Intergroup Cognition - Racial Bias Flashcards
(34 cards)
Describe levels of analysis, two levels of processing?
Implicit / Explicit Distinction
Implicit?
What’s uncontrollable (automatic) and not accessible via introspection.
Automatic, unconscious, uncontrollable
Explicit?
Controllable and accessible via conscious thought.
Deliberate, intentional, consciously accessible.
“…any any knowledge or understanding of the illusion we may gain at the intellectual level remains virtually powerless to diminish the magnitude of the illusion”
What does it mean?
- Subjective awareness may not influence unconscious processing, ex. Visual size and length illusion
What do we learn for the colour naming experiment?
Unconscious processes can influence conscious processes?
Examples of Social categories, us and them?
- Gender
- Nationality
- Sports team
- Political parties
-> We are hardwired to cave out different kinds of groups
Some functions of Social categories?
- Reasoning (evaluation/attitudes & stereotypes
- Facilitates social interaction (helping, friendships)
- Shaping how we perceive events in the words, in-group vs. Outgrip actions ex different sports team
Understanding intergroup bias? 4 questions
- When do such biases begin to form?
- What role does experience play?
- How do such biases change across development?
- Hoe do such biases shape bechviori and other aspects of cognition? (Indirect evidence)
Sources of intergroup cognition?
- Experience, to what extend to you get a change to interact with this group and how does that experience change your perception
- Peers, family
- Media
- Biology
Interaction between our environment and biology (we are hardwired to speak, but where we are born determines what language + culture fills in content)
Development of intergroup cognition, Aboud (2003)?
- Ingroup liking emerges before dislike of outgroup (explicitly)
- Age 3/4 for ingroup liking, outgroup dislike after age 7
Development of intergroup cognition, Bigler, Jones, & Lobliner (1997)?
- Children seem to spontaneously form categories and prefer ingroup members (by age 6)
Effects of Contact?
Interactions with children of different races.
Ask children to describe and ambiguous picture where the interpretation can be either positive or negative (steal the money, return it)
More hostile interpretations towards black transgressor than white transgressor only for ONLY WHITE Schools. Mixed schools or all black school did not see the same pattern.
Development of Explicit Social Group Preferences - A paradox! Why?
- Developmental decline in negative attitudes toward the outgrip
Race bias:
- Emerges by age 3 or 4
- Peaks near age 7
- Decline though adolescence
- Developmental increase in negative behaviour toward the outgrip
(Fewer interracial interactions & freiendships)
Discrimination:
- Housing
- Employment
- Healthcare
- Education
Limitations of Explicit Measures?
- Only access conscious thought, things we can introspect on
- Social desirability, we know that it is bad to be racist -> change our response
Measuring Implicit Bias with The Implicit Association Test?
- Reaction time measure
- Measures strength of association between concepts
Category A Good / Category B Bad
Example, Race (European, Asian, African American)
Stronger association = Faster, more accurate responses
Implicit Preferences and Behaviour (example, racist and gender bias)?
- Friendliness
- Hiring
- Voting
- Medical treatment
-> Implicit bias is a better predictor of behaviour than explicit
Where of these biases come from?
- Learned gradually from parents, peers, media, personal experience -> Insufficient!
Early and automatic
- In-group preference
- Preference for mere familiarity
Development of Implicit Social Group Preferences?
- Early acquisition
- Group membership, the status of your in-group matter
- Stable across development, children and adults are demonstrating the same pattern
When your group has high social status there is a clear implicit in-group bias, whereas when your group has a low social status there is no implicit in-group bias. Both still stable throughout development
Development of Implicit Social Group Preferences?
- Roots prior to age 6
- Early life experiences are important for acquisition
- How early do such biases form? The messages about race is so embedded in society that children will come across them from a very early age, it’s unavoidable
Development of Intergroup Cognition?
- With age explicit intergroup preferences change
- Implicit intergroup preferences remains fairly constant
Malleability of Implicit Bias
What to make of the apparent stability of bias across development?
- Forms early, slow to/doesn’t change?
- Reflects shared environments btw children and adults?
- Need to directly examine whetter developmental differences exist in the capacity to change implicit bias, is it easier to intervene with children to change their biases?
-> just because the biases are stable across development doesn’t mean it is equally easy to change the implicit bias
Malleability of Implicit Bias
What to make of the apparent stability of bias across development?
- Forms early, slow to/doesn’t change?
- Reflects shared environments btw children and adults?
- Need to directly examine whetter developmental differences exist in the capacity to change implicit bias, is it easier to intervene with children to change their biases?
-> just because the biases are stable across development doesn’t mean it is equally easy to change the implicit bias
Where do these biases come from?
- A Class Divided example
Teacher have had conversations with her students about racism, but it did not seem like it had any effect. Created an expertise where she divided the class by eye-colour, saying that one is better allowing to discriminate the other. The kids did not challenge the concept, but them followed it. Emily influenced by a few short exemplar “Billy forgot his glasses and he has blue eyes, Jane remembered hers and she has brown eyes, what does this tell us?”
As adults, they did not forget this experience and carried it with them into adulthood. More rememberable than simply taking, they remember the experience of discrimination. When giving pro mission to assert power over someone else people exploit it. People are eager to use structures that benefit them, without questioning the unfairness of how it effect the outgroup.
Noun-labelling, the blue eyed kids instead of kids with blue eyes.
Stereotype threat, Decline in performance
- Rudman (2004) identifies 4 sources for implicit intergroup bias? (All you need know from this article)
- Early experiences, first impressions (not early in life)
- Affective experiences, not all experiences are the same and more may be more emotionally charged -> more impactful in shaping one’s implicit biases
- Culture, the broader exposure
- Cognitive consistency, are implicit associations are not independent but interviewed with other pre-existing believes that we have. Cognitive dissonance, people like things to be in harmony. How much we implicitly like a group have to do with how much we identify with the group and vice versa
