Lec 5 Explicit and implicit prejudice

Question 1

what is the shooter bias?

Answer 1

Shooter bias: a reaction time task that measures the speed of a pp’s judgement whether a target figure is armed (holding a gun) or unarmed (holding a cell phone).

Shooter bias result:
- speed (reaction time)
- pp’s tend to decide to shoot an armed target more quickly if he is African American as opposed to white.
- race affects how fast someone shoots.
- more faster to shoot an African American than white.

• accuracy (when the game was sped up)
• pp’s were more likely to mistakenly shoot an unarmed target if he was African American as opposed to white
• pp’s were more likely to mistakenly NOT shoot an armed target if he was white as opposed to African American.
• race of the target influences the speed of reaction time & accuracy of the target.
• replicated in Canada & replicated in Australia & Germany using Muslim s. white targets.

Question 2

Can explicit negative prejudice remain if it’s low?

Answer 2

• Even when Explicit Negative Prejudice is low, Implicit Negative Prejudice can remain.
• Explicit attitudes will usually guide our conscious actions when we are thinking about people in terms of their group membership.
• BUT Implicit attitudes can influence our automatic behaviours.

Question 3

Prejudice is much more than blatant disrespect and antipathy?

Answer 3

1. prejudice is less obvious
   - blatant “old fashioned” prejudice vs. subtle “modern” prejudice
2. ambivalent stereotypes/ prejudices
   - judgements can be both positive and negative (nice but dumb)
   - implicit and explicit components of prejudice/ stereotypes can differ
   - (e.g., explicit egalitarian values/ implicit negative feelings
3. prejudice vs. ingroup bias
   - outgroup evaluations vs. relative ingroup/ outgroup evaluations
4. explicit vs. implicit prejudice
   - conscious evaluations vs. unconscious evaluations
   - some negative prejudices are hidden even from ourselves.

Question 4

What is dehumanization?

Answer 4

• dehumanization involves the denial or minimizing of our common humanity
• seeing members of a particular group as “less human” (as lacking some of the characteristics/ attributes that make us human)
  vs.
• humanization involves the recognition and affirmation of our common humanity
• dehumanization is moral disengagement
• dehumanization as a process is about:
• replacing empathy with disinterest or even disgust and fear
• the subtraction of human qualities
• or the imposition of sub-human or non-human qualities
• the exclusion of people from the circle of moral regard.

Question 5

What is infrahumanization?

Answer 5

Infrahumanization is a more subtle way of seeing outgroup members as less human.

• two types of emotion:
• primary emotions: e.g., happiness, anger, fear, and attraction
• secondary emotions: (these are thought to be uniquely human emotions), e.g., love, guilt, humiliation, grief and hope.

-infrahumanization is denying a group of secondary emotions

• primary emotions are seen to be felt equally by both the ingroup and the outgroup.

But…

• secondary emotions are seen to be felt more strongly and clearly by the group than the outgroup