intergroup cognition Flashcards
Implicit biases
what’s uncontrollable (automatic) and not accessible via introspection
- Automatic, unconscious, uncontrollable
explicit biases
Controllable and accessible via conscious thought
- Deliberate, intentional consciously accessible
Unconscious processes can influence …
conscious process
what are social categories?
How we represent gender, sexual orientation, nationality, belief system, religion
Sources of intergroup cognition
Experience, Peers and family, Media, Biology
Aboud states that…
Ingroup liking emerges before dislike of outgroup (explicitly)
Age 3/4 for ingroup liking
Outgroup dislike after age 7
Bigler, Jones & Lobliner state that…
Children seems to spontaneously form categories and prefer ingroup members (by age 6)
In schools - racially mixed, all black, all white…
children in all white schools show more hostility towards black transgressor, whereas white children in racially mixed school show no difference in black or white transgressor
what is the racial development bias?
Developmental decrease in negative attitudes toward the outgroup, developmental increase in negative behavior toward the outgroup
race bias timeline
Emerges by age 3 or 4
Peaks near age 7
Declines through adolescence
what happens to interracial friendships as kids get older?
they reduce
how does discrimination present in adults?
Housing
Employment
Healthcare
Education
limitations of explicit measures
Access: we don’t have access to everything our brain might be processing
Social desirability: People don’t want to offend, don’t want negative judgements
Implicit Association Test
The faster you are to respond, the stronger the association
IAT in adults
How friendly you are with people of different racial groups
Hiring - who you hire
Voting - who you vote for
Medical treatment - Less likely to recommend treatment that involved more patient-doctor interaction
where do biases come from?
Parents, peers, media, personal experience
(learned gradually, and are early and automatic)
Implicit Intergroup Preference: European-Americans
european-americans:
- 6-year olds greater percentage chose white over black
- 10 year olds, drops but still choose white over black
- Adults show no preference
Latino group
In adults:
- When comparing their identity to white - no preference
- When comparing their identity to black - clear preference for their own group
Development of Implicit Social Group Preferences
early acquisition, group membership, stable across development
change with implicit and explicit group biases
With age, explicit intergroup preferences changes
Implicit intergroup preferences remains fairly constant
How is the pattern of development of implicit intergroup bias different from the development of explicit intergroup bias?
Implicit remains stable across dev, with age, bias becomes more egalitarian
Rudman’s Four Sources of Implicit Bias
culture, early interactions/impressions, affective experiences, cognitive consistency principles
cognitive consistency principles
Our associations ought to make sense - ought to be linked to one another/correlated with one another
Psychological Essentialism
how we reason about an object’s identity
3 parts of essentialism
- categories are real and discovered
- Belief that some unobservable property (essence) causes things to be the way they are
- belief that everyday words reflect this real structure of the world
- essentialism does NOT apply to human groups!
Essentialism on identity
Leads to beliefs about the stability of that identity for individuals and groups
- Membership/identity fixed at birth
- Highly resistant to change (immutable)
cues to essentialism
linguistic cues (e.g., noun labels), social cues (e.g., stereotypes), and cognitive cues (e.g., perceived similarity)
