Day 19: Identity and Culture Flashcards
Identity: Runner Example
Running Vs. Being a Runner
- You can participate in an activity without:
- Identifying with it - Saying/Knowing you do it
- Running, the act that runners do, could be part of another activity
- Soccer players vs. runners
- Intersectionality: Intersection of identities (in this case soccer and runner)
- Relationship between performance, identification, and connection to other activities
- Soccer players vs. runners
Intersectionality Example: Audre Lorde
“I am a black feminist lesbian poet, and I identify myself as such because if there is one other black feminist lesbian poet in isolation somewhere within the reach of my voice, I want her to know she is not alone.” - Audre Lorde
What is Identity?
- Identities are social rather than individual constructions
- Heavily influenced by social interaction
- Identity is no longer seen as a single, stable, fixed entity
- “It is a shifting, temporary construction” (Foucault)
- Identity is a performative
- “The act that one does, the act that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene. Hence, gender and race are acts which have been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again” (Butler, Gender Trouble)
Identity According to James Gee
- At a given time and place, a person engages in what Gee calls a “combination”
- Combination: Some specific way of combining the following things:
Speaking (or writing in a certain way)
Acting and interacting in a certain way
Using one’s face and body in a certain way
Dressing in a certain way
Feeling, believing, and valuing in a certain way
Using objects, tools, or technologies (i.e. “things”) in a certain way
Which Identity
- Sex
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Class
- Sexuality
- Gender
- (Dis)Ability
- Age
- Religion
- National Identity
- Regional Identity
- Cyber Identities
- Parental Status
- Interests
- Education
- Jobs
- Professional
- Majors
- Friends
- Family
- Choices
- Values
- Survivor
- Many more
Why Categorize?
- Our social world is very complex and thus presents us with too much information
- Since our capacity to process information is limited, our social world needs to be simplified
- One way to avoid this information overload is through social categorization
- The information is used in social categorization is stereotypes
Stereotype Formation
- Stereotypes: Are schemas about groups of people; Set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category
- Social categorization simplifies processing
Sociocultural views on stereotypes
- Stereotypes are a salient part of our social and cultural environment
- We learn them through daily interactions, conversations and through the media
- Stereotypes are simplified mental images which act as templates to help interpret the social world
- Stereotyping is an automatic cognitive process
Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
- Stereotype: Belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of particular groups (Cognition)
- Prejudice: A negative (or positive) attitude toward a certain group that is applied to its individual members (Emotion)
- Discrimination: Denial of equal treatment and opportunity of members of a particular group based on their membership in that group (Behavior)
Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination Example
- Stereotype: People in racial group are all bad/stupid/lazy/smart/athletic/rich
- Prejudice: I don’t like people in racial group, so I don’t like Bob because he is a member of this group
- Discrimination: Bob applied for a job in my company, but I won’t hire him, because he’s in Racial Group
Social Identity Theory
- Social Identity: Our self-concepts formed by being members of various social groups
- Based on intergroup behaviors rather than interpersonal ones (can have many)
Minimal Group Paradigm
- Assigned randomly to meaningless groups
- Assigned points to anonymous members of both their own and other group
- Even the most minimal conditions were sufficient to encourage ingroup favoritism
Why does identity matter?
- Stereotype threat: Situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group
Gender stereotype threat
- Only happens when: You say that gender is important to the task
- The women in question are high identifiers as ‘women’
- Seems to be due to effects on working memory
- We are not consciously aware of the effects of stereotype threat
- Thinking about stereotypes others hold of us uses up cognitive resources
When does Identity matter?
- Identity salience: The likelihood the identity will be invoked in diverse situations
- Context matters!