Impression Formation II: Social Categorisation Flashcards
CATEGORISING
- assigning objects/people to discrete groups based on common characteristics
- consequences can be harmful BUT we can’t always do otherwise
WHY IS CATEGORISING EASY?
MACKNIK & MARTINEZ-CONDE (2011)
- thinking requires expensive brain activity
- energy = limited resource
- takes time/attention away from other tasks (ie. food/finding a mate/avoiding danger)
CHAOS
- categorisation prevents chaos, which humans are naturally wary of
- if everything is unique, we experience info overload
- categorisation = simplification
- categorisation = important fundamental cognitive ability
INITIAL CATEGORISATION
- AUTOMATIC
- UNINTENTIONAL
- EFFORTLESS
- UNCONSCIOUS
CATEGORISATION EVIDENCE
- we encode on the basis of physical cues (ie. age/ethnicity/gender)
- we add contained knowledge (aka. stereotypes/schemas)
- this affects judgement of/beh towards social groups and their members
MACRAE ET AL (1995)
PHASE 1. parafoveal priming aka. woman/Chinese person
PHASE 2. video aka. Chinese woman reading book
PHASE 3. LDT (Lexical Decision Task)
- prediction of priming influencing LDT
! CRITICAL !
- the categories we activate are influenced what is salient
- those that are less useful may be inhibited
PENDRRY & MACRAE (1996)
- role of motivation in categorisation (superordinate/subordinate categories)
- video of woman at work
- processing goal (accountability/clarity/height)
- LDT (women/business/female-coded language)
- more involved categorised at a deeper level
THE SHOOTER BIAS: BACKGROUND
CORRELL (2002)
- US black oppression
- research prompted by high police shootings of (particularly male) black people; speedy racial categorisation processes impacting such behs
- pps played videogame; photos of young men (1/2 white; 1/2 black) in a range of settings; 1/2 w/gun, 1/2 w/harmlesss object
TBS: PROCEDURE
CORRELL (2002)
- pps asked to press button saying if man was holding/not holding gun (aka. “shoot”/”don’t shoot”) on gut reaction
- pps most likely to his “shoot” for black males regardless of if they had a weapon
- reveals how accessible schemas can bias interpretation given to social events when time/processing capacity is limited
TSB: META-ANALYSIS
MEKAWI & BRESIN (2015)
- not all researchers study it in the same way
- different shooter bias definitions/method usage/interpretations
- contextual factors may affect outcome (ie. community racial make-up/state gun laws/individual prejudice)
TSB: M-A: FINDINGS
- all studies compared w/white males
- pps shot black armed targets fast, unarmed slower
- more likely to have liberal shooting threshold for shooting black targets = SHOOTER BIAS FOUND
- studies in more premissive gun law states found bigger effects
- studies in high POC neighbourhoods showed bigger effects (aka. contact hypothesis link theory)
MODERATING FACTORS OF THE SHOOTER BIAS
- EXPERTISE
- MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF SOCIAL CATEGORIES
- ECOLOGICAL VALIDIY OF 2D DEPICTIONS
- CONTEXT
- PREVALENCE OUTSIDE US
MFOTSB: EXPERTISE
CORRELL ET AL (2014)
JOHNSON ET AL (2018)
- experts (police officers) VS novices
- same effects not always found
MFOTSB: MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF SOCIAL CATEGORIES
BODENHAUSEN & PEERY (2009)
FRABLE (2007)
TODD ET LA (2020)
- results attenuated when dif categories are salient (ie. age)