Lecture 5 - Prejudice and Social identity

Question 1

Define prejudice

Answer 1

“The holding of derogatory social attitudes or cognitive beliefs, the expression of negative affect, or the display of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership of that group” (Brown, 1995; p. 8). This goes beyond intention to include actual behaviours.

Question 2

What are the 3 components Allport (1954) for prejudice?

Answer 2

1. Cognitive – beliefs about a group
2. Affective – strong feelings (usually negative) about a group
3. Conative – intention to act in a certain way towards a group

Question 3

Define stigma

Answer 3

“Stigmatised individuals possess (or are believed to possess) some attribute or characteristic that conveys a social identity that is devalued in particular social context.” (Crocker, et al. 1998; p. 505)

Visibility/concealability (Steele & Aronson, 1995)

Controlability (Crandall, et al. 2009)

Question 4

Describe masculine and feminine tasks study (Deaux & Emswiller, 1974)

Answer 4

Students who watched fellow students perform well on male-stereotypical or female stereotypical perceptual tasks over-attributed male success on male tasks to ability relative to luck

Question 5

Describe backlash study (Heilman et al., 2004)

Answer 5

• Students were given information about employees in a male-stereotypical job (Assistant Vice President of Sales, aircraft company)
• Employees identified as male or female
• Record of clear or ambiguous success
• Previous success was clear – rated equally competent
• Previous success ambiguous – males rated more competent
• Previous success was clear – males rated as more likeable
• Previous success ambiguous – rated equally likeable

Question 6

Describe homemaker vs employee study (Eagly & Steffen, 1984)

Answer 6

Male and female students rated a ‘homemaker’ as significantly more feminine than someone described as a full-time employee, irrespective of the target’s sex

Question 7

Describe white vs black labels (Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983)

Answer 7

White ppts did not fifferentially associate negative words with racial labels. However, positive words were more quickly associated with ‘white’ than ‘black’

Question 8

Describe recognising in and outgroup faces study (Brigham & Barkowitz, 1978)

Answer 8

Black and white ppts had more difficulty identifying faces they had seen before if the faces were of racial outgroup rather than racial ingroup members

Question 9

Describe detecting racism study (Duncan, 1976)

Answer 9

• Students shown a live video of a conversation between a white man and a black man
• An argument develops and ends with one pushing the other
• White man pushes – 13% viewed it as violent
• Black man pushes – 73% viewed it as violent
• In the US, African Americans make up 12% of the general population
• But 37% of the prison population

Question 10

Describe Favourable and unfavourable behaviour study (Howard & Rothbart, 1980)

Answer 10

Ppts were equally good at recalling whether it was an ingroup or outgroup member who performed favourable behaviours, but they were better at recalling outgroup than ingroup actors who performed unfavourable behaviours

Question 11

Describe relative homogeneity effect (Simon & Brown, 1987)

Answer 11

Majorities rated the outgroup as less variable than the ingroup (the usual relative homogenity effect). However, minorities did the opposite - they rated the outgroup as more variable than the ingroup

Question 12

Describe Tokenism (Chacko, 1982)

Answer 12

A pitfall of tokenism. Women managers who felt they had been hired as a token women reported less organisational commitment and less job satisfaction than women who felt they had been hired because of their ability

Question 13

Describe reverse discrimination – Marking essays (Fajardo, 1985)

Answer 13

White teachers evaluated black students’ essays more favourably than white students’ essays, particularly where the essays were of average, rather than poor or excellent, quality. An unintended consequence of reverse discrimination such as this is that black students would be less likely to seek or be given guidance to improve their actually very average performance

Question 14

Describe Pygmalion in the classroom (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968)

Answer 14

Pygmalion in the classroom. Elementary school children showed IQ gains over the first and second years at school; however, the gains were much greater for the ‘bloomers’ - a randomly selected group that the teacher was led to believe had greater IQ potential

Question 15

What 4 social movement stages do people go through?

