Final - Lectures Flashcards
All ordinary people are prejudiced, what process explains this?
Categorization!!
We love to categorize things, including people, automatically (ex. gender, age, legal status, etc.)
Within our categories of people, what two things do we exaggerate that creates a recipe for prejudice?
- We exaggerate the differences between categories!
- We exaggerate similarities within categories! (within groups, everyone appears similar)
What is ingroup favoritism/ingroup bias?
We tend to think more highly of people who are a part of us (ingroup) and less highly of people who do not belong to us (outgroup).
AKA: we think of people close to us as good, and those around us as not so good
Is it possible to overcome ingroup favoritism?
It is very hard, but not impossible to overcome.
3 strategies we talked about in class to try and reduce it:
- other forms of self-affirmation
- decategorization
- recategorizaion
In research that use oxytocin to study ingroup bias, what has been the main finding?
Administering oxytocin does NOT lead to a reduction in ingroup prejudice, but actually leads to MORE ingroup prejudice
More trust for the ingroup, but not for those in the outgroup.
Explain the “other forms of self-affirmation” strategy for reducing ingroup favoritism
People have a motive to percive themselves positively - can do so through prejudice favoring ingroup over outgroup (the group I belong to is better than the groups I don’t belong to - more positive impression of themselves)
Other forms of self-affirmation could lead to the same outcome.
STRAGETY 1 (other forms of self-affirmation): If people are provided with some other way to feel good about themselves, then they may be less motivated to achieve that goal through prejudicial perceptions of ingroup and outgroup.
Explain the “decategorization” strategy for reducing ingroup favoritism.
Decategorization = information identifies people not just as members of us and them, but as individuals in their own right (people have their own names, features, etc.)
By highlighting those individual factors, you can break down category barriers
STRATEGY 2 (decategorization): If people are encouraged to perceive group members as distinct individuals, then it can weaken the categorical distinction between us and them.
Explain the “recategorization” strategy for reducing ingroup favoritism.
Recategorization = create a superordinate category for “us” that overarches everyone in a broad way.
Reduces differences between us and them because we are all part of a larger group.
STRATEGY 3 (recategorization): If people are encouraged to perceive that both ingroup and outgroup are part of some bigger superordinate category, then it can weaken the categorical distinction between “us” and “them”.
Looking at these results, what can we infer about recategorization and decategorization in real life?
Decategorization shows that it does not really change our opinion of “them”, but it does reduce this biased positive impression of “us”.
Recategorization does not change the ways we view “us”, but increases the way we positively view “them” because they now belong to this larger overarching group.
What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?
people tend to perceive members of out groups are similar and indistinguishable from each other.
(exaggerate similarities of out groups)
What is a consequnce of the outgroup homogeneity effect?
Relatively poor recognition memory for faces of outgroup members (the “they all look alike effect”)
- Real consequences in law enforcement (ex. Identifying criminals) → especially for members of outgroups, where there is a bigger risk of misidentifying an innocent person as being a criminal.
The “they all look alike effect”, refering to poorer recognition memory for outgroup faces, is exaggerated when….
people are especially concerned about fitting in with and belonging to their ingroup!
When people are concerned about belonging in their in group, they are especially focused on the ingorup and do not have the motivation to make the distinction for outgroup members.
When people feel like this, they are worse at recognizing out groups.
How can the “they all look alike” effect be reduced?
- Intergroup contact
(with more contact with people in outgroups, we develop an expertise at recognizing the distinguishing features of outgroups and reduce the outgroup homogeneity effect) - Can be reduced and disapear when people are perceiving angry faces
Explain the findings from this study in the context of the “they all look alike” effect.
Study resented for a short period of time with faces that were either black or white (with either neutral or angry facial expressions) and then tested for how they could recognize those faces later.
FINDINGS:
Neutral expressions = there is a very clear “they all look alike” effect → people had better recognition memory for faces of their ingroup not their outgroup
Angry expressions = very different outcome, no difference for ingroup members, but they did a lot better for out group members (just as accurately as ingroup)
Explain the process that is happening as to why we recognize outgroup members faces more when they are angry?
Whether someone is an ingroup or outgroup member, if they have an angry expression on their face, they are pretty relevant to me! (may be violent, do something, etc) → will motivate us to pay attention to who they are more!
We devote the additional cognitive effort to encode their facial features, which leads to increased accuracy.
OVERALL: we pay attention more to people when they have more relevance to us.
Explain the process that is happening as to why we recognize ingroup members faces more than outgroups when they both have neutral expressions?
If no threat, we do not find a need to encode outgroup faces because they are “irrelavent to us”
What is Benevolent Sexism?
Attitudes about women that seem positive in tone (e.g., women should be cherished) but nonetheless connote inferiority to men based on fragility, lack of competence, or need of help and protection.
*example of a stereotype that may seem positive, but is still problamatic
This attitude could lead to discrimination even though it comes from a positive stereotype
In general, what is a prejudice?
a negative evaluation of a social group or a negative evaluation of an individual that is significantly based on the individual’s group membership.
*very broad - it is helpful to look at prejudice plurals because they come in lots of different forms (contents of stereotypesprejudices matter!)
What is the stereotype content model?
Two big things people generally want to know about other people:
1. Friendly or unfriendly intentions (warmth)
2. Capability to carry out those intentions (competence)
Stereotype content model is focused on this idea that we care whether someone is nice or not and whether someone can carry out their intentions.
The stereotype content model involves what 3 things?
- Different stereotypes are attached to different categories of people
(ex. citizens, middle class, etc. are attached to high warmth, high competence stereotype, promoting admiration) - Different stereoypes evoke different emotional responses
(ex. if a group is stereotyped to be highly competent but low warmth → we create resentment or envy to that person) - Different emotions evoked from stereoypes have implications for different forms of prejudices and discriminations
Which of the 4 emotions from the stereotype content model would be evoked with benevolent sexism?
Pity! (high warmth, low competence).
Society views women as very kind and warm, but also in a way that connotes inferiority to men with a lack of competence and need of help/protection.
What does the emotion “contempt” mean withint the stereotype content model?
Contempt (low competence, low warmth)
form of discrimination where you might just ignore them/pretend they don’t exist
Some groups are associated with specific threats when people encounter them. When is the consequence of this?
When someone sees a member of a group and I associate that group with threats, alarm bells go off → can cause a bunch of emotional responses, including prejudicial beliefs that go along with that type of threat.
Will influence actions, potential forms of discriminatory behaviour!
When someone percives another group to pose threat, the level of emotional response/prejudicial beleif is influenced by what?
influenced by how vulnerable someone feels to that specific threat!!
**More vulnerable to threat = strongly prejudiced attitude
Less vulnerable to threat = less strong prejudicial attitude