Stereotypes Flashcards
1
Q
“people are less prone to stereotyping others upon whom they depend- but only if they have the cognitive resources to do so”. Who gave this conclusion and what was the study behind it?
A
- Pendry and Macrae
- with a group of undergraduate students
- divided into 2 groups. One group dependent on old lady Hilda and another group acted independently of Hilda.
- the independent group stereotyped Hilda
- The dependent group was further divided into two groups: they received different profiles of her, one stereotypical and one was not.
- The non stereotypical description group was given an 8-digit number to remember while they were reading the description.
- They were ripped of cognitive attention and did not have enough capacity/resources to read her profile and was ‘forced’ to stereotype her in the end.
2
Q
In simple terms, why do stereotypes arise?
A
it is seen as impoverished, simplistic understanding of groups and their members. There is not enough space, particularly in working memory, for observers to take in each person. It is easier and more realistic for observers to take certain shortcuts known as heuristics.
3
Q
Stereotype formation no.1: Accentuation. What does it mean?
A
- When a person, place, or thing is placed into a category, and aspects of this person tend to match the category, they are put in more than they actually match it.
- memory of anything that can be categorised is subject to an accentuation effect in which the memory is distorted toward typical examples.
- e.g. Corrveille, Huart, Becquart and Bredart found that when Ps had ethnically ambiguous faces, certain ethnic features that stood out caused Ps to falsely remember the person more toward an ethnic category than they actually were.
- e.g. A study at Brown university asked Ps to state mean temperature differences between dates such as Sept 2, 9, 15, 25 etc. Ps stated August 25 to Sept 2 has the largest temperature change. However, 2nd-10th sept has just the same temperature change. But because people stereotype August to be hotter, they assume temperature change should the greatest.
4
Q
Stereotype formation no.2: Outgroup and homogeneity. Explain:
A
- social categories (age, race, gender) are often correlated with a continuous dimension (face morphology, skin color). Over estimate similarity within the categories and differences between them.
- There is less variability of habit and opinion seen among members of outgroup -“they are all the same”. Perception of ingroup members are more diverse and variable e.g. university, sorority
5
Q
Stereotype formation no.3: Illusory Correlation. Explain:
A
- a bias exaggerated by perception of a correlation between two variables.
- in intergroup relations, the perception that a behaviour is more frequently displayed by minority than a majority group, when the behaviour is displayed equally by both groups.
- e.g. Football hooligans and the Away team
- explains why certain undesirable behaviours are unfairly perceived to be more characteristics of real-life minorities
- Statistically rare, minority behaviours are more distinctive relative to majority behaviours. Undesirable behaviours are rarer and thus more distinctive. Minorities seize the most attention and their actions carry the most weight.
- Fiedler (1991) showed that imperfections in human learning and memory help produce the bias effect.
- Memory for events is faulty, so people do not encode the actual ratio of positive and negative events. As time goes by, their estimates of this ratio moves towards 50:50 and causes them to underestimate good behaviours and magnify the bad ones.
- Rothbart’s (1981) explanation emphasised on accessibility of information at the time of retrieval.
- Positive events by majority are more common, hence they are more accessible.
- The absolute difference of positive and negative events is larger. Hence it seems like there are lots more of positive events than negative in majority.
6
Q
Despite being stereotyped, these people actually help confirm the bias! What are some ways to maintain stereotypes?
A
- Self Fulfilling Prophecy- act towards members of a certain group in ways that encourages the very behaviour they expect.
- Attributional ambiguity- target of bias develop expectancies that people will be biased against them. Helps people confirm that they are in fact the stereotypes.
- Stereotype threat- belief that others have negative expectancies of that group causes the group members to perform below actual ability as they feel threatened.
- these are debilitating effects, showing decrease in performance on tasks relevant to the threat increases arousal, distraction, negative thinking, obsession with avoiding failure
- Dis-identification; undermines motivation
7
Q
As part of controlling stereotyping people, one can utilise the dissociation model to reactively control their stereotyping behaviour. Explain the dissociation model:
A
- automatic and controlled behaviour can be dissociated and happen independently.
- one can seek to dissociate/ remove or correct stereotype influence.
- preconditions: awareness, motivation to correct, accurate theories of bias, cognitive capacity
- cognitive capacity as proven by the Hilda experiment
- most importantly, you need compunction (the feeling of guilt). This happens most often in low prejudiced people where stereotype for them is distasteful. They have egalitarian values, standards and beliefs.
- This guilt can be explained by self discrepancy theory, where the actual/own does not meet requirements of the ought self. In order to self correct, one needs cognitive dissonance at first to trigger self discrepancy. Finally, as the actual and ought self meet, discrepancy disappears.
8
Q
So how does one correct stereotyping behaviour using self discrepancy? What is going through one’s mind?
A
- think more deeply and re-assess prior belief
- analyse features and details
- engage in counter argument
- inspection of the veracity
