Stereotypes & Prejudice Flashcards
(26 cards)
Stereotype
A belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group, ofen carrying a negative connotation. It involves thinking about someone as simply a member of a group and projecting your beliefs about that group onto the person.
beliefs
Prejudice
An attitude or affective response (positive or negative) toward a group and its individual members. It involves prejudging others because they belong in a certain category of people.
prejudgements
Discrimination
Favourable or unfavourable treatment of individuals based on their membership in a particular group.
concrete actions
Modern racism (Sam Gaertner & Jack Dovidio, 1986)
23ite people may reject explicitly racist beliefs (i.e., Black people are morally inferior), yet still feel animosity towards them, being highly suspicious of their actions and generally uncomfortable dealing with them. People may hold strong egalitarian values that compel them to reject discrimination and prejudice, while also harbour unacknowledged negative feelings towards out-groups that stem from ingroup favouritism and a desire to defend the status quo. It shows itself in subtle ways.
Modern Racism Experiment
White participants were put in a position where they had to help a White or Black person who required medical assistance. If they thought they were the only one who could help, they aided the Black person somewhat more often (94% of the time) than the White perspon (81%). When there were other people and they thought their actions could be justified outside of racial factors, they helped the Black person way less (38%) than the White one (75%). In such situations prejudice is masked.
Benevolent Sexism (Peter Glick & Susana Fiske, 2001)
The researchers interviewed 15000 men and women in 19 nations and found that “benevolent racism” (chivalrous ideology marked by protectiveness and affection towards women who embrace conventional roles) often coexists with hostile sexism (dislike of nontraditional women and those seen as usurping men’s power). Thus, they argue that even seemingly positive stereotypes are not actually benign. Ambivalent and benevolent beliefs may be particularly resistant to change, because they allow the person to deny any prejudices. They inhibit progress toward equality.
Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Anthony Greenwald and Mazarin Banaji, 1995)
A test intended to reveal subtle, nonconscious biases, even among those who believe they are bias-free.
Setup: a series of words or pictures are presented on a computer screen. The respondent preses a certain key if it conforms to a pre-established rule, and a different key if it conforms to another rule. Researchers argue that participants will be faster to press the button for a particular group if they match stereotypes they already carry about them, compared to pressig the button for what contradicts these stereotypes.
Neuroimaging studies showed activation in the amygdala when looking at Black faces, correlating with their IAT results.
Priming
Priming (mental activation) procedures are also used to measure prejudices that people deny or are unaware of.
= the presentation of information designed to activate a concept and hence make it accessible easily
prime - stimulus presented to activate the concept at hand
Affect Missatribution Procedure (AMP)
Measures how people evaluate a stimulus after a given prime instead of how quickly they respond to it. They are shown a picture of a target group, which is then followed immediately by a neutral or unfamiliar image. The question is whether their feelings towards the initial group trasfer to the subjects’ evaluations of the following neutral image.Responses to the AMP have been related to political attitudes, measures of racial bias and smoking or drinking.
Realistic Group Conflict Theory
Prejudice and discrimination often arise from competition over limited resources. It predicts that prejudice and discrimination should increase under conditions of economic difficulty (recessions and periods of high unemployment). Those are also strongest among groups that stand to lose the most from another group’s economic advantage.
i.e., working class whites exhibited the most anti-Black prejudice during the Civil Rights Movement; jobs were at risk.
The theory was expanded to include that groups also compete for ideology and cultural supremacy. Profound ethnocentrism develops when group conflict plays out.
Ethnocentrism
Glorifying one’s group while vilifying other groups.
Robbers Cave Experiment (Muzafer Sherif, 1961)
Study: Robbers Cave Experiment (1954) – Muzafer Sherif
Objective: Investigate intergroup conflict and cooperation
Participants: 22 white, middle-class 11-year-old boys, all strangers to each other
Setting: Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma (summer camp)
Stages:
Group Formation: The researchers randomly divided the boys into two groups, with efforts being made to balance the groups’ physical, mental, and social talents. Neither group was aware of the other’s existence, as they were kept separate. They were encouraged to bond as two individual groups through the pursuit of common goals that required cooperative discussion, planning and execution (hiking, swimming, etc.)
