WEEK 3 - Influencing Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination Flashcards
What are steroytypes
Generalised beliefs about a group often their characteristics e.g., traits, intelligence
What are descriptive steroytypes
Describe the characteristics that group are believed to have
Women talk more than men
What are Prescriptive stereotypes
Describe the characteristics that people expect members of that group to have.
Older people should share their life’s savings with their children
What is predjudice
Biased evaluations (good-bad) of a group and its
members (“pre-judging”)
What are opinions
feelings and attitudes about person or group
How are prejudice and emotion linked?
“Defeated intellectually, prejudice lingers
emotionally
What is discrimination
The differential treatment of groups or individuals on the basis of their group membership.
Behaviours, policies, practices
- Interpersonal discrimination
- Institutional discrimination
What is sterotype application
“the extent to which one uses a stereotype to judge a member of the stereotyped group”
What is the typical working model for stereotypes, prdudice and discrimination?
Stereotypes → Prejudice
Prejudice → Discrimination
What are other plausable models for stereotypes, prdudice and discrimination?
Stereotypes ← Prejudice
Prejudice ← Discrimination
Stereotypes and prejudice: example women in gaming
Stereotypes
men’s and women’s capacities and interests
Prejudiced attitudes
Men = interested in and good at games
Women = not interested in and bad at games
Discrimination
women’s fewer job opportunities
greater workplace harassment
Broader influence on society
What is Implicit bias
- Unconscious and/or automatic mental associations
- Refers to both “implicit stereotypes and implicit prejudices”
What is the impact of implicit bias on behaviour?
particularly given the potential for this to lead to discrimination in important domains (e.g., health care, law enforcement, employment, criminal justice and education).
Are stereotypes justified
- groups differ in real ways e.g., practices, norms, beliefs
- stereotypes may contain “grains of truth
- stereotypes may be Over-generalisation
–> applied to ALL group members where exceptions occur, ignore these or “bracket them off” (subtyping)
Are stereotypes valid?
Motivated reasoning (e.g., by prejudice/ discrimination goals)
e.g., stereotyping to justify poor treatment
stereotypes may lead to
biased hypothesis testing – we look for information that confirms stereotype
What are self-fufilling prophecies
our actions contribute to stereotyped behaviour
Example:
Stereotype employee as lazy
–>
Treat employee as lazy
–>
Employee motivation and performance declines
–>
Employee actually becomes lazy
Is discrimination valid?
Often easier to interact/exchange with in-group members than with outgroup members
- for outgroups, we may need to understand and negotiate different rules and expectations
But in-group bias can undermine benefits to society
- power differentials, marginalised groups, stratified society
- lose access to useful ideas and perspectives
Discrimination may contrast with other cultural values
- e.g., in Australia: equality and tolerance
Social identity perspective
- Our group memberships contribute to how we feel about ourselves (self-esteem or positive self-regard)
Group memberships are defined in relation to other groups
- “in-group” implies “outgroup”
- a specific comparison group (e.g., Australians v. NZ’s)
- a more general “not us”
We favour in-groups over outgroups
- good in-group outcomes contribute to our positive self regard
- findings in real settings are mixed-we don’t always favour in-groups
