Lecture 7 - Unconscious Bias and Stereotype Threat

Question 1

social facilitation

Answer 1

• an example of how adding a group/person can affect your performance
• seen across species
• Chen (1937) - observed ants excavating soil for 4 days. ants took longer before they started working when they were alone vs in group. worked harder and moved more soil in groups.
• humans more complex. may depend on task (zajonc 1965)
  > easy/good at task = watching you perform makes you better
  > difficult/unknown = worse performance when being watched due to pressure

Question 2

zajonc’s theory and yerkes-dodson law

Answer 2

• how arousal affects performance. Zajonc 3 parts as to why it matters if a task is new or well-learned:
  1. mere presence leads to arousal - evolutionary response. under pressure go back to core things you know well
  2. arousal causes psychological rigidity or inflexibility. arousal will encourage the dominant response
  3. dominant response facilitates well-learnt or easy tasks as likely to be correct.
• social facilitation occurs on simple tasks that require dominant response and improves performance
• social interference occurs for complex tasks that require non-dominant responses and worsen performance.
• linked to yerkes-dodson law. some arousal is good and improves performance but too much inhibits our ability if we cannot go on autopilot.
• high arousal improves simple or well-learned tasks but worsens complex or poorly learned task

Question 3

is it mere presence?

Answer 3

• humans are more self aware.
• need to:
  1. test someone alone on a hard/not learned task and measure response type
  2. test someone in front of an attentive audience and measure response type
  3. test someone in front of a non-attentive audience and measure response type.

Question 4

cottrell (1968) evidence for evaluation apprehension

Answer 4

• pps had to learn nonsense words, some very well (dominant response) and some not so well (non-dominant)
• pp’s then guessed whether they saw the word on a difficult recognition task
• researchers measured frequency of dominant response in each condition and whether audience was attentive or blindfolded.
• suggests responses only affected when the audience are evaluated
  > when there was an evaluative response they tended to fall on dominant response
  > when alone or blindfolded they didn’t allow the dominant response as much

Question 5

Markus (1978) evidence for mere presence effects

Answer 5

• tried to control for exp effects
  -p’s had to get changed before exp and take of shoes, socks and coat (dominant response) then dress in lab clothes and tolf the exp was cancelled due to non-attendees
• researchers timed how long it took p’s to undress in both conditions
• researchers also manipulated if p’s were alone
  > for well learned, fastest when attentive or someone present
  > for non0dominant task task took longer when audience and attentive audience there
• people perform differently with others aroybd
• humans are self-aware and aware of stereotypes
• the fear that we will perform according to a stereotype is called stereotype threat. when neg this is a threat.

Question 6

effects of prejudice on individuals (stereotype threat)

Answer 6

• Steele and Aronson (1995) - had black and white pp’s take test that was either test of intelligence or develop new test. in reality identical. black pps worst in test of intelligence.
• Stone et al (1999) - black pp’s did worse in sports intelligence condition and white worse in natural athletic ability condition. ST can affect everyone depending on the stereotype.
• Aronson et al (1999) - white pps worse in maths test if reminded of asian proficiency in maths.
• Inzlicht & Ben Zeev (2000) - women performed lower when completing test around men. ST could affect performance on tests as well as abilities and is not limited to one group, affects all as long as you are aware of the stereotype.
• spencer et al (1999) - saying the test benefits you makes performance better. ST can lead to self-fulfilling behaviours.

Question 7

Social factors for stereotype threat: recursive cycles and negative feedback loops

Answer 7

• appears to be a SFP e.g. lack of confidence and motivation etc.
• ST could undermine important pedgogical variables relationship related to learning e.g. autonomy and self-efficacy
• can lead to a recursive effect and a negative feedback cycle
• it reinforces the stereotype threat

Question 8

stereotype threat affects women in STEM

Answer 8

• cheryan et al (2009) - tested whether ST and masculine environments deter women from entering STEM subject areas and research
• across 4 studies, primed f students through subtle changes of the environment e.g. pool tables, male focussed posters, darts board or more neutral room.
• in sterotypical room men reported more interest in computer science. for neutral, women interested more. non-masculine environment showed more interest in postgraduate study for men and women

Question 9

evidence linking stereotype threat to physiological stress responses

Answer 9

• vick et al - tested in ST affected physiological responses and whether this varied by gender
• measured arterial blood flow and blood pressure (affected by stress)
• when test was gender biased men had inc physiological activation = ready to compete. women when were told men were better at test were less engaged in the challenge. when told test was gender fair women show inc physiological response and ready to compete while men felt more threatened.

