Lecture 18 - Cultural Variation in Stereotyping etc Flashcards
Definitions
Stereotypes: often-biased heuristics used to make inferences about others’ minds based on cultural beliefs about their identity
Prejudice: attitudinal preferences for some individuals over other
individuals based on cultural beliefs about their identity
Discrimination: behavioral preferences for some individuals over other individuals based on cultural beliefs about their identity
Person perception: the various mental processes used to form first impressions of others
History of prejudice research in psychology
The Nature of Prejudice
Seminal book in the study of intergroup conflict and prejudice (Allport, 1954)
Large discussion of various themes
\What is an ingroup?
How is prejudice acquired?
Does contact with outgroup members reduce prejudice?
How do personality and religious belief relate to prejudice?
Shift toward two-dimensional models
Not new, but gained
prominence:
Stereotype content model
(Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu,
2002)
Valence-dominance model of face perception (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008)
Stereotype Content Model
Organizes stereotype onto two axes
Warmth: tolerant, warm,
good natured, sincere
Competence: competent,
confident, independent,
competitive, intelligent
Warmth predicts “If members of this group get special breaks, this is likely to make things more difficult for people like me”
Competence predicts “How
well educated?” and “How
economically successful?
They looked at the clusters in the axes and designed words that suited them
Stereotype Content Model
Associated stereotypes
(4)
Low competence, low warmth
=Contemptuous (disgust/anger)
e.g. homeless
High warmth/low competence
Paternalistic = sympathy/pity
e.g. elderly/homeless
High competence/low warmth
Envious = jealousy
e.g. rich, Jews
High competence/high warmth
Admiration = pride
e.g. Christians Whites
Valence-Dominance Model of Face Perception
Based on the idea that face
perception has a functional
basis
Humans have adaptations to
guess other people’s
intentions and figure out
whether people are dangerous
Valence/trustworthiness and
dominance judgments of faces
emerge from these functions
Why two dimensions?
It is parsimonious and simple to work with. Might not be accurate
Warmth = Sociability + Morality
Study on what makes people warm
Ptps asked:
“Imagine that you have a 30-year-old daughter who brings home a new boyfriend she is quite serious about. In one case, your daughter’s new boyfriend is warm, charming, and charismatic, but he also gives the impression of being dishonest and untrustworthy.
In another case, he is aloof, quiet, and introverted, but appears to be honest and trustworthy.
In which of these two cases do you expect you would form a more positive impression of your daughter’s suitor?”
There is an effect of being sociable that makes people warm
There is a much larger effect of being moral
Even being unsociable, moral people are viewed as more favorable
Illustrates the construct “warmth” has more parts to it
Valence-Dominance-Attractiveness
Analysis shows there are 3 parts to facial judgement, not just valence dominance
Valence/Trustworthiness: ~35%
Youthful-Attractiveness: ~20%
Dominance: ~17%
and each account for a part of the variance
Are stereotypes really universal
Basics
Most research done on WEIRD ptps
Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic
But this is only 10-15% of the world
Are stereotypes really universal
correlation between warmth and competence
In the USA these two things are orthogonal
In Denmark, there is a moderate correlation
In Pakistan they are strongly correlated
Research shows the number of factors varies across the world
The two factor model only was the best fit in the original study
Three factors was the best fit for most places
Some showed four
Takeaways for number of factor models
Two-dimensional models of stereotyping parsimonious and intuitive
Sometimes, two dimensions not accurate or sufficient
Also not as “universal” as authors originally claimed
“Not universal” versus
“universal” is not a binary choice, but a spectrum
New focus: why do cultures vary? Shared characteristics?
Intersectionality in stops by police in the USA
Black men were disproportionately stopped
Just saying black ppl not enough, need to see the intersection of race and sex
The intersectional lense can be used to
make better theories by adding nuance to ideas
has expanded from race/class/gender to many other areas
What does an intersectional lens allow us to do
- REVEAL intersectional stereotypes
- REVISE psychological constructs to add nuance
Are femininity and masculinity two ends of one dimension or two distinct dimensions?
