Week 4-Bias and Discrimination Flashcards
Define prejudice
An adverse (harmful) opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge has been acquired.
Define stereotype
A standardised mental picture that’s held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgement.
How are we biased in physical appearance? (social cognition)
Asch 1946: our response to others is based off the primacy effect (more weight put on the first info we receive about someone i.e., appearance)
-Halo effect
Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972: physically attractive people seen as good in skill and morality superiority.
Knapp, 1978: Taller men receive higher starting salaries than shorter men.
What’s a schema according to Hogg and Vaughan, 2008?
A set of interrelated cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allows us to quickly make sense of a person, situation, event or place on the basis of limited info. Certain cues activate a schema and the schema then fills in the missing info.
■ ‘The filing cabinet of the mind’ or ‘computer desktop of the mind’
■ This is generally very useful e.g. visit to a restaurant
■ Allows us to function in a complex world e.g. chair example
■ Resistant to change
What are the types of schema?
Some schemas relate to oneself:
– Scripts – e.g. how to behave in a restaurant
– Self-schemas – e.g. actual self, ideal self and ought self
Some schemas relate to other people:
– Person schemas: schematic impression of a specific person – e.g. our best friend or a famous celebrity
– Role schemas: e.g. a lecturer or a pilot – an
impression of how they should behave
How do we use stereotypes?
■ If our person schema or role schema is based on widely held social assumptions about that person or role, due to their group identity, we are using a stereotype
■ Stereotypes can be true or false, but even if true they tend to be generalised and sweeping
■ At their best they allow us to function swiftly and effectively in a complex social world
■ We struggle to process information which contrasts with the stereotype we hold about a person - the intelligent boxer, the shy celebrity. Incongruous information is often ignored or forgotten (Haire & Grune, 1950)
What are the effects of prejudice?
■ Social Stigma – developed with negative stereotypes
■ Devaluation of a social identity
■ Can be visible (physical size) or hidden (AIDS sufferer)
■ Increased prejudice against ‘controllable’ stigma
■ Allows for downward comparisons (perhaps for a number of groups), which may boost self esteem
■ Justifies unjust power systems
■ Defends the ‘worldview’ – important for self esteem
■ Demonstrated in Tajfel’s minimal groups studies – we seek to maximise intergroup difference
What’s stereotype threat?
■ ‘Looking glass self’ (Cooley, Mead)
■ Prejudice inspires anxiety which worsens performance
■ Stone et al (1999) – golf study with black and white ps (Hypothesis is that awareness of the stereotypes=increased anxiety so do worse as a result)
– Sporting intelligence
– Natural athletic ability
■ Shih, Pittinsky & Ambady (1999) – Asian women and maths study (When Asian/women were primed they did better on the maths test)
■ Stereotype lift – Meta-analysis by Walton and Cohen (2002)
■ Some problems with recent attempts to replicate the effect
What are some examples of self-fulfilling prophecies?
■ Snowball effect (e.g., + response from teacher then + response from child and so on)
■ Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968):given tests to see students’ potential (deception they didn’t do the test) + asked teacher who would flourish (who experimenters/teachers predicted did fluorish and suggested it was due to teacher’s behaviour towards those students/paid more attention and more positive towards)
■ Eden (1990) (prediction for platoons’ similar idea to study above)
■ Good evidence for gender, less good for race and poor for socio-economic status - review by Jussim & Fleming (1996)
What’s Attributional Ambiguity?
■ Overt discrimination replaced by subtle discrimination – requiring implicit measures
■ Contrast between hostile and benevolent sexism
■ Attempts to redress discrimination and change institutional cultures - reverse/positive discrimination (but tokenism)
■ Aversive racism – anxiety and apathy (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008; Trawalter et al, 2009)
■ All leads to attributional ambiguity – suspicion and mistrust in relationships
■ Online discrimination is often still overt (Munger, 2017)
What are some explanations for prejudice?
■ Inherent fear of the unfamiliar – as omnivores we are neophilic (like new things) and neophobic (dislike new things)
■ Mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968)
■ Evolved fear of other groups (dangerous/competitors?)
■ Learned
■ Barrett & Short (1992): 5 – 10-year-old children prefer Spaniards to Germans (duo to associations S=energetic, funny/G=sober, not as funny)
■ Parental prejudices passed on through: modelling, operant conditioning, classical conditioning
What’s an authoritarian personality?
■ Adorno et al (1950)
■ Arose from consideration of the Holocaust (Shoah)
■ Proposes that harsh parenting leads to ambivalence towards parents (love/hate) leading to authoritarian personality
■ Excessive respect for authority, obsession with status, displacing anger onto weaker others, intolerance of uncertainty, difficulties with intimacy
■ Lots of research but mixed evidence
What are some critiques of the authoritarian personality?
