our social identities (can place them in hierarchies)

Question 15

What’s social identity theory? (Tajfel, 1970)

Answer 15

• Individuals strive to belong to groups that have positive and distinct identities
• Positive = positively valued
• Distinct = people know the boundaries that make them different from other groups

Question 16

When making social comparisons of social identities, what would one group do that had an adequate social identity?

Answer 16

They can either:
- Maintain superiority
- Extend superiority across higher groups

Question 17

What are the options for an inadequate social identity when they can perceive cognitive alternatives (i.e., we can gain higher status)?

Answer 17

• Absorption = play by the system’s rules to show everyone how good you are
• Redefine characteristics = do so to gain a higher status
• Direct challenge = Refuse to withstand disrespect, demand that treatment changes

Question 18

What are the options for an inadequate social identity when they cannot perceive cognitive alternatives?

Answer 18

• Social mobility - let go of your social identity and change groups (ex. Jewish people during the holocaust)
• Make intra-group comparisons = start sub-grouping your own group (ex. “at least I’m not a serial killer”)

Question 19

Why does the “us” vs “them” theory not fully explain prejudice?

Answer 19

3 main reasons why:
1) Social categorization and intergroup bias are normal and ubiquitous social psychological processes
2) Intergroup bias rarely leads to outgroup derogation
3) Out-group derogation requires other contextual factors to emerge
- We favour those in our own group, doesn’t mean we hate people of other groups

Question 20

How do we maintain prejudiced social categorizations when stereotypes have been violated?

Answer 20

• Subgrouping - we salvage the stereotype by splitting off these “exceptions”
• We don’t want to appear inconsistent with our categorizations

Question 21

What’s the stereotype threat?

Answer 21

• Individuals who have a stereotype against them understand the dangers of that threat (ex. women are bad at math)
• Reinforcing these stereotypes can prime the victims of these stereotypes to perform poorly on tasks
• Much higher degree of self-monitor and impacts their performance
• Somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 22

T/F: People tend to believe that they receive less discrimination compared to others in their group

Answer 22

• TRUE
• Individuals with a high need to belong factor will find themselves diminishing the amount of discrimination they receive to feel more apart of group identities

Question 23

What are the four conditions of contact theory?

Answer 23

1) Equal Status (very important)
2) Common goals
3) Intergroup cooperation
4) Supportive system
- All four must be met to decrease prejudices and stereotypes
- Team sports are really good for this

Question 24

T/F: Prejudice is an attitude.

Answer 24

• TRUE

Question 25

What are the ABCs of attitudes?

Answer 25

A - affect (feelings)
B - behaviour tendency (inclination to act)
C - cognition (beliefs)

Question 26

T/F: In the context of the world, every race is a minority.

Answer 26

• TRUE

Question 27

What’s an example of benevolent sexism?

Answer 27

• Ex. Women require much more protection compared to men

Question 28

T/F: Religion and prejudice are not correlated.

Answer 28

• FALSE
• Religion and prejudice are correlated but there’s no causal connection
• Depends on the type of religious beliefs the person has (ex. those who are intrinsically religious are less prejudiced)

Question 29

What does the realistic group conflict theory state?

Answer 29

• Prejudice arises when groups compete for scarce resources
• Maximum competition will exist between species with identical needs

Question 30

Define terror management.

Answer 30

• Shield yourself from the threat of your own death by derogating those whose challenges to their worldviews further arouse their anxiety.

Question 31

T/F: Stereotypes are illusory correlations

Answer 31

• TRUE

Question 32

How exactly does a stereotype threat undermine performance?

Answer 32

• Stress
• Self-monitoring
• Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions (this requires energy)