Breaking Barriers + Milgram's study Flashcards
Steroetypes
beliefs or associations that link whole groups of people with certain traits or characteristics
Prejudice
negative feelings or attitudes towards others because of their connection to a particular social group
racisim
stereotypes, prejudice, and/or discrimination based on a person’s racial background
- Can include institutional or cultural practices that promote the dominance of one racial group over another
sexism
stereotypes, prejudice, and/or discrimination based on a person’s gender
Institutional or cultural practices that promote the dominance of one gender over the other
what is Social craterisation
- Refers to the process of grouping people based on shared characteristics
○ Can include groups based on age, gender, ethnicity, and other shared attributes - Allows us to save time and energy by using group membership to infer information about an individual
○ Can lead us to overestimate similarities between group members
○ Can affect perception of even basic features
Ingroup - Outgroup processes
- Ingroup: a group to which an individual belongs
- Outgroup: a group to which the individual does not belong
○ People typically feel a sense of membership, belonging, and identity in their ingroups
Outgroup Homogeneity effect
- People believe there are more similarities among members of an outgroup than there are among members if their own ingroup
○ Acknowledge that there are many differences among us but they are all the same
○ May have less contact with and less familiar with outgroup members than ingroup members
Dehumanising outgroup
- People process information about outgroup members similar to how we process objects of animals
○ Less empathy towards them
○ Increased violence and aggression
○ Decreased likelihood of helping
Increased blame and victimisation
Social dominance orientation (individual level)
Motivational process
the degree to which people see their ingroup as dominant over others
○ Positively associated with support of cultural values that lead to the oppression of other groups (more accepting of practices that disadvantage other groups)
System Justification Theory (societal level)
Motivational process
people are motivated to maintain the ‘status quo’
○ Even if this includes accepting and justifying social, political, and economic conditions that negatively impact their own group
Ingroup favouritism
- People tend to favour their own ingroup over other outgroups
- Occurs across many cultures, nations, languages, religions etc.
○ Can operate even at low levels, when groups are considered minimally important
- Occurs across many cultures, nations, languages, religions etc.
Social identity theory
- Individuals are constantly trying to enhance their own self-esteem comprised of
○ Personal identity: self-esteem boosts from personal achievements
○ Collective or social identities: self-esteem boosts from belonging to successful groups
§ Explain why they value their own groups achievements over outgroups ones
Predictions of Social Identity Theory
- Threats to self-esteem will increase the need for ingroup favouritism
○ Want to maximise social identity = enhance self-esteem - Expressions of ingroup favouritism will enhance self-esteem
less likely to be obvious mistreatment more like providing more experiences and opportunities for ingroup members (more implicit)
Cultural influences of why stereotypes etc. occur
- When you join a new group you learn about the rules, norms and information shared
○ Learning the stereotypes that are commonly held
○ How valued or not values certain groups are
○ Which prejudices are considered culturally acceptable
Gender stereotypes + culture
- Boys = Blue, trucks, tools AND Girls = Pink, dolls, makeup
- E.g. Mothers watching children engage in risky play behaviours (told when they would intervene)
○ Mothers of daughters intervened more frequently and earlier
○ Mothers of daughters: “Be careful”
○ Mothers of sons: encouraged them to keep playing
Social role theory
- Small gender differences are magnified and perceived as greater due to the contrasting social roles often occupied by men and women
○ Society kind of incorrectly perceives that men and women are wholly based in actual behaviour differences and neglects the influence of unequal distribution of men and women in social and cultural roles
persist due to confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecy
Process of social role theory
- Division of labour between men and women
- People behaviour in ways that align with their social roles
- Behaviour differences overestimate the biological basis or behavioural basis of these differences and neglect social influences
Explain Attribution and subtyping
- People tend to use situational factors to explain away people who don’t align with their stereotypical beliefs
○ E.g. seeing a women who holds a high power job without children believe that she got lucky or who is cut-throat and doesn’t hold any maternal instincts
- Categorise ‘exceptions’ to the stereotype into a different subtype, rather than updating their stereotypical beliefs
Stereotype threat
- When individuals or groups experience concern about being evaluated based on negative stereotypes that exist about their groups
- Can negatively impact performance
Reducing stereotype threats
- Describing a task as irrelevant to intellectual performance
- Informing individuals that their group doesn’t typically perform worse than another group
- Presenting a role model from their own group who performs well
- Highlighting other aspects of identity that promote better performance
- Anything that increases feelings of trust and safety
- Reducing the perception that there are low expectations based on group identity
- Increasing an individual’s sense of belonging
Cognitive approaches to reducing stereotypes etc.
- Learning about group variability (reduce outgroup homogeneity effect)
- Encouraging reflective thinking and taking multiple perspectives (reduce ingroup-outgroup favouritism and social dominance orientation)
Educational interventions and/or media interventions that increase exposure to diverse groups of people
- Encouraging reflective thinking and taking multiple perspectives (reduce ingroup-outgroup favouritism and social dominance orientation)
Systemic Level Changes to reducing stereotypes etc.
- Policies, programs, and legislation to protect against acts of prejudice and discrimination
Discrimination laws have been shown to positively influence attitudes towards a previously discriminated group
Difference between science and common sense
- Conceptual schemes and theoretical structures
- Systematic and empirical tests of theories and hypotheses
- Uses a control to rule out alternative explanations
- Ascertain whether relations between phenomena are casual
Avoids explanations that cant be tested
