Lecture 4 - Perceiving Groups Flashcards
What is the definition of discrimination?
A positive or negative behaviour directed towards a social group and it’s members.
What is the definition of a social group?
3 or more people with common socially meaningful interdependence and goals.
What is the definition of prejudice?
A positive or negative evaluation of a social group and it’s members.
What is the definition of a stereotype?
A cognitive representation of the features thought to characterise a social group and it’s members.
What is the definition of social categorisation?
The process of identifying individuals as part of a social group or category.
What is this the definition of?
A positive or negative behaviour directed towards a social group and it’s members
Discrimination
What is this the definition of?
A positive or negative evaluation of a social group and it’s members.
Prejudice
What is this the definition of?
A cognitive representation of the features thought to characterise a social group and it’s members.
Stereotype
What does non-categorisation prejudice typically target?
Feature detection - e.g. prejudice based on someone’s nose, height, etc.
What are 4 types of characteristics that stereotype content could be based on>
- Physical appearance/features
- Personality traits
- Habits & Traditions
- Preferences & Motives
What is the function of stereotypes?
- Mastery (summarising personal experiences/for prediction and control of situations)
- Connectedness (shared beliefs within our in-groups)
- Self-enhancement (feel better about our own group status when we stereotype)
- Efficiency
What is the definition of social norms?
Generally accepted ways of thinking, feeling or behaving that people in a group agree on and endorse as right and proper.
What did Macrae et al., (1994) find about the efficiency of using stereotypes?
When stereotype labels were present, recall of information heard in a passage was remembered with much greater accuracy than when stereotype labels were not present.
Stereotypes provide us with scheme-type ideas which allow us to save processing capacity.
Do categorisation and stereotype activation occur automatically, and who’s study supports the answer?
Yes. Fiske et al., (1998) found that, if you encounter someone and make a social categorisation about them, you automatically activate and apply the related stereotype.
The correction occurs later and is not automatic.
What does the automatic activation of categorisation and stereotypes depend on?
- Perceiver’s level of prejudice (Lepore & Brown, 2002)
- Perceiver’s goals (whether interactions are based on role/function, or an individual as part of society)
- Dimension of categorisation (e.g. race or gender, etc)
What did Kurzban et al., (2001) find about gender vs race biases?
Easier to reduce race biases than gender biases. This is due to deep rooted gender biases in evolutionary history - small social groups will not have known groups of other races, but will always know and stereotype people of other genders.
How does stereotype activation influence processing?
- Stereotype activation guides attention and memory for specific aspects of people/groups. Acts as a confirmation bias, in terms of seeking out/only paying attention to behaviours which prove the stereotype to be true.
- Changes the way we react to information. We are fluent and accepting of stereotype-consistent information, but challenging of stereotype-inconsistent information, and therefore strive to explain it away.
What influences stereotype activation and application?
- capacity
- emotion (more likely to use stereotypes when we are happy, to sustain positive affect)
- motivation (more accountability leads to more processing, and therefore less stereotype activation)
What are the barriers to stereotypic change?
- Explaining away inconsistent information
- Compartmentalising inconsistent information (e.g. creating subtypes)
- Differentiating atypical group members
What fosters stereotype change?
- Repeated inconsistency
- Widespread inconsistency
- Typicality (of the group) and inconsistency
