INTERGROUP RELATIONS

Question 1

Study of Intergroup relations focuses on the following three forms of intergroup relations:

Answer 1

Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination.

Question 2

Stereotypes

Answer 2

Stereotypes - simplified, but widely shared, beliefs about the traits of groups and the members.

• Humans act as “cognitive misers” (make cognitive heuristics).
• Can be seen as a heuristic understandings of groups and their members, simplified, but often having a grain of truth (Campbell, 1967).

Question 3

Prejudice

Answer 3

Prejudice - negative affection towards a group.

Question 4

Discrimination

Answer 4

Discrimination - negative treatment of a person based on their group membership.

Question 5

Why do stereotypes occur? (7 theories)

Answer 5

1) Cognitive Miser Approach
2) Less Contact with Out-groups
3) Mere act of Categorisation (Accentuation)
4) Personal Need for Structure (PNS)
5) Need for Cognitive Closure (NFCC)
6) Ideology (Authoritarianism)
7) SDO (Social Dominance Orientation)

Question 6

How do stereotypes & prejudice occur? (2 theories)

Answer 6

1) SIT (Social Identity Theory)
2) RGCT (Realistic Group Conflict Theory)

Question 7

Pendry & McCrae (1994) - Individuals will expend more of their limited cognitive resources on another person if they see that person as outcome-dependent !

Answer 7

• Told particiapnts they would work with an elderly woman named ‘Hilda’ on a problem-solving task and the best problem solvers would be eligible for a £20 prize.
  Outcome-dependent condition - participants were told that they would work together with Hilda to jointly produce solutions + would both receive the £20 prize if they were the most successful pair.
  Outcome-independent condition - participants were told that they and Hilda would each produce their own solutions + £20 would go to the best performing student and partner.

Q: “How characteristic are these traits of Hilda?”

• Half of participants were then just given a profile of Hilda.
• Another half of participants were given the profile + a cognitive load task (rehearse an eight-digit number while reading the profile).
• Results: Participants who expected to depend on Hilda later evaluated her in more accurate, less stereotypical terms than participants who did not. BUT this advantage disappeared under the cognitive load condition.
• Conclusion: People can be less prone to stereotyping others upon whom they depend – but only if they have the cognitive resources free to do so (if they were cognitively busy they relied more on stereotypes).

Question 8

Out-group homogeneity effect

Answer 8

Out-group homogeneity effect - an exaggerated perception that members of out-groups are more similar to each other than members of in-groups.

Due to 2 reasons -
1. More familiar with in-group members (so easier to think of many different examples).
2. More likely to use examples when judging in-groups but more categorical info when judging out-groups.

Question 9

Savitzky et al. (2016) - Out-group homogeneity effect may have important self-protective psychological function

Answer 9

• Participants who received negative comments from several people were more likely to see those people as alike.
• Conclusion: If we see the ‘haters’ as all the same, we can also see their negative comments are less credible, and thus less threatening to our self-image.

Question 10

Discrimination

Answer 10

Discrimination - the act of making unjustified distinctions between human beings based on the groups, classes or other categories.

Question 11

A Classroom Divided (1970)

Answer 11

• A Class Divided portrays the reunion of a group of students who had taken part in a bold experiment in 1970.
• The teacher, Jane Elliott, wanted to teach her third-graders a lesson in discrimination, so she told them that blue-eyed people were superior to those with brown eyes.
• Results: Those in the superior group made fun of the other group. The brown-eyed children were discriminated against because of just their eye colour !

Question 12

Personal Need for Structure (PNS)

Answer 12

• The more people are motivated to understand the world in simple terms, the more likely they are to rely on stereotypes and apply prejudice.
• People who score higher on PNS have a high preference for structure and clarity + get annoyed by ambiguity + stereotype more.

Question 13

Need for Cognitive Closure (NCC)

Answer 13

Need for Cognitive Closure (NCC) - a general desire to seek an answer on any given topic, any answer, compared to confusion or and ambiguity.

Question 14

Dijksterhuis et al. (1996) - High NCC scores & Stereotyping football fans

Answer 14

• Participants who scored higher on NFCC tended to recall more stereotype-consistent information about a group of football hooligans.

Question 15

Ideology - Authoritarianism

Answer 15

Authoritarianism - a form of social organization characterized by preference for, and submission to, authority.

Question 16

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)

Answer 16

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) - measures people’s preference for hierarchy within any social system.

• A general preference for hierarchical relations between groups.
• A desire for one’s own group to dominate.

Question 17

Pratto et al. (1994) - SDO & prejudice towards black and gay ppl

Answer 17

• Individuals who scored highly on SDO tended to be prejudiced towards a range of social groups, such as Black people and gay people, and opposed social policy measures designed to enhance the welfare and esteem of these groups.

Question 18

How do stereotypes form? - Realistic Group Conflict Theory (RGCT) (Sherif & Sherif, 1953)

Answer 18

Realistic Group Conflict Theory (RGCT) - a theory of intergroup relations (how hostility is created + how it can be solved).

• Explains intergroup behaviour with respect to the need to secure scarce resources.
• When competition occurs, prejudice form (suggests there is a real reason for group conflict).
• E.g. Business competition, sporting tournaments, wars over finite resources.

