Lecture 2: The Sociocultural Approach Flashcards
1
Q
scientific racism (4)
A
- 1920s: Scientific racism explained prejudice as a natural response to hierarchy among groups.
- White people believed to be superior to people of other races.
- Scientists approached questions in a way that would “prove” white people to be superior.
- Served to justify white political domination and European colonial rule of the time.
2
Q
psychodynamic approach (4)
A
- 1920s-1950s: Psychodynamic phase questioned scientific racism and the assumption that prejudice is normal and natural.
- Instead, explained prejudice as irrational and unjustified attitudes, expressions of pathological needs.
- Particularly emphasized that prejudice was an individual problem, i.e. some personalities are more prone to prejudice (e.g. high in authoritarianism).
- Was being theorized following the atrocities of WWII and trying to explain how people could act this way.
3
Q
sociocultural approach (4)
A
- 1960s and onwards, up until today.
- Sociocultural approach explained prejudice as a social norm or learnt attitude.
- Emphasized how social factors outside the individual influenced prejudice (vs. the psychodynamic approach).
- Proposed that people conform to cultural norms, and culture communicates stereotypes.
4
Q
social learning theory (Bandura, 1971) (6)
A
- Previously, theories of learning explained that people learn through conditioning and internal drives (motivation).
- However, not all learning can be explained through these models; we can learn things even when we are not motivated or rewarded for learning, such as from:
- Live models; observing a person performing behaviour (happens spontaneously).
- Verbal instruction; receiving instruction in which the desired behavior is described.
- Symbolic; modeling occurs through the media.
- Implication: Your own attitudes don’t necessarily come from contact with that group, but from learning how others in your in-group feel about that group.
5
Q
social norms (1)
A
- Unwritten rules about how we should behave.
6
Q
Crandall et al. (2002) (11)
(hint: norms)
A
- Explored the relationship between norms and willingness to express prejudice
- Study 1: Particpants evaluated groups ranging from typically acceptable targets of prejudice (e.g. rapists) to typically unacceptable targets of prejudice (e.g. blind people) on: 1) how normative it is to have prejudice towards that group and 2) how warmly they feel towards the group.
- Results: Normative appropriateness of prejudice positively correlated with lower warmth ratings.
- Conclusion: The more acceptable is it, generally, to have a negative attitude towards a group, the more likely people will be to express bias against that group.
- Study 2: Participants read about 10 groups in 3 different scenarios (dating, housing, employment) being discriminated against, and rated: 1) how acceptable discrimination was in each scenario, and 2) how likely they would be to discriminate in the same way.
- Results: Acceptability of prejudice towards the group positively correlated with acceptability of discrimination towards the group.
- Conclusion: Since norms predict how acceptable the expression of negative attitudes are, they will also predict what kinds of discrimination are deemed acceptable and what aren’t.
- Study 3: Participants read jokes about 10 different groups and rated them on both offensiveness and humor.
- Results: The less normatively appropriate it was to express prejudice, the more offensive the joke was rated.
- When it’s normatively appropriate to express prejudice, offensiveness and funniness are positively correlated; offensiveness enhances the humour.
- When it’s not normatively appropriate to express prejudice, offensiveness and funniness were negatively correlated; offensiveness negates the humour.
7
Q
Rudman & Borgida (1995) (8)
(hint: sexist commercials)
A
- What effects do sexist advertisements have on people’s cognitions and behaviors?
- Participants were men who viewed either sexist ads or control videos.
- Then completed a lexical decision task, interview and recall of features, and competency evaluation of interviewee.
- When men viewed the sexist ads:
- Responded faster to the sexist and double meaning words, and slower to nonsexist words in the lexical decision task.
- Recalled more characteristics about a female interviewee’s appearance vs. biographical info.
- Rated female interviewees as less competent.
- Effects were seen for all men, regardless of whether or not they scored highly on sexism measures.
- Demonstrates that prejudice can often be an automatic process; we’re not always going around thinking “don’t be prejudiced towards X group”.
8
Q
Pennel & Mehm-Morawitz (2015) (6)
(hint: superheroes)
A
- What impact does exposure to sexualized heroines have on attitudes and does this differ from exposure to sexualized victims?
- Female participants watched clips of: 1) sexualized victims in Spider Man movies, 2) sexualized heroines in the X-men movies, or 3) no movie.
- Then completed measures of gender stereotyping, body esteem, and self-objectification.
- Gender role beliefs: Spider Man clips resulted in less egalitarian beliefs about women’s roles in society vs. control and X-men conditions.
- Body esteem: X-men clips resulted in lower self esteem than the Spider Man and control conditions.
- Self-objectification: X-men clips resulted in higher rankings of body competence vs. control condition.
9
Q
Tukachinsky et al. (2015) (6)
A
- How have racial minorities been portrayed in the media over a 20-year span, and how do these portrayals relate to attitudes towards these racial groups?
- Looked at large state-conducted surveys between 1998-2008 and content analysis of the 40 most viewed US primetime TV shows between 1987-2008.
- Results: Minorities were underrepresented in the media (with Latinos receiving the least proportionate representation).
- Overall: 93.6% of minority characters were rated as “good” (moral disposition), 74% likeable, 64.2% had not been objectified, 56.6% had high social status.
- Asians most likely to have high professional status, Latinos least likely.
- The more black characters present on TV and more positive and likeable they were, the warmer people’s attitudes towards black people.
- More hyper-sexualized black characters associated with less positive attitudes towards black people.
10
Q
How are black people represented in news media, and what are the consequences? (10)
A
- Black people (men in particular) are:
- More likely to be depicted as criminals than Whites;
- More likely to be discussed with prejudicial info;
- Shown at a rate inconsistent with real-world statistics.
- Over-represented as criminals vs. victims when compared to actual crime reports.
- Under-represented as police officers (based on actual employment records).
- News reports connect being Black with criminality. As a consequence, exposure to biased news coverage (among White participants) is associated with:
- Stronger support for harsher punitive measures;
- Greater support for law enforcement and police.
- Watching news media also correlates with implicit attitudes towards Black people—the more news is consumed the less positive (more biased) people’s attitudes are.