■ Pettigrew (1958) White South Africans and Northern US citizens were similar for personality but different in terms of racism
■ Numerous examples of rapid changes in attitude to outgroups: anti-semitism in Germany (1930s), Racist attitudes against Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbour, attitudes vs. Argentineans after Falklands War, attitudes against Muslims following 9/11 (Amer & Bagasra, 2013).
What’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism?
■ Altemeyer (1998)
■ Attitudes rather than personality measured with RWA scale split into 3 subscales:
■ Conventionalism (how they should behave and conform), authoritarian aggression (authority legitimate in their force e.g., fines), authoritarian submission
■ May vary with context (Stenner, 2009)
What’s Social Dominance Theory?
■ Social Dominance Orientation = acceptance of myths which justify unequal status quo (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)
■ People at the top defend the status quo so as to maintain privileged status
■ System Justification theory=people from lower groups defend hierarchy (Jost & Van der Torn, 2012)
■ Defence of status quo so as to avoid uncertainly anxiety even if this results in personal marginalisation
■ Relates to internalised racism (David et al, 2019)
What’s Social Identity Explanation?
■ We categorise ourselves and others
■ We seek positive differentiation so as to enhance our self esteem
■ Patterns of bias become established as defining norms
■ Hierarchies of identities are formed
■ Also escape from a low-status personal identity to a constructed ‘high status’ social identity set
What’s the pernicious (harmful) nature of prejudice?
■ Necessity of categorization and schema formation for normal human functioning
■ Power of ingroup bias for raising self-esteem
through the adoption of a positive social identity
■ Makes prejudice hard to combat
Sexism: ‘Woman’ as a social construction: What is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex? (1949)
■ ‘Femininity’ is a social construction of the quintessential other – constructed by men
■ Women are the ‘second sex’ – defined in relation to men due to male power
■ Female norms include, lack of education, female passivity, dependence on men
■ Femininity was culturally defined by men so that women became a foil before which men appeared active, capable, necessary and strong
■ Women were also presented (by society) as overly emotional; expressions of women’s anger or pain was dismissed as hysteria
What’s Optimal Distinctiveness?
■ We seek to be distinct from and superior to outgroups so as to enhance our self-esteem
■ Achieved by positive reflection on the norms of the in-group
■ E.g., assertions of men as strong, adventurous, capable, knowledgeable
■ Control of the outgroup allows for the norms of the outgroup to be defined by the ingroup (men) so as to enhance the ingroup further by comparison
■ E.g., assertions of women as weak, passive, needy and uneducated
What’s Structural Misogyny?
■ Established norms of male empowerment and female marginalisation maintain male control over society and the norms of the female identity
■ This marginalisation becomes ’normal’ and ‘common sense’
■ Men love their wives, fathers their daughters, sons their mothers but all within a social order which through the passing centuries marginalises
women
■ Example: norm of ‘women should not be educated’
What was Moss-Racusin et al.’s (2012) research on sex inequalities?
■ Participants = 127 members of science faculties (biology, chemistry & physics) from a range of Universities across the USA
■ Believed they were evaluating a real student who wished to pursue a career in science
■ Received the student’s CV; only the sex of the applicant was varied
■ Participants rated the student’s perceived competence, their own likelihood of hiring the student, an annual starting salary they would offer, how much mentoring they would provide to the student
■ Both male and female faculty members viewed the female student as being less, competent, were less likely to hire them, would start them on a lower
starting salary and would give them less mentoring
What is Orientalism (1978) according to Edward
Said?
■ The ‘Orient’ is a semi-mythical construct – an abstract antithesis of the West
■ A mixture of racist and romanticised stereotypes have formed – ‘Orientals’ are presented as lazy, suspicious, gullible, mysterious, untruthful, weak,
barbaric and irrational
■ This allows for a contrasting presentation of westerners as hard working, fair, wise, open, honest, capable, civilised and rational
■ These norms were established and maintained by colonial rule, academic studies and media depictions
■ This also creates a worldview which justifies Western colonialism, imperialism and political interference
What have recent psychology studies found in regard to racism?
■ Black students are more likely to be expelled from school than white students because white students are perceived as being more compliant (Okonofua et al, 2016)
■ White home-owners are perceived as cleaner and more responsible than black homeowners leading to disparities in perceived property value (Bonam et al, 2016)
■ Sanctioning of racial harassment on twitter by an in-group white interlocuter was more effective at reducing such harassment than were sanctions from an outgroup black interlocuter (Munger, 2017)
What is structural racism?
■ De-humanization – e.g., 18th century language in context of the trans-Atlantic slave trade
■ Infra-humanization – a legacy of lessening the humanity of black people
