Lecture 13: Stereotypes and diversity

Question 1

Why has the field lagged behind with diversity issues?

Answer 1

Due to little attention to diversity in theory building, use of homogenous samples, no specific training related to diversity

Question 2

Prejudice

Answer 2

Hostile or negative feelings about people based on their membership in a certain group

Question 3

Discrimination

Answer 3

Behaviour directed against people solely because of their membership in a particular group

Question 4

What are stereotypes?

Answer 4

incomplete and overgeneralized beliefs regarding members of a particular
group

Question 5

What is the stereotype content model?

Answer 5

Has two primary dimensions of competence and warmth

Question 6

BIAS

Answer 6

Behaviours from intergroup affect and stereotypes, behavioural tendencies: passive harm, active facilitation, passive facilitation, active harm. Emotions: pity, admiration, contempt, envy

Question 7

What are the cognitive biases that play a role in stereotypes?

Answer 7

• confirmation bias: interpretation of the environment in line with own beliefs
• contrast effect: perceiving stimuli that differ from expectations as being even more different than they really are
• fundamental attribution error: internal vs external attributions

Question 8

What are the gender stereotypes and E-sports?

Answer 8

Seen as warm but not competent (housewives) or competent but not warm (feminists). Can be typically respected or liked but not both. Exercise women are seen as moderately competent and warm, but more competent than warm compared to sporty men. They denote how they should be according to the stereotype holder. There can be “backlash” to counter-stereotypical behaviour so penalties in the form of social disapproval and negativity. Engaging in a domain/sport is seen as more stereotypically masculine

Question 9

What ae the hypotheses about gender stereotypes in E-sports?

Answer 9

Gaming clips depicting female utterances will be perceived as less competent, and as having made more errors compared to male and neutral clips across both skill levels. The effect of gender on competence and errors is moderated by skill level, with stronger effects on the higher skill level

Question 10

What did results find about women in E-sports?

Answer 10

• female clips were rated as less competent than male clips, the difference was stronger in the expert condition
• no significant effects of gender perceived number of errors and warmth

Question 11

What are the consequences of stereotypes?

Answer 11

Negative self-evaluations
Self-fulfilling prophecy(Tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies one’ own beliefs)
Stereotype threat

Question 12

What is stereotype threat?

Answer 12

-People can underperform at tasks when thinking about the negative performance expectations for their group( Worry that the performance might confirm the stereotype / excessive concern, tasks that are higher in difficulty, stereotype does not have to be presented explicitly, the target does not need to endorse the stereotype)
- Experiment: 2 (gender) x 2 (threat versus no-threat) Design
- Two tasks across two sports contexts (basketball & tennis): difficult concentration task and speed task

Question 13

What did results find?

Answer 13

female athletes performed significantly worse in the threat condition only but only in the more difficult task

Question 14

What are the stereotypes regarding disabilities?

Answer 14

• low competence/ high warmth
• disability used as a general category

Question 15

How do stereotypes differ for the issue?

Answer 15

• low competence/low warmth: schizophrenia and depression
• low competence/high warmth: down-syndromes, traumatic brain injury
• moderate competence/high warmth: paraplegia, blindness deafness

Question 16

What are implicit association tests?

Answer 16

These provide a prompt which need to be categorized into good/bad categories

Question 17

What did results find about implicit and explicit stereotypes?

Answer 17

Participants explicitly linked more warmth and competence with people with disability who engage in sport than with people without disability. But the implicit associations show the opposite!
Participants explicitly linked more warmth and competence with people with disability who engage in sport than with people with disability. But the implicit associations do not show a difference between the target groups!
The influence of practicing sport on the stereotype content associated with people with physical disability seems less consistent than has been assumed thus far

Question 18

What does the stereotype content model suggest?

Answer 18

People with physical disabilities are perceived as warm (i.e., having good intentions) and incompetent (i.e., lacking the abilities to put the intentions into action). But technology in assisting people with physical disabilities has advanced dramatically over the past years

Question 19

How do bionics help those with a disability?

Answer 19

Therapy can alleviate the burden caused by disability or illness and enhancement is changes to improve the body, mind or any ability beyond the species-typical level or statistically normal range of functioning of a human being

Question 20

How do bionics affect stereotypes towards people with physical disabilities?

Answer 20

• Participants perceived people with physical disabilities with bionic prostheses as more competent than people with physical disabilities in general
• Participants did not perceive people with physical disabilities with bionic prostheses as more competent than able bodied people, but the other way around
• Similar results for Cyborgs
• Participants also did not perceive people with physical disabilities with bionic prostheses as colder than able bodied people
• Cyborgs were perceived as colder than people with disabilities and able-bodied people

Question 21

Coaching challenges

Answer 21

• Even elite athletes have problems accessing professional coaches
• Risks: Counterproductive training (e.g., overtraining), limited access to competitions (athletes with disabilities lose more training time due to injuries, higher problems with fatigue, discomfort and pain, problems in differentiating temporary and fatigue-related pain and serious pain)

Question 22

What are the practical suggestions for sports psychologists working with athletes with disabilities?

Answer 22

• treat the athletes as whole people, not athletes
• do not focus on the disability
• understand the trauma resulting from the injury
• be aware of non-sport challenges
• be cognizant of the influence of disability-related pain and chronic injuries
• prepare for the classification procedure
• learn disability-specific changes in psychological skill development delivery