Lecture 11- Prejudice Flashcards
What is prejudice?
Unfavorable affective reactions to or evaluations of groups and their members (has an emotional component)
What are stereotypes?
Generalized beliefs (schemas) about groups and their members (no emotional component).
What is discrimination? What are the two different types?
Broadly it’s when someone acts on their prejudice (the behaviour component)
2 types:
-Interpersonal Discrimination= Differential treatment by individuals toward some groups and their members relative other groups and their members
-Institutional Discrimination= involves policies and contexts that create, enact, reify, and maintain inequality. To change these you have to change the institution which is very hard to do= is not a result of individual attitudes but instead deep underlying structures.
What factor about group formation makes it easy for prejudice to arise?
Forming groups is easy, we as humans are wired this way and require very little encouragement to do so. Usually we have a bias towards our own group and view it as better than all other groups.
What two experiments show that forming groups is relatively easy?
- Robber’s Cave: Boys in a camp. Easy to pit two groups against each other when there was conflict due to shared resources (realistic conflict theory). Groups developed own rituals, nicknames, culture etc. and it was hard to undo the boys hatred for the other group despite efforts of the experimenters
- Jane Elliot’s class: School teacher divided class into groups based on eye colour said “blue eye better than brown” and the kids easily followed. Undid by reversing the discrimination e.g. next day “I got it wrong brown is actually better than blue”
What is the minimal group paradigm?
- Looks at the minimal conditions/level of competition that will result in inter-group conflict i.e. how much is enough to cause group A to hate group B?
- Finding: You could even be randomly assigned for no reason to groups and will still behave in a bias way (give more to own group when asked to divide resources up). Therefore, simply being assigned to a group is enough in itself.
How did Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963 show how category accentuation may influence stereotyping?
- Have two sets of lines A and B even if there is not much difference between the line length of the two groups people will think there is. See greater difference between than within groups.
- Once categorization occurs we accentuate the differences between groups.
What is the outgroup homogeneity effect? What study demonstrates this?
- Byatt and Rhodes, 2004
- People rated the similarities between faces across two dimensions.
- There was more within groups similarities (Chinese and Cork Asian). That is expected but there was also something interesting; the outgroups were view as more similar than the ingroups were. This points to the idea that it is easier for people to think outgroup members are all the same.
What is an illusory correlation? What study demonstrates this?
- Mistaken belief/ over estimation of the relationship between a group and trait.
- There is a study that builds on the idea that co-occurrence of distinctive events are especially available (Chapman, 1967). Hamilton and Gilford, 1976 found that minority group / negative behaviour is especially distinctive. The idea that both events (meeting minority group member and negative behaviour) are rare so the combination especially sticks in our minds leading to an overestimation of the frequency.
What is social identity theory by Tajfel & Turner?
-People have both personal and group identities
-People derive self esteem from the groups with which they
are associated. Low self-esteem produces more prejudice because prejudice increases self-esteem.
- Group associations, and therefore stereotypes, are constantly in flux (changing can be part of multiple groups at once with some only becoming relevant in certain situations: could potentially use this idea to recategorize ourselves and over come prejudice???)
What is Fazio’s view on stereotype activation?
Fazio beliefs that attitudes are a simple association in memory between object and attitude. Strong + well-rehearsed attitudes become automatic.
What is Devine’s (1989) two-stage theory of prejudice?
-Stage 1: Stereotypes are automatically activated in the
presence of a member or symbol of a stigmatized group (fast step)
-Stage 2: If the person becomes aware of these thoughts and is
motivated, he or she will feel “compunction” (negative feeling)and actively inhibit discriminatory behaviour (slow/ processing step)
How do stereotype prime influence ratings of the Donald paragraph?
- “black” “ghetto” “basketball” “music”= African-American primes
- When primed with these they activate aggression concepts (schemas) in the minds of participants they are therefore more likely to judge Donald’s actions as aggressive
What does Sherman and Gorkin’s 1980 riddle about a father and son driving do? What happened afterwards?
- Made people aware of bias assumptions
- It’s the mother that’s the doctor but in the time this doesn’t align with stereotypes
- After this people who described themselves as egalitarian but failed the task gave more money in an affirmative action lawsuit to women. People who care do more afterwards to confirm to themselves they have that belief. This supports the idea of the two stages as stage 2 occurred (feeling of computation resulted in actively trying to inhibit discriminatory behaviour)
What is the Police Officer’s dilemma Correll et al. (2002)?
- Showed participants African American or cork Asian Americans holding ambiguous objects: either cell phones or guns
- Pretend you are police officer: shoot or not shoot depending on what you think is in their hand
- Quicker to shoot African- American and without cause. Used as training for police so become aware of prejudice.