Intergroup Conflict: Groups were introduced and placed in direct competition (tug-of-war, baseball, treasure hunt) with rewards for the winners, leading to hostility and prejudice. Name-calling turned into burned flags and ransacked cabins.
Conflict Resolution: Researchers introduced shared goals (fixing a broken water supply, pulling a stuck truck delivering food, having to procure a movie that the camp could not buy) that required cooperation, reducing intergroup hostility.
Key Findings:
* Competition breeds conflict and prejudice.
* Superordinate goals (shared objectives requiring cooperation) reduce intergroup tension.
Superordinate Goal
A goal that trascends the interests of any one group and that can be achieved more easily by two or more groups working together.
Minimal Group Paradigm (Henri Tajfel, early 1970s)
Henri Tajfel created groups based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria, then examined how their members behaved towards one another. Participants first performed a trivial task and were then divided into groups, on the basis of their responses (estimating the number of dots projected on a screen -> overestimators vs underestimators). They were actually randomly assigned to them, and then asked to allocate points transferable with money to two people they did not know nor see. The more points they gave to their in-group member, the less the out-group member received.
The MGP has been instrumental in demonstrating that mere categorization into groups is enough to trigger discriminatory behavior. Moreover, discriminatory behavior may occur without the need for conflict or competition between groups. These findings have profound implications for understanding social prejudice and intergroup relations.
Social Identity Theory (
This theory attempts to explain the ubiquity of ingroup favouritism. It refers to the idea that our self-esteem comes from our personal identity and accomplishemnts, as well as the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which we belong.
i.e., honey vs maple syrup experiment with Canadians.
Basking in reflected glory
Taking pride in the accomplishments of other people in one’s group, such as sports fans identifying with a winning team.
Our self-esteem is powerfully tied with out identity and group membership.
Outgroup Homogeneity Effect
The tendency for people to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups.
Own-race Identification Bias
The tendency for people to be better able to recognize and distinguish faces from their own race than from other races.
Contact Hypothesis (Gordon Allport,1954)
The contact hypothesis was first introduced by Allport in 1954. Prejudice can be reduced if members of different groups are in frequent contact with one another. Simple contact is however, not a magical solution. The groups must have equal status, a shared goal that requires cooperation that promotes a common ingroup identity, and community support. Even merely having a friend who is close to someone from an outgroup can reduce stereotyping and outgroup denigration. Intergroup contact should encourage one-on-one contact between members belonging to different groups, as it downplays their group identity.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis (Dollard & Miller, 1939).
The frustration-aggression hypothesis states that aggression is a result of frustration. When our drive to reach a goal is blocked by external factors, we experience frustration, which, in turn, creates an aggressive drive, and this can lead to aggressive behavior.
Catharsis
When we express this aggression physically, verbally, or by fantasizing, we experience catharsis, and our emotional tension is reduced.
Displacement
However, our aggression is not always expressed towards the legitimate target because it could be too dangerous and we risk punishment, or because this target is not available so we displace our aggressive response towards a less dangerous target or one who just happens to be present. This is called displacement.
System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994)
System Justification Theory posits that individuals have a physic psychological need to justify and rationalize the sociopolitical system they are part of, even if it doesn’t serve everyone equally. People who benefit from the system have both a psychological and economic incentive to defend it, while those who don’t benefit or are disadvanatged have primarily a psychological incentive to defend the system. Justifying reduces ideological dissonance more easily than trying to bring about effective change as protest is difficult and justifying the status code is easier. This explains why some women believe that they deserve to be paid lower than men.
Stereotype Content Model (Fiske et al., 2002)
The nature of different stereotypes varies systemically depending on how the groups in questions are evaluated on the dimensions of warmth and competence.
Key Dimensions:
Warmth – Is the group perceived as friendly or competitive?
* High warmth: Seen as trustworthy, non-threatening.
* Low warmth: Seen as competitive, self-serving.
Competence – Is the group seen as capable or incapable?
* High competence: Respected, intelligent.
* Low competence: Pity, dismissed.