Answer 15

1. Becoming part of the mobilisation potential
2. Become a target of mobilisation attempts
3. Developing motivation to participate
4. Overcoming barriers to participate

Question 16

What are the types of self and identity identified by Brewer and Gardner (1996)?

Answer 16

1. Individual self – traits that differentiate self from others
2. Relational self – connections + role relationships with others
3. Collective self – based on group memberships that differentiate us from them

Question 17

Detail social identity theory

Answer 17

• Theory of group membership and inter-group relations based on self categorisation, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of in-group defining properties
• Prototype – cognitive representation of the typical /idea defining feature of s of a category
• Meta-contrast principal – largest ratio between differences to in-group positions versus differences to out-group positions
• Salience means that people’s perceptions of themselves and others becomes depersonalized

Question 18

Describe and explain Sherif (1954/1961) ‘robbers cave’ study

Answer 18

Aim - To find out what factors make two groups develop hostile relationships and then to see how this hostility can be reduced. Specifically, to see if two groups of boys can be manipulated into conflict through competition and then conflict resolution by working together.

IV - The IV is the stage of the experiment: (1) ingroup formation, (2) friction phase and (3) integration phase, this is a Repeated Measures design.

DV - Intergroup behaviour was measured by observing the boys behaviour and friendship patterns and tape recording their conversations and recording the phrases they used; also the boys filled out questionnaires on their attitudes to their own group and the other group.

Sample - 24 participants (11-year-old boys) who were selected by opportunity sampling. They were split into two evenly-matched groups of boys. The boys called themselves the “Rattlers” and the “Eagles”. Two boys later left (from the Eagles) due to homesickness, reducing the sample to 22 by the end of Phase 1.

Procedure - The boys arrived on separate buses and settled into their cabins on two sites. They were unaware of the other group, thinking they were alone at the park. Each group junior camp counselors (college students earning money during the summer) who lived with the boys and supervised their activities and senior camp counselors who were participant observers who stayed with the boys for 12 hours a day. Sherif was very clear that he did not want his observers to influence the boys in any way: “nobody is to be a leader to the boys… or interact with any subjects in any way that might contaminate the group dynamics that they are there to observe”.

Ingroup Formation lasted a week. Each group had tasks to accomplish (eg a treasure hunt with a $10 prize). During this time the boys gave their groups names and discovered the existence of the other group; they immediately requested a baseball game against the other group.

The friction phase involved a tournament between the two groups. This involved sports like baseball, tug-of-war and scavenger hunt but also experimental tests, like a bean-counting competition. A trophy was promised for the winners along with prizes like knives and medals.

In the integration phase, Sherif tried to bring the two groups together. He tried “mere contact” by allowing the groups to have dinners and watch films together in the recreation hall. When this failed, he took a different approach, blocking the water pipe to the camp which forced the boys to work together to find the broken portion of pipe. Other tasks involved choosing films to watch together, cooperating to pull a (supposedly) broken-down truck and pitching tents with missing parts.

Results
Sherif found that the boys required little encouragement to be competitive. As soon as they found out about another group in the park, they resorted to “us-and-them” language and wanted a baseball match – so the boys themselves initiated the start of the friction phase.

In the friction phase, the two groups met for baseball and name-calling started immediately.
• The Eagles burned the Rattlers’ flag and the Rattlers retaliated by doing the same.
• After their second flag was destroyed, the Rattlers did a night raid on the Eagle’s cabins, stealing comics and overturning beds
• The Eagles launched their own raid, but brought bats with them for maximum destruction
• When the Eagles won the tournament, the Rattlers stole their prizes (medals and knives)

The two sides met for a fight, but the camp counsellors intervened and this phase ended.

In the integration phase, the shared films and meals deteriorated into name-called and food-fights. The shared task fixing the water pipe produced cooperation, but another food fight followed. However, each shared task led to reduced hostility. By the end, the Rattlers shared $5 they had won to buy soft drinks for everyone.

