Lecture 6 - Stereotyping Flashcards
What are stereotypes?
the cognitive component of attitudes towards a social group, beliefs about what a particular group is like
What is prejudice
Affective (feeling)
What is discrimintation?
Behavioural (action)
What are the traits of stereotypes?
- positive/negative
- accurate/inaccurate
- agreed/rejected by group members who are stereotyped
- But must be agreed on by some majority to go beyond prototype status (Turner et al., 1987)
Why do we form and use stereotypes?
Schemas
What is the aim of Dovidio, Evans & Tyler’s 1986 study?
To explore whether stereotype consistent information is processed faster than inconsistent information
What participants were in Dovidio, Evans & Tyler’s 1986 study?
12 male undergraduates and 24 female undergraduates
What did Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler do in thier 1986 study?
Presented ‘Black’ and ‘White’ as primes, followed by positive and negative Black and White stereotypic words as test
stimuli
- Participants had to respond whether the word was “ever true” of the group or “always false” – measured reaction times
What was the result of Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler’s 1986 study?
As predicted, primes of black and white most facilitated response to traits stereotypically attributed to these social groups.
What did Katz & Braly do in thier 1933 study?
surveyed 100 white Male Princeton students about the traits they associate with 10 ethnic national groups
Participants given a list of 84 traits and asked to select the 5 most typical of each group
What did Katz and Braly find in their 1933 study?
Consistency of these traits: Number of traits taken in to consideration to find 50% agreement between participants
- African Americans: 4.6
- Jews: 5.5
- Italians: 6.9
- Americans: 8.8
Becoming more nebulous as the traits become more positive – agreement over widely held negative stereotypes in 1933
Why do stereotypes change over time?
Contextual influence
Who did Dasgupta and Asgari study in their 2004 study?
assessed female college students’ gender stereotypes in their 1st and 2nd year of either a women’s college or co-educational college
What did Dasgupta & Asgari do in their 2004 study?
- Madon and colleagues showed in their replication of Katz and Braly’s original Princeton study that explicitly reported stereotypes are not constant and are in fact subject to change over time. Why might this be? Influence of context seems possibly important
- 1933 vs. 2001 – racial segregation in the US revoked between these two time points, increased representation and contact with African Americans for White European American participants
- Dasgupta and Asgari tested this possibility experimentally in the context of gender stereotypes amongst students attending women’s college or co-ed college in the US
What are the results of Dasgupta & Asgari’s 2004 study?
- The results of this study suggest that exposure to the women’s college context was related to a decrease in implicit gender stereotypes between year one and year two. In contrast, these implicit stereotypes increased between year one and two for participants attending co-ed college
- Crucially, this effect could be explained by the proportion of women who were members of staff in the college – greater exposure to female staff buffered against automatic gender stereotypic beliefs
- Stereotypes are subject to contextual influence
Who proposed the stereotype content model?
Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu
What is the stereotype content model?
All groups can be stereotyped along two dimensions – warmth and competence
- Where groups fall along these two dimensions determines how they are viewed by society
What is the “Women are wonderful” effect?
Consequences of warm but less competent stereotyping
- Benevolent sexism – women hold positive traits that actually lead to the upholding of the patriarchy, whereas men are stereotyped as having traits that are not always as positive but lead to positions of power
What are the consequences of the “women are warm effect”
Are women penalized for not living up to these benevolently sexist stereotypes?
What did Deutsch, LeBaron & Fryer examine in their 1987 study?
- examined this possibility by asking participants to rate how warm, happy, carefree and relaxed a number of people were based on a verbal description accompanied by:
- No Photo
- Smiling Photo
- Non-Smiling Photo
What did Deutsch, LeBaron, & Fryer find in their 1987 study?
- When not smiling, women were perceived as less happy, carefree and relaxed than men
- Nonsmiling women were rated less happy, warm relaxed and carefree than women with no photo– whereas smiling men were rated more favorably on those traits than men with no photo
- Double standard applied to men and women – if women don’t express warm nonverbal behaviour as expected by these benevolent stereotypes, they face harsher critique
What is stereotype threat?
Occurs when people believe they might be judged in light of a negative stereotype about their social identity and that they may inadvertently act in some way to confirm a negative stereotype of their group
What did Steele and Aronson (1995) examine?
Examined performance on an intellectual ability test among 24 black and 23 white participants (university students – in study 4, more participants across other studies demonstrating similar effects) with race salient or not:
- Race made salient by asking participants for demographic information immediately before taking (ostensible) verbal ability test
- In non-salient condition this demographic information wasn’t collected
- Does stereotype threat invoked through thinking about race relate to performance on this task?
What did Spencer, Steele, & Quinn (1999) do in their studies?
Male and female participants selected with approximate math ability (e.g., completed calculus course at B grade or higher, self-reported being good at math)
Participants asked to take a math test that was either described as being diagnostic of gender differences in math or not
- Study 2 – 30 women, 24 men
- Study 3 – 36 women, 31 men
All university students
What is the Stereotype Threat Process?
“Integrated process model of stereotype threat effects on performance”
There is consistent evidence that the activation of stereotypes leads to performance detriment effects, but why?
Physical stress and thought supression
What is meant by physical stress in the stereotype threat process?
stereotype activation leads to a physiological stress response that directly impairs prefrontal processing
Self-Monitoring – stereotype activation leads us to monitor our own performance
What is meant by thought suppression in the stereotype threat process?
efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions in the service of self-regulationTogether these mechanisms place a strain on our executive resources that are required to perform well on cognitive and social tasks – such as academic tests
What was the aim in Aronson, Fried, & Good’s 2002 study on challenging stereotype threat?
to counter the effects of stereotype threat on African American college students’ performance in academic tests
What participants were in Aronson, Fried, & Good’s 2002 study on challenging stereotype threat?
Stanford undergraduates, 42 Black, 37 White
What was the method of Aronson, Fried, & Good’s 2002 study on challenging stereotype threat?
Intervention focused on conceptions of intelligence as malleable (”growth mindset”) or fixed (”fixed mindset”)
Three conditions:
- Pen Pal – Growth Mindset
- Pen Pal – Control
- Non Pen Pal - Control
Control condition – “many different types of intelligence”, didn’t focus on malleable or fixed nature of intelligence
