L11 - Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination Flashcards
1
Q
What is the triangle?
A
- Thoughts, behaviour, feelings
- Thoughts = beliefs and attitudes
- Feelings = affect as beliefs are evaluated
- Attitude is not behaviour, but gives us a tendency to behave in a certain way
2
Q
What is a stereotype?
A
- Beliefs about the typical characteristics of members of a group or social category
- Overemphasises negative attributes (thoughts)
- Underestimate variability within a group
- Can be learned/constructed when exposed to certain groups etc.
3
Q
What is an experiment about stereotypes?
A
- More likely to be used when info about individual is ambiguous or inadequate
- Ppts read about housewife/construction worker
- Low aggressive behaviour e.g spanked son for mud on carpet, Aggressive behaviour e.g punched neighbour for taunting or ambiguous behaviour e.g hit someone who annoyed them
- In high/low aggressive = cases are extreme and enough info so both could be aggressive/not, in ambiguous they used their stereotypes
4
Q
What is Prejudice?
A
- Affective response towards a group or its members
- Evaluative (either positive or negative)
- Based on a prejudgement, see individual as a member from a group to activate a stereotype and maybe a prejudice - when groups interact
- Often negative and is less favourable evaluation of attributes of other groups
- High prejudiced people endorse more stereotypes
- Stereotypes can be known without being endorsed
5
Q
What is discrimination?
A
- Negative behaviour toward individuals based on group membership
- Refusing members of a group access to desired resources
- Blatant or subtle e.g sexist jokes
6
Q
What is Early evidence of blatant prejudice?
A
- White prof travelled across US with young Chinese couple
- Stopped at 251 establishments and received well in 250
- Questionnaire to all places 6mo later asking if they would let a Chinese couple into their establishment, 92% said no
7
Q
What was another exp describing contemporary racism?
A
- High and low prejudice students evaluate potential applicants to their uni (black/white)
- When profile was consistently strong/weak = no discrimination
- When applicant profile was ambiguous, high prejudice individuals did discriminate
8
Q
Experiments describing contemporary racism?
A
- More likely to reveal itself when situation is ambiguous
- White ppt interacted with single/group of confeds
- Ppts were in cubicles and communicated through intercom, confed indicated he was having a medical emergency
- When ppt is alone, chance of getting help is high, and at the same level if confed is white/black
- When ppt is with others, chance of getting help is lower, but a lot higher for white confed rather than black confed BECAUSE other people can help, divergent responsibility e.g is it really an emergency = self-doubt
9
Q
What is positive discrimination?
A
- Not all stereotypes are negative: can have favourable assessments
- Benevolent sexism: protection & affection form women in conventional roles BUT coexists with hostile sexism with dislike of women in power
- Trouble with positive stereotypes: can be used to justify holding other neg stereotypes, inhibit progress to equality, hostility towards people who do not fulfil ideal
10
Q
Role of social categorisation in stereotypes and prejudice?
A
- Perceive world in social categories which activate schemas (frameworks to organise info that influence perception, expectation and interaction)
- Schemas are prone to biases and GROUP schemas are stereotypes
11
Q
What is accentuation and outgroup homogeneity?
A
- Accentuation effects: differences between categories are exaggerated
- Outgroup homogeneity: they are all the same, as there is selective exposure to info and structuring and encoding of info
- Can sometimes be ingroup homogeneity but evidence for outgroup homogeneity is mixed
- When we form categories, we overemphasise boundaries between categories e.g exp lines were given letter categorisation according to height - A&B in condition 1, condition 2 - no correlation between labelling and lines, asked people to estimate length of each line and found people overestimated the longer lines and underestimated short lines in condition 1. Degree of overestimation was shortest one in longest group and highest degree of underestimation was longest of the shortest lines
- General procedure is we study categorisation phenomena in non-social contexts and then add social elements
12
Q
What is illusory correlation?
A
Perceiving relations that are not there: distinctive events capture attention, two of these = paired distinctiveness = overrepresented in memory = availability heuristic (predicting frequency of events based on ease of which it is brought to mind)
13
Q
What did Hamilton and Gifford do?
A
- Info about two groups (A&B)
- Positive and negative behaviour
- Twice as many positive behaviours in both groups (equal proportions)
- Twice as many behaviours from group A (bigger group)
- HYP: Negative behaviour of minority group B is most distinctive & more memorable combination
14
Q
What was the results of Hamilton and Gifford?
A
- Members of minority groups were rated more highly on neg traits, and less highly on pos traits
- The majority were under attributed for negative actions and only slightly under attributed for positive action
- Minority groups = Over attributed for negative actions and only slightly for positive actions
15
Q
What did Hamilton and Gifford find? (implications)
A
- Stereotypes do not need evidence to form
- Accentuation processes are needed to produce stereotypic prejudice = pure cognitive illusion
