Lecture 5 Flashcards
Article: Flattering to Deceive: Why People Misunderstand Benevolent Sexism.
Benevolent sexism is recalled more often than hostile sexism. But protested less often because it is seen as warm. The warm affective tone of benevolent sexism masks ideological functions.
Benevolent sexism vs aggressive sexism
With aggressive sexism men say things to undermine women and they underestimate women.
Benevolent sexism manifests in a behaviour that seems very nice and friendly and less aggressive but if you think about it, it stems from the same cause. It is not necessary to have a negative intention.
- E.g., “This part of the work is not for women because we want to protect you, it’s too dangerous for women” or “Let me carry your bag”.
Article: The “Equal-Opportunity Jerk” Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias
If someone is rude to women and they are called out as sexist, but they say they are also rude to men, this is no longer seen as sexism.
So, rudeness to men can make somebody look less sexist and discriminatory.
Just by showing rudeness to everyone, doesn’t mean that that person doesn’t have a gender bias or can still have certain implicit stereotypes of women.
Parastronaut project
It is about commitment to enhance inclusiveness and fair representation
Article: Difference Matters: Teaching Students a Contextual Theory of Difference Can Help Them Succeed
Interventions that teach students about the contextual nature of differences between social groups can improve all students’ intergroup skills and even their academic performance.
Differences are not inherent but can be influenced by context, e.g., by norm.
Inclusion of ethnic studies and diversity courses in curricula has led to increased attendance, grade point averages, and credits earned among disadvantaged students.
Contemporary inequality
The post-industrial class structure based on four types of capital.
What are the four resources of contemporary inequality?
The four resources; things that can cause inequality:
- Economical capital – income
- Social capital – who you know
- Cultural capital – where you fit in
- Personal capital – who you are
o Good health and attractiveness are positive
o Attractiveness is relative, every culture has a different form of beauty
Diversity
Diversity is a fact of life; just look around you. Differences in personality can be categorized as diversity. Everything can be called diversity, it is part of life, we can’t eliminate it.
Diversity is diverse; look beyond the usual suspects.
All processes have their initial difficulties; we have to work through them to obtain the benefits.
On one hand we humans are expected to cooperate, to work together towards a certain common goal so that we can all survive and achieve our goal together. But on the other hand we also have diversity of people with different characteristics and different ideas with different principles or perspectives. The challenge is how to make sure that we can still achieve the goals but at the same time manage this diversity and ensure that the diversity is going to help us achieve that goal instead of hindering the progression/achievement of the goal.
What are the challenges associated with managing diversity?
- Conflict
- Lack of effort to promote inclusion and to manage diversity in a positive way
- Resistance towards efforts to promote diversity
The categorization-elaboration model (CEM) (Van Knippenberg et al., 2004)
Research in managing work-group diversity and performance has two main traditions that use distinct perspectives that generate different predictions regarding performance outcomes.
Elaboration of task-relevant information & perspectives = because there is diversity there will be more motivation to talk about different perspectives
What are the perspectives of the CEM?
- Social categorization perspective
o As humans we tend to categorize people into certain groups, we see ourselves as an ingroup of something and others as an outgroup.
o This categorization may lead to conflict because the categorization makes people less united.
o Homogeneous groups will perform better than heterogeneous groups because of higher commitment and less conflict.
o The focus of this perspective is on the relational aspects of group processes.
o Diversity will not lead to better outcomes. - Information/decision making perspective
o Diversity can lead to positive outcomes such as innovations and creativity. This is because when you have a group consisting of diverse people, these people might have different perspectives, ideas, knowledge and experiences that can increase the quality of the discussion. It will create the quality of the ideas.
o Diverse groups should outperform homogenous groups because of their better range of task-relevant knowledge, skills, and ability.
o The focus of this perspective is on task-related aspects of group processes.
Contact hypothesis (Allport)
If you want people to like each other you have to make sure that they are familiar with each other. You can make people more familiar with each other through contact.
The source of negative attitudes and intergroup conflict lies in unfamiliarity = intergroup anxiety.
Not every contact will work, only contact under the right circumstances is a solution.
Intergroup anxiety
You don’t know the other group which can make you feel anxious, not knowing how to act, whether or not to talk to them.
Intergroup anxiety may lead to conflict. You might feel threatened by the presence of the group.
Contact in organizations (Kulik & Roberson)
Contact can be very effective in meeting diversity targets
- Informal contact (e.g., coffee break)
- Formal contact (e.g., diversity initiatives that aims to directly increase contact)
- Direct effect (e.g., let’s get to know each other)
- Indirect effect (e.g., department outings where you hope people will understand that they will have to make contact)
Facilitating conditions that make contact work
- Equal group status
- There should be a common goal
- Intergroup cooperation
- Authority support
- Acquaintance potential
Also facilitating: treated as member of the group rather than individuals (i.e., common ingroup)
- You should treat everybody like they are a member of the same group
Equal group status as a facilitating conditions that makes contact work
If one group feels like the other group is too dominant it’s not going to work because they’ll feel threatened
Intergroup cooperation as a facilitating condition that makes contact work
Even though they come from different groups, if you give them a common goal and a common task they will have to work together.
Robber’s cave research, Sheriff: competitive games in two groups during a summer camp => conflict. And then, they are given tasks promoting cooperation (lunch task) => decreases tension and increases contact.
Examples of authority support as a facilitating condition that makes contact work
- E.g., in organizations they provide coffee in the hope that you meet colleagues and make contact so that you can work together more effectively.
- E.g., organize events that can allow people to have contact with each other.
Examples of acquaintance potential as a facilitating conditions that makes contact work
- E.g., if you want more cooperation you need to have potential to be more than just stranger
- E.g., in the supermarket there is no intention to be acquaintances with each other
How does contact improve attitudes?
- Learning about the outgroup
- Behavioural change
- Developing affective ties
- Ingroup re-appraisal
When does learning about the outgroup improve attitudes?
Only change in perceptions when:
- Behaviour inconsistent with stereotype
- Frequent and in several situations
How does behavioural contact improve attitudes?
Repeated behaviour leads to attitudes
Reoccurrence leads to liking if attitudes are positive, if negative than it leads to more conflict
How does developing affective ties improve attitude?
- Positive emotions; prejudice comes from an absence of pos. emotion
- Self-disclosure
- Empathy
How does ingroup re-appraisal work with improving attitudes?
Changing perspective on ingroup and outgroup together
Article: Does contact at work extend its influence beyond prejudice? Evidence from healthcare settings
“These novel findings showed that frequent and positive contact with non-native individuals can improve health and organizational outcomes along with facilitating positive intergroup relations. “
So, yes!
But there are also other studies that don’t support contact leading to positive attitudes.
How can we have more contact if the immigration policies that try to make society more diverse are restricted. What is a strong argument against such policies?
That we need people to have more contact with each other to reduce conflict and improve positive attitudes.
