Chapter 10: sterotypes, prejudice and discrimination Flashcards
Define stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
Stereotypes: cognition, belief that certain attributes are characteristics of members of a particular group
Prejudice: affect, an emotion based attitude toward a group and its members
Discrimination: behavior, an unfair treatment of individuals based on their membership in a particular group
Define modern racism and why it is a so-called “contemporary” form of racism.
Modern racism can also be referred to as symbolic racism or subtle racism, it is a belief that it is no longer an issue that disadvantaged groups are responsible for their own social and economic inequalities. Chatacteristics could be denial of racism, resistance to polices aimed at reducing inequality, negative stereotyping, avoiding personal responsibility. It is considered conepmorary because of the legal and social progression, the cultural norms against prejudice, and framing as non racial issues.
What is benevolent prejudice, and why can it be harmful?
Benevolent prejudice is when not all stereotypes are necessarily negative, some include favourable assessments of abilities or positive attitudes toward group members. However the this can be harmful because is can be used to justify holding other negative stereotypes and might disparage members that don’t fit the positive stereotype keeping certain people at a lower status position.
How does implicit bias differ from explicit bias, and how are each measured?
Implict bias: refers to unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, or associations that influence an individuals thoughts, feelings and beahviours toward certain groups often without their conscious awareness or control. – measured by implicit association test (IAT) which assesses the strength of automatic associations between concepts and evulations, faster responses to stereotype to consistent pairings than stereotype incocnsitent pairing suggest implicit bias. Another way is through priming tasks, or behvioaur observations such as body language, tone of voice and eye contact.
Explict bias: involves conscious attitudes or beliefs that individuals are aware of and can report – intentional and reflect personal beliefs and prejudices. It is controlled and deliberate, shaping ones values and at times societal norms and context. This is measured through self report surveys, interviews and behavioural choices.
Describe the economic, motivational, and cognitive perspectives of intergroup bias.
Motiviational perspective: prejudice can result from motivations to feel good about oneself and ones social groups, as a result people often see social groups as us vs them, inidividuals motivated to express ingroup favoritism
Coginitive perspective: prejudice can result from the by products of our cognitive systems, caterogize stereotypes and conserve mentl energy but can lead to prejudice/discrimination
Economic perspective: identify the root of intergroup hositility in competeting interests that can put groups against eachother often resulting to intergroup competition also for cultural and ideonological supremacy.
Discuss Realistic Group Conflict Theory and its application to intergroup conflict.
Realistic group conflict theory: intergoup conflict arises when groups compete for scares resources. This competition leads to negative attitudes, stereotypes and discrimination between groups. Key principles are competition, zero sum thinking (what the group gains vs losses), and interdependence that conduct can reduce if group has cooperation with benefits. Application to this could be economic competition, social and political division and sport rivalries.
Summarize Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment and its implications for reducing intergroup hostility.
The Sherifs robbers cave experiment was when two groups of boys were split up to foster song ingroup identity within cooperative tasks. When competition takes place for limited resources hostility and fights occur. At the end of the study the groups are not required to work together which reduced hostility and fostered unity. The implications of reducing intergroup hostility is that competition leads to conflict, but cooperation can reduce intergroup hostility. Practical applications include designing inclusive polices and fostering collaborative projects.
Describe Tajfel’s minimal group paradigm and what it reveals about ingroup bias.
In Tajgels minimal group paradigm it demonstrated ingroup bias by having meaningless group divisions where participats were randomly assigned to groups based on criteria. They were then asked to allocate rewards to members of their own group and outgroup. The study found that participants consistnatly favored their ingroup even when it was at expense of maximizing total rewards for all showing a bias without competition, conflict or interaction between the groups.
Define Social Identity Theory and summarize the findings concerning intergroup bias and group-based self-esteem.
Social identity theory: suggests that individals have part of their self esteem from their group membership. Key principles of this being social categorization, social identification, and social comparison. On intergroup bias, ingroup favoritism, outgroup detogation and group based self esteem was shown. Applications of this include behaviours of nationalism, organizational loyalty and ethnic or religious conflicts.
What does the research on stereotypes and mental energy suggest?
Stereotypes act as cognitive shortcuts to help conserve mental energy. Effort reduction occurs when stereotyping simplifies complex social information reducing cognitive loads when processing new individuals or situations. A study was done that preformed simple tasks that were done better when relying on stereotypes suggesting stereotypes are free cognitive resources for other tasks.
Define and provide examples of paired distinctiveness and subtyping – how do both relate to intergroup bias?
Paired distinctiveness: the pairing of 2 distinctive events that stand out even more bc they occur together
Subtyping: actions consistent with stereotypes tend to be noticed, inconsistent actions ignored, dismissed or forgotten, explaining away expectations to a given stereotype of the stereotypes group that can be expected to differ from the group as a whole
What do studies on shooter bias reveal? What are the implications of this research?
Shooter bias: investigate the impact stereotypes on decisions to shoot in simulated scenarios particularly focusing on race. A study used a video game as a simulation where participants had to decide whether to shoot armed or unarmed individuals of different races, showing participants were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed black people compared to unarmed white people. There was hesitation shooting white people relative to black people. This shows a bias among participants of all races indicating the influence of societal stereotypes rather than soley personal prejudice. Time pressure and cognitive load ncreased any showing of biases. Implications of this are real world releventce: officers may unfairly use lethal force against black people meaning we ned better training for this, implicit racial stereotypes about danger can override consiocous efforts to act fairly under stress and time pressure, and policy and training should include advocacy for techniques of community policting to build trust.
Discuss the contact hypothesis and other strategies to reduce intergroup biases
Contact hypthosis : suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can reduce prejudice and improve relationships between groups. Some conditions for effective contact are: equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and support of authorities or norms. Other strategies to reduce intergroup bias are: superordinate goals (shared goals), perspective taking or empathy for others, individuation or focus on unique traits rather than group stereotypes, intergroup friendships, education and awareness, and normative changes.
