Lecture 6 - Social Categorisation, Stereotypes and Prejudice Flashcards
Personal vs social identity
- Who am I?
- Personal identity = personality characteristics e.g. introverted, honest, caring
- Social identity = groups you are a member of e.g. woman, business executive, collect stamps -> stereotyping
What is a stereotype?
“Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p.47)
What is a category?
Collections of instances that have a family resemblance organised around a prototype
What are prototypes?
(Theory) = cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category (standards against which family resemblance is assessed & category membership decided)
What is categorisation?
- “The process of understanding what something is by knowing what other things it is equivalent to, and what other things it is different from” (McGarty, 1999 - cited in Crisp & Turner, 2014, p.53)
- Categories not rigid, but fuzzy i.e. move and change (Rosch, 1978)
- More or less typical of the category
- Depending on the prototype
- Categorisation of less typical members more difficult
Social identity -> stereotyping
- Characteristics of person? – e.g. mask, stripy jumper, ‘SWAG’ bag
- How would you describe this person? – e.g. burglar
- If it is a burglar, what does this mean? – e.g. steals other peoples’ possessions, criminal, dangerous?
- Why does it matter? – e.g. you want to run away
- We categorise people, give assumptions based on category, influences behaviour
Why do we categorise?
Save cognitive energy
- Saves time & cognitive processing
- Simplify how individuals think about world
Clarifies and refines perception of the world
- Once category is activated - tend to see members as possessing all traits of the stereotype
- Reducing uncertainty, predict social world
Maintain a positive self-esteem
- Motivational function for social identify & self-concept
- E.g. understand what group you are and how others are different (understand self)
What are some common group distinctions?
- Sexual orientation
- Profession
- ‘Class’
- Race
- Age
- Employment status
- Nationality
- Immigrant status
What is illusory correlation (stereotypes)?
- Negative stereotypes may occur when people inaccurately pair minority groups with negative events/behaviours because they are both distinct:
- Hamilton and Sherman (1996):
- Asked White American participants to estimate the arrest rate of various types of American
- African Americans were estimated to have a higher arrest rate than they, in fact, did
- African Americans = relative minority <- illusion that they are correlated -> being arrested = negative and therefore unusual
What is the behavioural assimilation effect of stereotyping?
Stereotypes don’t just influence our perceptions of others; they influence our own behaviour
What did Bargh et al. (1996) find about behavioural assimilation?
- ‘Scrambled sentence’ task - making sentences out of randomly ordered words
- IV: word types (2 conditions) = (1) ‘elderly’: task used words associated with elderly stereotypes (e.g. grey, lonely, wise, old). (2) Neutral: words unrelated to age (e.g. thirsty, clean)
- DV: participants directed to the exit and hidden confederate timed how long it took them to leave room
- Participants primed with elderly words behaved in a way related to an ‘elderly’ stereotype i.e. moved more slowly to leave the room (even though ‘slow’ wasn’t primed specifically – it was part of the stereotype activated)
Do studies like Bargh’s replicate?
- The studies that prime stereotypes (e.g. the Bargh study) often don’t replicate
- It might be because the effects are not universal; people might already need to care about what’s being primed
- Papies (2015) found that people who want to become thinner are likelier to make healthy food choices if they are primes, say, with words on a menu such as ‘diet’, ‘thin’ and ‘trim figure’
- But it works only in people for whom a healthy diet is a central goal; it doesn’t make everyone avoid fattening foods
What is the stereotype threat effect of stereotyping?
- The threat of negative evaluations can actually lead to poor performance e.g. sinking to the level expected of you when expectations are low
- When negative stereotypes define our own groups, and we behave in line with them:
- “Feeling that we will be judged and treated in terms of negative stereotypes of our group & that we will inadvertently confirm these stereotypes through our behaviour” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p.383)
What are some examples of stereotype threat?
- Women and maths (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999)
- Men and social sensitivity (Koenig & Eagly, 2005)
- Elderly people and memory (Levy, 1996)
- This negative impact is not inevitable; reframing low expectations as a challenge instead of a threat can eliminate the effect (Alter & al., 2010)
Does stereotype threat replicate across groups?
- Tan and Barber (2020) examined whether age-based stereotypes impact older Chinese adults
- They tested older Chinese participants’ memory recall under a stereotype threat condition (or control condition)
- Results demonstrated poorer memory recall in the stereotype threat condition (vs. control)
- However, it should be noted that participants were immigrants residing in the United States
- As shown in other studies, could the effects of stereotype threat be different in Asian participants who still reside in an Asian country (e.g., Zhang et al. 2017)?
What is a third effect of stereotyping?
Prejudice and discrimination
What is prejudice?
Strong, highly accessible negative attitude (dominated by cognitive bias and negative stereotypes)
What is discrimination?
- Behaviour based on unjust treatment of certain groups: reluctance to help, tokenism, reverse discrimination
- Intergroup bias (e.g. favouritism) -> intergroup prejudice -> discrimination (but: attitude <-> behaviour?)
What is reluctance to help?
(Type of discrimination)
- Gaetner & Dovidio (1977)
- Participants were more reluctant to help a minority member (than their own group) when faced with an emergency, but only when others were present
What is tokenism?
(Type of discrimination)
- Process of favouring a member of a minority group in isolated episodes
- Monin and Miller (2001) found that participants who were given the opportunity to hire a well-qualified minority candidate were willing to discriminate against other minorities in future hiring, as they had already ‘proved’ that they were not prejudiced
What is reverse discrimination?