Question 10

is stereotype threat a reliable and robust effect

Answer 10

• flore and wicherts (2015) conducted a meta analysis int stereotype threat. did not find evidence of ST when p hacking and publication bias considered. many had small effect sizes

Question 11

factors necessary for ST to be visible

Answer 11

• one reason ST is negative is because the person affected has to spend cog resources to suppress effect
  > identify with group
  > group membership becomes salient
  > awareness/identification of neg group stereotypes
  > neg social impacts
  > monitoring and suppression of negative ST

Question 12

risk-taking buffers negative effects of stereotype threat

Answer 12

• Petzel and Casad (2020) - conducted a study to examine how risk taking protects against consequences of negative gender stereotypes among women in STEM
• in study 1 people took online survey assessing risk-taking, academic outcomes, vulnerability to ST etc. risk taking predicted positive academic outcomes. women with higher risk taking reported lower vulnerability to ST.
• in study 2 assessed maths vs problem solving while assessing cardiovascular activity. hierarchical regression revealed women higher in risk-taking experiencing ST exhibited adaptive cardiovascular reactivity accounting for improved math. risk taking may buffer consequences of gender stereotypes.
• therefore indiv difs e.g. confidence and academic risk taking can mitigate the effects of ST for STEM and improve academic performance.

Question 13

what to do if affected by ST

Answer 13

• group stereotype that does not apply to most
• most do not think about the stereotype
• see it as a positive
• practice more to be better than the majority
• speak to GP and ask for medication for anxiety

Question 14

testing for prejudice using implicit unconscious bias

Answer 14

• unconscious bias and stereotype threat seen in classroom. even if teachers unaware.
• we are unaware of these implicit biases
• important because: people will not admit biases, we cannot trust peoples words only actions, and we learn through experience and the media which creates associations in the brain
• associative and propositional evaluative model: in brain input media and learning comes in and unconscious bias comes out. the conscious part can analyse things (relates to type 1 and 2 reasoning - analytical style and gut feeling)
• there is interplay between unconscious and explicit part of the brain
• gut instinct affects how conscious decisions which affect how you think and feel about other people.

Question 15

dual process models of bias based on previous research

Answer 15

• several researchers have proposed dual process models of learning that could lead to bias against social groups
• Devine (1989) - argued we learn cultural stereotypes and unconscious bias through the media which create well learned associations that become activated when primed.
• automatic associations can become dissociated with explicit attitudes
• APE model - implicit associations formed through repeated exposure but explicit propositions require logical analysis

Question 16

why do we maintain stereotypes

Answer 16

• implicit assiciation test shows unconscious biases too
• test always counterbalanced
• is a reaction time task which creates a D score.
• harvard tests also show implicit tests.

Question 17

criticisms of the IAT

Answer 17

• poor test-retest reliability
• some relationships weaker
• correlation strength of association and prej behaviour unclear
• further criticisms argue implicit tests do not cor well together
• not clear what type of IAT test is measuring
• response latencies usually measured in milliseconds so not generalised

Question 18

criticisms of IAT and implicit research methods

Answer 18

• Jost (2019)
  > critics poor understanding of iAT test
  > not all IAT tests unreliable.
  > IAT no better or worse than many other measures
  > other tests e.g. blood are more variable
  > poorly done test
  > IAT results are consistent with robust theories
• some researchers acknowledge and provide guidelines (Gawronski 2019)
• implicit tests not all the same. shooter task also criticised
• unkelbach et al 2008 - people have implciit bias and shoot muslim targets more

Question 19

emotional stroop task

Answer 19

• an implicit test for bias/prej
• have to say what colour word is
• if shown word e.g. spider this slows response as fearful stimuli
• showing word mosque slows responses in people who are racsit/islamophobic