Lecture 10 Flashcards
What are the concerns about the IAT? Are they a problem?
Side/order effects?→ in proper use of
IAT, should be counterbalanced! Also
typically found to not have an impact
Reliability? → can be impacted by context,
scores do vary from one test to the next.
But over several tests, fairly reliable.
Meaningful? → does require you to attend
to the target social categories – even if in
“real life” you might not act on
generally you would counterbalance all of these things
if the test was given to you like ten times the average result would be fairly reliable.
its requiring a focus on race but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you pay a lot of attention to that category.
What does the IAT really tell us?
there tends to be a small correlation between implicit attitudes and actual real world behaviour.
NOT A DIAGNOSIS
can be useful in research to assess intergroup preferences within a group
this test can be useful in research looking across groups. You would expect white people to have a preference for their own group at the same ages.
why do we focus on implicit biases?
one way we can look at our thinking about social groups is explicit bias etc. But researchers have increasingly been less interested in studying explicit attitudes because we know there are social desirability factors.
REWATCH THIS WHOLE VIDEO
what do we see about latinx individuals when tested for implicit biases?
Latine/x
individuals:
When tested on
implicit
preference for
Latinx vs White
(higher status)→
no preference
Latine/x
individuals:
When tested on
implicit
preference for
Latinx vs Black
(lower status)→
preference for
own group
babies tend to prefer people of the same race as them, people of the same ethnicity as them, people who act like them etc.
there is the one study that looked at implicit attitudes in latin american attitudes in north america. They found that if you test in an IAT, latin american vs. black you see a group preference. Both of these things, own group preference and racial hierarchy in society are at play.
what data is missing from intergroup bias research?
Missing:
→Biracial/multiracial
individuals?
→Individuals from many
non-dominant racial
groups (ie, Indigenous)
→Intersectionality!
What is the minimal group paradigm? What does it try to answer?
where does this tendency to like people that are like us show up?
this is where they create groups that are minimally different. You randomly assign them to 2 types of t shirts. Then after they hang out in their t shirt groups you can test them using an IAT for blue shirt vs. red shirt folks.
mere membership in a group can lead us to have in-group preference.
what you see is that they now have a preference for their own group. This is true for explicit preferences but also implicit preferences.
What appears to be the development of intergroup bias?
attitudes about race:
- ingroup bias (Seems to be rapidly/
automatically) - Social norms; social/cultural evaluation of dominance (Overt messages, cultural stereotypes, learning from
authority figures…)
Can you change intergroup biases?
- What works in adults to reduce
intergroup bias? - Personal contact with out-group
members - Encountering positive examples
of out-group members
→But, not very strong effects…
could children be more
malleable?
→At what age?
What was the Gonzalez, Steele, & Baron (2017) paper about?
combating bias
- Gonzalez, Steele, & Baron (2017)
- Can children’s implicit biases be
reduced through exposure to
counter-stereotypical examples? - White and Asian children aged 5-
12 - Exposed to examples of either
White individuals, Black
individuals, or flowers (control) - Completed child IAT
This is Karen. Karen is a
doctor who lives in
Vancouver. She is an
excellent doctor - in fact
she is one of the best
doctors at Vancouver
General Hospital. Every day
she helps to make sure that
children stay healthy. When
she is not helping people at
the hospital, she loves to
read books and go for
walks along the beach.
they bring them all into science world and expose them to examples of white individuals and black individuals. This example goes against stereotypes often seen in media.
when older kids (about 10 years) are getting the counter-stereotypical examples, they do not seem more likely to prefer white vs. black individuals. However, there is no difference in younger kids ( about 7) Maybe older children have more cognitive flexibility.
What is language?
Language is:
* A system of symbols used to
communicate
* Combines meaningless
elements into structures that
convey meaning
What are the components of language?
- Phonemes: the sounds of language (lake and rake)
- Morphemes: smallest units of
meaning in language (rake and raking) - Semantics: meaning
- Syntax: rules for combining words
into meaningful and interpretable
sequences (I see the rake vs rake the I see) - Pragmatics: the rules for how
language is used