(Type of discrimination)
- Opening displays pro-minority behaviour but as a way to deflect accusations of prejudice, e.g. giving more money to a minority member when feeling threatened (Dutton & Lake, 1973)
Has racism and sexism gone or is it in new dress?
- Dovido et al. (1996): decline of racist attitudes over 60 years
- But Quillian and Lee (2022): find that hiring discrimination among 170k apps for minority groups has not fallen over the past decades
- Specific stereotypes changed, but negatively remains
- Racism changed in the form: new/modern racism:
- Conflict between evaluation towards out-group and values of equality and egalitarian attitudes (human equality)
- -> aversive/discomfort (a bit more implicit)
- Old fashioned -> aversive -> total egalitarianism
What are the three theories of subtle prejudice?
(1) Modern or symbolic racism (Kinder & Sears, 1981)
- Blaming the victim
- Support of policies that all happen to disadvantage racial minorities
(2) Ambivalent racism (Katz & Hass, 1988)
- High scores on pro-Black attitudes (pity for the disadvantaged)
- High scores on anti-Black attitudes (hostility toward the deviant)
(3) Ambivalent sexism (Glick & Fiske 1996)
- Hostile sexism paints women in a negative light
- Benevolent sexism could be seen as apparently positive
What causes prejudice?
- Two categories of causes:
- (1) Historical/economical = linked to the psychological notion of frustration of aggression
- (2) Psychological = individual differences in personality; group processes (such as unequal status)
What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis?
- Frustration causes aggression (Dollard et al., 1939):
- ‘Psychic energy’ built up by frustration needs an outlet
- We find a scapegoat e.g. a minority group.
- Linked to the Freudian notion of ‘displacement’
- When we get angry, we misdirect our anger
- Also, linked to historical context
Describe evidence for the frustration-aggression hypothesis
- Evidence (Hovland & Sears, 1940) – some of the only evidence
- Archival study about cotton workers
- Over a fifty year period measured the price of cotton and number of lynchings of Black workers
- As frustration increased (i.e. price of cotton fell), lynching increased (displaced aggression)
- Evaluation: can’t determine cause and effect (not the best theory)
Psychological causes - what is the authoritarian personality?
- Researchers then started to ask: ‘are some types of people predisposed to be prejudiced towards minority groups?’
- Authoritarian personality traits = extreme reactions to authority figures, obsession with rank and status, tendency to displace anger
- Related to upbringing = harsh parental discipline
What is evidence for the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950)?
- Retrospective interviews about childhood
- Questionnaire (F-scale) monitoring anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, political and economic conservatism, potential for fascism
- E.g. ‘a person who has bad manners and poor breeding can hardly expect to get along with decent people’
- Correlation between the harshness of upbringing and measures of prejudice
What are some criticisms of the authoritarian personality explanation?
- Problems with supporting evidence (the F-scale)
- Correlation evidence – can’t determine cause and effect
- Poor methodology = relies on memory of upbringing, not all strict upbringings result in fascist, self-report
- Ignores the social context – need to take into account history and culture (Pettigrew, 1958)
- Personality can be predicted, but not this personality
What is the social learning theory?
- Rather than personality, Tajfel (1981) argued that hatred and suspicion of certain groups are learnt (early) in life
- Evidence - Barrett and Short (1992):
- English children, aged 4-5 years old
- French and Spanish were liked, followed by Italians, and Germans were liked the least
- Parental prejudices:
- Modelling (child witness expression of racial hatred)
- Conditioning (parents approval of racist behaviour)
How may conformity explain prejudice and discrimination?
- Conforming to group norms
- Are some groups more prejudiced than others?
- Evidence - Minard (1952):
- Investigated attitudes of White miners
- 60% would readily switch between racism & non racism depending on whether situational norms encouraged or discouraged prejudice (e.g. friendly at work then segregated outside of work in society)
- Being influenced by a group authority figure? e.g. 1920s & 30s Germany
How may group relations theory explain prejudice and discrimination?
- “We cannot extrapolate from the properties of individuals to the characteristics of group situations” (Sherif, 1962, p1)
- One main theory: Social Identity Theory
- We have a social identity as well as a personal one. Made up of how we categorise ourselves in terms of social groups (Turner et al., 1987)
- Intergroup differentiation:
- ‘in-group’ vs ‘outgroup’
- Depersonalisation
- In-group bias
Why is social identity important?
- Helps to maintain self-esteem
- Social bonding
- BUT
- Implications for interaction with out-group members
- Hypothesised cause of prejudice and stereotyping
Describe the blue eyes/brown eyes demonstration
- School teacher Jane Elliot (1968) tied to highlight effects of prejudice to school children (not a psychological experiment – done in a classroom)
- One day, blue eyed children were ‘inferior’ and had to wear a collar and lost privileges
- Brown eyed children were very quick to derogate those with blue eyes
How are these explanations brought together (Akrami et al., 2011)?
- Previous research has almost exclusively examined sexism from either a personality or a social-psychology perspective
- Akrami et al. explored whether personality (e.g. right-wing authoritarianism) or social-psychological (e.g. group member) – or a combination of both – predicted sexism
- Results demonstrated that sexism was best explained by considering the combined influence of both personality- and social-psychology constructs
- The findings imply that it is necessary to integrate various approaches to explain prejudice
