Chapter 10 Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Question 1

What is parochial altruism?

Answer 1

Evolutionary perspective: individual sacrifice to benefit the in-group and harm an out-group; us vs. them thinking

Undermines inter-group cooperation

Question 2

What is pathogen avoidance?

Answer 2

Evolutionary perspective: strangers were potential sources of new pathogens for which immune defence is unprepared

Avoid people who are perceived as outgroup members
1) areas with high pathogen prevalence = more ingroupish
2) more fear of pathogens = more prejudice and stronger immune reaction

Question 3

How do you differentiate between prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes?

Answer 3

Prejudice (Affect) a negative attitude or affective response toward a certain group and its individual members

Discrimination (Behaviour) negative behaviour towards members of a particular group based on their membership in that group

Stereotypes (Cognition) beliefs about attributes that are thought to be characteristic of members of particular groups

Question 4

What does the theory of modern racism suggest?

Answer 4

The idea that even though explicitly the prejudice against certain racial groups are rejected, there are still implicit feeling of superiority or being highly suspicious of those minority racial groups

Modern racism is expressed when people can come up with a justification or “disguise” for their discriminatory actions

Question 5

What is “benevolent” sexism?

Answer 5

A chivalrous ideology marked by protectiveness and affection toward women who embrace conventional roles

Benevolent sexist attitudes are particularly resistant to change because the “positive” aspects of the attitudes enable those who hold them to deny any prejudice.

Question 6

What is hostile sexism?

Answer 6

Dislike of nontraditional women and those seen as usurping men’s power

Question 7

What is the relationship between benevolent sexism and hostile sexism?

Answer 7

Benevolent sexism seems nice but inhibits social progress on equity as they amplify hostile sexism. people may act nicely towards figures who fulfill their idealized image but be more hostile to those who deviate from the stereotype

Question 8

What is implicit association test (IAT)?

Answer 8

A technique for revealing subtle, nonconscious biases toward different stimuli, particularly groups of people

e.g., implicit bias towards the old and the Blacks

IAT score can also be predictive of behavior

Question 9

What is the procedure for priming?

Answer 9

The presentation of information designed to activate a concept and, hence, make it accessible. A prime is the stimulus presented to activate the concept in question.

Question 10

What is the affect misattribution procedure (AMP), a variant of priming procedure?

Answer 10

Measures how people evaluate a stimulus after a given prime instead of how quickly they respond to it

e.g., rate Chinese pictograph after seeing a Muslim face

Question 11

What are the three perspectives that look at the causes of stereotyping, prejudice, or discrimination?

Answer 11

1. The economic perspective
2. The motivational perspective
3. The cognitive perspective

Question 12

What is realistic group conflict theory? (Economic perspective)

Answer 12

Groups develop prejudices about each other and discriminate against one another when they compete for
1) limited material resources
e.g., under conditions of economic difficulty (recession or periods of high unemployment)

Strongest among groups that stand to lose the most from another group’s economic advance, e.g., white blue collars fear of losing jobs after Black people enter the competing ground
2) ideology and cultural supremacy, e.g., whose God should be worshipped, what should be on the TV and internet

Question 13

What is the idea of ethnocentrism?

Answer 13

Glorifying one’s own group and vilifying the other group

People view out-group members in stereotypical ways and intensity in-group loyalty

Question 14

What does the Robbers Cave Experiment illustrate?

Answer 14

Relationships between groups or intergroup hostility could be improved by having superordinate goals—goals that could only achieved by both groups working together

Question 15

What is the idea of a Jigsaw Classroom?

Answer 15

Students are divided into small groups of about six students each. Every effort is made to balance the groups in terms of ethnicity, gender, ability level, leadership, and so on. The material on a given topic is then divided into six parts, and each student is required to master one part and teach it to the others.

Results: Students in jigsaw classrooms like school more, perform better, and develop more positive attitudes toward different ethnic groups than students in traditional classrooms do.

