Lecture 6 Flashcards
Define sterotype
A belief that associates a group of people with a certain trait.
Define prejudice
Negative feelings towards someone based on their connection to a certain group
Define discrimination
Behaviour directed against someone because of their connection to a particular group
Describe Broverman’s study on gender stereotypes
Male and female nurses answered a questionnaire about gender and he found no significant difference between the gender of the participant. Men were described as independent, not emotional, dominant, competitive and self-confident. Women were described as talkative, gentle, interested in their own appearance, neat and expresses feelings.
How do stereotypes form?
Social categorisation; the classification of a person into groups basic on their common attributes.
Outgroup homogeneity effect; assuming there is greater similarity of members in out-groups compared to in-groups due to lack of familiarity, lack of experience with the out-group and less neural activity towards those in out-group.
We also generalise one sample to a whole group.
Illusory correlations; overestimating the association between variables that aren’t correlated
Over using distinctive words/ideas
Subcategorisation; categorising a large out-group into smaller sub-groups.
What is the social identity theory?
How does this relate to stereotypes
A sense of who you are based on your group membership. Favouring your in-group enhances your self esteem. Emphasising differences leads to a negative evaluation of the out-group, this can happen with religions or sport and so on.
Discuss Vrij’s study about racial stereotypes and newspapers
People viewed 40 newspaper headings about a crime committed by either a white or a black person. They were then asked afterwards, how many headings did they see committed by a black person/white person for each type of crime. Participants greatly over-estimated the amount of headings they saw about black people and drugs and black people and theft. This is how stereotypes are maintained because people pair black people and theft together so then any evidence for this will solidify it.
Give an example of a campaign that tried to tackle prejudice
The Dutch did a campaign showing a day in the life of a black police officer, however, it had no effect.
How do people explain away positive behaviours of an outgroup?
It was an exceptional case, it was luck, they had high motivation, they were manipulated.
Describe Vrij’s study about media campaigns
Participants were exposed to either existing posters, newly developed posters or no posters and they then filled out a questionnaire. People were more prejudiced when they looked at old posters because they would be more racist.
What are the features of a good campaign?
It needs to be explicit, positive and have many examples, have a lot of money, test the campaign before implementing it. However, policy makers don’t believe in campaigns as they can be harmful and they don’t communicate with researchers.
Confirmation bias is an example of how stereotypes are used to evaluate people. What is confirmation bias?
Give an example study
The tendency to seek and interpret information that supports existing beliefs.
Stone et al: Students listened to a college basketball game. Some were led to believe the player was black and some were lead to believe the player was white. If they thought the player was black, they thought his physical ability was significantly better.
Another example of how stereotypes are used to evaluate people is self fulfilling prophecies. What is this?
Give an example study
You have negative expectations from information you have heard, you then have negative behaviour towards the target, the target then reciprocates this. So basically your ideas guide your behaviour, your behaviour influences someone else and your beliefs are supported because of how they react.
Von Bayer: Female applicants were interviewed by a male, before the interview the participants were either told that the interviewer held traditional female stereotypes or that he didn’t. When they believed there wasn’t any stereotyping, they spoke for longer and had more eye contact throughout the interview.
What is the contact hypothesis?
The idea that you can reduce conflict between two groups by: enforcing equal status, creating common goals, introduce co-operative activities and increase personal interaction. Most studies have supported this idea.
Define non verbal communication
The way speech is presented, for example, we can tell one is extroverted even when silent.
