Chapter 3

Question 1

categorization

Answer 1

Psychologists define categorization as the process of simplifying the environment by creating categories (called social groups) based on observable characteristics (such as body size and face shape) that a particular set of people appear to have in common

Question 2

A key point is that snap judgments can be fraught with

Answer 2

bias

Question 3

subtype

Answer 3

Subtypes. Because people are members of all three basic categories simultaneously—a person is an older Asian male or a middle-aged Latina, for example—observers can create single categories, called subtypes, such as middle-aged Black woman, that incorporate all three pieces of information.

Question 4

practice qs popped up on pg 102

Answer 4

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Question 5

bottom up processint

Answer 5

Bottom-up processing is based on the observable characteristics of the people we encounter. Thus, the participants in Cohen’s (1981) study, described earlier, saw an image of a woman who had specific physical characteristics (such as gender, age, and manner of dress) which provided information for the perceivers to use to categorize her

Question 6

top down- good pic illustrating both TD and BU on pg 102

Answer 6

However, categorization is also affected by top-down processing in which perceivers call upon prior knowledge they have stored in memory and their expectations about interactions to classify others (Kawakami et al., 2017). So, when evaluating the woman in the video, participants in Cohen’s study relied on their stereotypes about either waitresses or librarians to decide which category she belonged to.

Question 7

racial phenotypic bias

Answer 7

the finding that the more prototypical of a category a person is, the more quickly and easily the person is categorized, is known as the racial phenotypical bias (Maddox, 2004).

Question 8

minority bias in categorization

Answer 8

Because biracial individuals often have ambiguous physical characteristics, they cannot be easily categorized. In these situations, perceivers often exhibit a minority bias in categorization; that is, they tend to classify the person as a member of the minority or socially subordinate group (or, more generally, as non-White) rather than as a member of the majority group

Question 9

minimal group paradigm

Answer 9

So, as we have noted, participants were alone, and the groups were created based on an unimportant variable rather than on an existing social group about which people had beliefs and feelings. In fact, placement into the “overestimator” or “underestimator” group was random and so was not based on the participants’ actual responses; therefore, any differences in how the groups were perceived could not have been due to real group differences. This procedure is known as the minimal group paradigm because it shows that ingroups and outgroups can be created from the most minimal conditions.

Question 10

cross-racial identification bias

Answer 10

In general, people of other races and ethnic groups “all look alike” to most perceivers, a phenomenon known as the cross-racial identification bias

Question 11

ingroup overexclusion.

Answer 11

Some people want to avoid treating outgroup members as though they were part of the ingroup; to accomplish this, they draw a tight circle around their ingroup, a bias called ingroup overexclusion. For these individuals, it is “safer” to misclassify people who are actually ingroup members as outgroup members (even though it means excluding some ingroup members) than to misclassify outgroup members as part of the ingroup—and thus extend ingroup privileges to the “wrong” people

Question 12

practice qs pg 114

Answer 12

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Question 13

For example, Javier Rodríguez-Ferreiro and Itxaso Barberia (2017) studied impressions of people from two districts in Barcelona. Citizens from the majority district and the minority district were described as having the same percentage of desirable or undesirable behaviors (see Table 3.1), but the majority group engaged in a higher number of desirable behaviors and fewer undesirable behaviors. Participants saw

Answer 13

an illusory correlation between place of residence and behavior—that is, they formed a positive impression of people from the majority district and a negative impression of people from the minority district.

Question 14

man first principle

Answer 14

As Anne Maass and colleagues (2014) note, there is a man-first principle that is reflected by the tendency for men to be mentioned before women when two-word phrases, such as brothers and sisters or king and queen, are employed.

Question 15

One problem is that, regardless of how researchers assess accuracy, determining the cutoff point for when

Answer 15

stereotypes are deemed accurate or inaccurate is difficult

Question 16

Humans process information quickly. The benefit of fast processing is efficiency, but the cost is

Answer 16

imprecision. When meeting someone for the first time, people rely on the basic social categories of age, race, and gender. However, perceivers readily recognize that people can belong to more than one basic category and so use more fine-grained social categories, called subtypes, when appropriate.