Question 19

Robber’s Cave Experiments (Sherif et al., 1946-1954)

Answer 19

• Inspired by the novel The Lord of the Flies.
• Aim: Wanted to study the development of conflict and prejudice.
• Created a summer camp called “Robbers Cave” for 11-year-old boys in rural Oklahoma.
• 22 children, ages 11-12.

The experiment had 3 phases -
1. Group attachment - arrived and were divided into groups.
2. Intergroup competition - contests between groups.
3. Intergroup reconciliation - tasks for working together.

• Results: Groups of boys got into conflict when they were put into competition + introduction of superordinate goals reduced ethnocentrism (negative classification of out-group members) (support for RGCT) !

Question 20

Limitations of The Robber’s Cave study

Answer 20

• Results cannot be generalised to adult populations (schoolboys were used as a sample) !
• Social Identity Theory (SIT) has a different view (prejudice happens automatically).
• What if there are NO resources to be gained?
• Left an important question unanswered – can socially significant displays of prejudice and ethnocentrism arise even when groups are not involved in a competitive situation?
• The boys chose to name their groups after predatory animals – rattle snakes and eagles. How might these choices have affected the normative climate of the camp? What other kinds of names might have been chosen and how might this have affected the results of this experiment?

Question 21

Category accentuation

Answer 21

Category accentuation - occurs when something is first categorized (for example: person, place, thing) and then aspects of it are matched to the stereotypes of that category. These similarities are then emphasized and perceived to be greater in magnitude than they really are.

• E.g. - You are given a category (carnivorous animals) and asked to name the first one that comes to mind. You say a lion. In this example, the use of an apex predator is used to illustrate the category is an accentuation effect of the category.

Question 22

Minimal Group Paradigm

Answer 22

SIT claims that prejudice is natural and instinctive + happens as soon as you categorise yourself as belonging to an ingroup (social categorisation) and notice other people belonging to an outgroup (social comparison) + this prejudice has nothing to do with competition over resources.

Minimal group paradigm - proposes that the minimal condition for group biases is simply being a member of a group !

Question 23

Tajfel (1971) -

Answer 23

• Aim 1: To examine whether merely placing people into different social categories can generate ethnocentrism and problematic intergroup relations.
• Aim 2: To re-examine whether prejudice and conflict are motivated by the desire to procure resources for the ingroup.
• Put high school boys into 2 groups based on (fake) art preference (Klee vs Kandinsky).
• Results: Found that they were fair when allocating points between two boys within the in-group or within the out-group, BUT not fair when allocating points for boys of whom one was from the in-group and the other from the out-group (gave more points to boys in their in-group even if a fair option was available).
• Conclusion: Provided evidence for Minimal Group Paradigm + SIT + In-group favoritism + Out-group discrimination.

Question 24

Limitations of Tajfel (1971)

Answer 24

• Task lacks ecological validity (in contrast to Robber’s cave) - assigning points from matrix booklets is artificial.
• Can’t generalise the results to adult behaviour (similarly to Robber’s cave, schoolboys were used as a sample) !

Question 25

Gender discrimination - importance

Answer 25

• It is possible to argue that gender is the most important of all intergroup contexts.
• All over the world, men and women are constantly interacting.
  Sex - a biological category (e.g. a female)
  Gender - a cultural category (e.g. a woman)

Question 26

Different types of sexism (Glick & Friske, 1996)

Answer 26

• Hostile sexism - a “negative” view of women characterised by the belief that they pose a threat to men’s dominant position.
• Benevolent sexism - a “positive” view of women suggesting that they are in many ways “superior” to men, especially morally.
• Ambivalent sexism - containing both positive & negative attitudes towards women.

In countries where gender inequalities are especially strong, women endorse benevolent sexism more strongly than men ! (e.g. they may try to counteract their suppression)

Question 27

Countries with most + least gender equality

Answer 27

Top 3 equality - Iceland, Finland, Norway.

Lowest 3 equality - Afganistan, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Question 28

Causes of discrimination

Answer 28

Discrimination can arise due to failure to recognise differences.

1) Historically poor representation of women in clinical trials.
2) Failure to disaggregate data by sex.
3) Failure to recognise biological differences between males and females.

Question 29

Countries with more gender equality have -

Answer 29

• More women choosing to enter the public sector.
• Less women taking degrees in STEM (gender equality paradox).

Gender equality paradox - countries such as Albania and Algeria have a greater % of female STEM graduates than countries with high levels of gender equality, such as Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Question 30

Biological evidence for race?

Answer 30

Human species do NOT contain biological races (hence it is socially constructed - we learn from media like books, news, etc.).

Question 31

History of racism

Answer 31

For much of the 20th century racist policies predominated.

• In South Africa and many US states, there was forced racial segregation (people of colour were excluded from restaurants, public facilities and even residential areas).
• In Australia, people were excluded from the vote on the basis of race.

Question 32

Spontaneous trait inference

Answer 32

Spontaneous trait inference - people sometimes spontaneously infer others’ traits from their behaviour without intending to, or being aware.

• E.g. If a person sees another person donating to charity, it is likely that they will spontaneously infer that he or she is kind.