Conclusion
Sherif regards the study as proving his hypotheses about intergroup behaviour – especially Realistic Conflict Theory.
• The groups formed quickly, with hierarchies (“pecking orders) and leaders, without any encouragement from the adults.
• When the groups meet in competitive situations, ingroup solidarity increases as does outgroup hostility.
• “Mere presence” by itself doesn’t reduce outgroup hostility.
• Friction is reduced when the two groups are forced to cooperate, negotiate and share. Sherif calls this working towards “superordinate goals”
• Some latent ethnocentrism without intergroup competition
• Prejudice, discrimination and ethnocentrism arose as a result of real intergroup conflict
• The boys did not have authoritarian or dogmatic personalities
• Less frustrated group expressed greater intergroup aggression
• In-groups formed even with friends in the outgroup
• Simple contact did not improve intergroup relations

An important conclusion from the study is that, although intergroup conflict is inevitable when competition is present, it can be reduced.

Question 19

How many studies?

Answer 19

The classic Robbers Cave study was actually the third replication of the test. Sherif had carried out two earlier studies, in 1949 and 1953.
• In the first (1949) study, Sherif tried to restore harmony by giving the boys an “common enemy” to unite against. They did this by beating a softball team from outside the camp. However, Sherif noticed there were still hostilities between the Red Devils and the Bull Dogs (the names the boys in the first study chose).
• The second (1953) study was called off, “owing to various difficulties and unfavorable conditions, including errors of judgment in the direction of the experiment,” according to Sherif.
• Frances Cherry (1995) discovered that this was because the boys mutinied against the adults – it seems because they realised they were being manipulated. The boys discovered a notebook left by one of the observers that contained details about their behaviour.

Michael Billig (1976) argued that Sherif’s studies really looked at three groups, not two, because the adult researchers were the third group that had most power and manipulated the other two. Billig didn’t know about the mutiny in the 1953 experiment, but his theory is backed up by it.

If Sherif got different results each time he did the study, that counts against the reliability of his research. If he misinterpreted what he was seeing (as Billig contends) then that counts against the validity of his conclusions.

Question 20

Describe Realistic Group Conflict Theory (Sherif, 1966)

Answer 20

Goal relations between individuals and groups determine cooperative or competitive interdependence, and thus the nature of interpersonal and intergroup behaviour

Question 21

Describe contact between groups (Wilder, 1984)

Answer 21

Relative to no contact, attitudes towards a rival college improved only when contact was both pleasant and with a typical member of the other college

Question 22

Detail LeBon’s views on anti-social behaviour

Answer 22

“By the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd he is a barbarian – that is, a creature acting by instinct.” (LeBon, 1896; p. 12)

Anti-social behaviour is based on:
• Anonymity
• Contagion
• Suggestability

Question 23

Detail evidence of deindividuation

Answer 23

Zimbardo (1970) females – paired learning task with confederate
• Half deindividuated by wearing cloaks and hoods
• Gave electric shocks twice as long as those in conventional clothes

Diener et al. (1976) observed 1300 children trick or treating
• Invited into house and told to take 1 sweet
• Individuated (asked name and address) - 8% transgressed
• Deindividuated - 80% transgressed

Question 24

Describe deindividuation of nurses (Johnson & Downing, 1979)

Answer 24

In a paired-associate learning task, women ppts dressed in either of two uniforms believed that they gave shocks of various levels to a confederate learner. Those dressed as KKK member gave increased levels of shock to the learner, whereas those dressed as nurses gave reduced levels. Further, deindividuated ppts (i.e. those not wearing large personal name badges) were not more aggressive, and in fact those deindividuated as nurses were the least aggressive of all

Question 25

Describe the ‘long, hot summer’ explanation of collective violence (Berkowitz, 1972)

Answer 25

Frustration induced by relative deprivation is expressed as individual aggression due to the presence of averisve and aggressive environmental stimuli, and this becomes collective aggression through a process of social facilitation