Question 17

Categorization is influenced by bottom-up processing, which is data driven and begins with the input we see in our visual field. Factors influencing bottom-up processes include..? what do ppl attribute physical weakness/submissiveness to? categ is inf by? how do ppl categ others? what else influences it?

Answer 17

attention to face shape and face prototypicality. People attribute physical weakness and submissiveness to adult baby-faces and dominance to faces with larger width-to-height ratios. Categorization is also influenced by top-down processing such as the information perceivers have stored in memory and their expectations. People tend to categorize others on the basis of characteristics that make them stand out from their surroundings, such as a man in a group of women. Contextual information, such as clothing and group composition, also influences categorization. Prejudiced people tend to focus on the categories they are prejudiced against and tend to take more time to categorize people who have ambiguous category membership

Question 18

Faces with prototypical features—those that are considered essential characteristics of a basic category—are processed quickly. Ambiguous faces are processed more

Answer 18

slowly, which can result in negative evaluations of those targets. When categorizing biracial faces, people exhibit a minority bias—that is, they tend to classify the person as a member of the minority or socially subordinate group rather than the majority or socially dominant group.

Question 19

One of the most natural cognitive tendencies is to divide the world into two groups—us versus them. The minimal group paradigm demonstrates how little it takes to start this division. As a result, people perceive a world in which they see

Answer 19

their own group as both diverse and deserving (ingroup bias) and other groups as all alike and less worthy (the outgroup homogeneity effect). When defining who is an ingroup member, people may overexclude others to avoid treating outgroup members as though they were part of the ingroup; this tendency is more common among prejudiced people. People also exhibit a cross-racial identification bias: They have difficulty drawing distinctions between members of other ethnic groups.

Question 20

Research on the ultimate attribution error shows that people believe their

Answer 20

own group’s negative behavior can be explained by situational factors, but the negative behavior of other social group members can be explained by their internal stable characteristics. When people explain the reasons for positive behaviors, these strategies are reversed: The other group’s positive behaviors are explained by situational factors and their own group’s positive behaviors are attributed to their stable traits.

Question 21

Some outgroups are dehumanized; that is, they are not perceived as having basic human characteristics or experiencing complex human emotions such as hope and regret. People appear to process information about members of dehumanized groups differently from groups that are seen as

Answer 21

more fully human. Members of dehumanized groups are seen as lower on the evolutionary ladder and they can be treated with indifference, callousness, and inattention.

Question 22

Social role theory recognizes that people form stereotypic beliefs from observing the world around them, but acknowledges that their tendency to give too little weight to situational factors tips the balance in these observations. When people notice distinctive events co-occurring with minority status, they can form

Answer 22

illusory correlations that misrepresent a group’s characteristics.

Question 23

Social groups are often portrayed stereotypically in the media and these depictions influence our stereotypic beliefs. Much of this research is correlational and, as such, cannot

Answer 23

determine causality; however, some experimental research has been conducted and the results support the hypothesis that the media affect people’s beliefs and behavior in both positive and negative ways.

Question 24

Stereotypes are conveyed through language. People prefer those who speak with “standard” accents and negatively stereotype those who do not, even though the idea that there is a “correct” accent is inaccurate. Messages conveyed through language also influence

Answer 24

stereotype formation. Some stereotypes appear to be more interesting and more easily communicated than others, which may play a role in stereotype transmission.

Question 25

The seemingly simple question of whether stereotypes are accurate has been perplexingly difficult to answer, in part because it is hard to determine when accuracy has been achieved. Moreover, assuming stereotypes are accurate can have

Answer 25

negative consequences, including people’s use of stereotypic beliefs to justify the status quo. Thus, researchers continue to debate the wisdom of trying to determine stereotype accuracy.