Question 16

What is the minimal group paradigm? (related to ingroup favouritism)

Answer 16

Groups created based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria to examine how the members of these minimal groups behaved toward one another

Results: People are more interested in maximizing the relative gain for members of their ingroup over the outgroup than they are in maximizing the absolute gain for their ingroup.

Question 17

What does motivational theory explain?

Answer 17

The motivational theory explains why once a distinction is made, we treat those we consider “us” better than those we consider “then”

Question 18

What does the social identity theory suggest about ingroup favoritism?

Answer 18

Our self-esteem comes not only from our personal identity and accomplishments but also from the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which we belong
People who feel uncertain about themselves are especially motivated to identify with and derive self-esteem from their group memberships.

Basking in reflected glory: the tendency to identify with a winning team and take pride in their accomplishments, e.g., sports fans

Question 19

Can denigrate outgroups bolster one’s self-esteem?

Answer 19

Yes. The results demonstrate that feeling down on oneself (a rater who had received negative feedback) can make a person more likely to denigrate the outgroup (rate the Jewish candidates more poorly). (B) Raters who had received negative feedback and subsequently denigrated the outgroup member received a boost in self-esteem from doing so.

Question 20

How do people use stereotypes to conserve mental resources?

Answer 20

When people are tired, overloaded, or mentally taxed, they tend to act in a stereotypical way.

e.g., Providing participants with an applicable stereotype made it easier for them to recall stereotypically consistent information, thereby allowing them to conserve mental energy for use in other tasks, such as taking the quiz on Indonesia.

Question 21

What is the relationship between distinctiveness and illusory correlations?

Answer 21

Illusory correlations: People sometimes “see” correlations (relationships) between events, characteristics, or categories that are not actually related.
People pay extra attention to negative behaviours members of minority groups exhibited

Paired distinctiveness: the pairing of two distinctive events that stand out because they occur together

Study: Doubly distinctive events, such as negative actions performed by members of minority groups, tend to stand out and exert a disproportionate influence on judgments. In this study, participants attributed more of the negative behaviors to the minority group than the minority group members were actually responsible for.

Question 22

How can stereotype be reinforced by self-fulfulling prophecies?

Answer 22

people act toward members of certain groups in ways that encourage the very behavior they expect to see from those groups.

The way a person treats members of a specific group can elicit behavior that confirms the person’s preexisting stereotypes.

Question 23

What does subtyping mean?

Answer 23

Explaining away exceptions to a given stereotype by creating a subcategory of the stereotyped group that can be expected to differ from the group as a whole

One way they do this is by attributing behavior consistent with a stereotype to the dispositions of the people involved and attributing behavior inconsistent with a stereotype to external causes

Question 24

What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?

Answer 24

The tendency for people to assume that within group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups

Question 25

What is own-race identification bias?

Answer 25

The tendency for people to be better able to recognize and distinguish faces from their own race than from other races

Question 26

What was an early idea to reduce prejudice that did not work out?

Answer 26

Contact hypothesis: making members of different groups in frequent contact does not reduce prejudice

Question 27

What are some conditions to be met if we want group interactions to be more positive and productive?

Answer 27

1. the group needs to have equal status
2. different groups must have a shared goal that requires cooperation
3. community support: a community’s broader social norms must support intergroup contact
4. intergroup contact should encourage one-on-one interactions between members of the different groups

Question 28

What is the difference between multiculturalism and color-blindness?

Answer 28

Multiculturalism views culture and ethnicity as central to people’s identities, we should acknowledge and appreciate the difference (show better results)
but may threat the white people lol and make them more exclusive towards other groups

On the other hand, color-blindness argues that identities should be downplayed or ignored and that people should treat others as unique individuals.

Question 29

What is the impact of diversity training in companies?

Answer 29

The effects of diversity training appear to be limited, suggesting the need to incorporate elements of other approaches to reducing prejudice—such as fostering cooperation between members of different groups in order to achieve shared, superordinate goals—into workplace environments.

Members of underrepresented groups may be prompted to doubt their own competence when companies emphasize diversity initiatives.