Lecture 6: Stereotyping and Prejudice Flashcards
What are automatic processes?
Occur outside of awareness, w/o intention, are efficient in terms of cognitive resources
Compare how psychologists used to uncover implicit attitudes vs now?
Psychoanalysis of dreams vs implicit bias tests (i.e. IAT)
What is the IAT?
Measures automatic association with reaction time. The logic behind it is that if one pairing matches better with one’s own personal belief on the pairing, the reaction time should be faster. Can be used to measure racial, political, consumer attitudes. People tend to be 145 ms faster on the compatible vs the non-compatible task.
What is the predictive power of the IAT?
People’s scores on IAT predicts their likelihood to shoot Black targets in the Shooter task. The greater the bias on the IAT, the more likely they are to make an error to shoot. Same with police officers but to a lesser extent (trained professionals make this mistake less). Also race IAT was a predictor for who would vote for Trump or Clinton.
What was the sequential priming experiment?
Ps were primed with either a Black or White face which was followed by a target work (positive or negative). Then asked if the target word was positive or negative. Result was that there were longer RTs on incompatible trials, although the scores did follow a normal distribution.
How did Kawakami et al. show the potential of brute force in eliminating stereotypes?
They used classical conditioning to unlearn stereotypes. That is saying “No” for stereotypic combination (Black person and black stereotype), and “Yes” for an antistereotypic combination. Did this over 480 trials over 45 minutes. After this a stereotype stroop task was taken and they found that the classical conditioning lasted for up to 24 hours.
What are 3 ways we can unlearn stereotypes?
- Superordinate recategorization
- Cooperative interdependence
- Incremental theory
What did Devine’s 1989 studies (3) show about the components of stereotyping?
tereotyping has two components (automatic activation and controlled application). Application is largely controllable, and so can be reversed.
Study 1. High and low prejudice Ps had no difference in knowledge of stereotypes.
Study 2. When a subliminal prime was presented to Ps having to do with afro-americans (“jazz”), they rated Donald (race unspecified) as more aggressive than those primed with neutral words. Suggests that spreading of one stereotype to another stereotype outside of awareness (people READ in other aggression), automatic activation.
Study 3. When asked to write an essay describing honest thoughts about Black people, high prejudice participants’ essays contained more stereotypes than those of low prejudice participants.
Which conclusion of Devine’s did Lepore and Brown criticize?
Study 2, that is that both high and low prejudice people were unable to inhibit stereotyping at the automatic stage. They showed that low prejudice people were capable of preventing stereotype attribution at the automatic stage by using more general category primes for Black people (not negative stereotypes). They found that in this case, only people that were high in prejudice labelled Donald as more aggressive.
What is the difference between the Internal Motive Scale (IMS) and External Motive Scale (EMS)?
One is how much one is internally motivated to squash prejudice and stereotypes, the other refers to how externally motivated we are to control them. That is, those with high IMS will control prejudice regardless of observation.
What is the ironic rebound effect?
The more we try to suppress a thought, the more it plagues us. Results in the intensification of the thoughts we are trying to suppress.
What is the mechanism of the ironic rebound effect?
We have two processes that work together
a. controlled search for distractors (intentional)
b. automatic search for examples of unwanted target
When we’re under a low cognitive load, a+b work together well. Under high cognitive load, process 1 is hard, but process 2 is easier which results in the hyperaccessibility of unwanted thought.
How did McCrae et al show the ironic rebound effect?
Asked subjects to imagine and write and essay about a typical day in the life of a nazi skinhead
½ Ps told to “avoid stereotypes”
Part 2: Asked to write a second essay about another skinhead
Freedom to write whatever they wanted
Results: Those who suppressed in part 1 included more stereotypes in Part 2 than those who did not suppress in Part 1 (might rebound when people are no longer under cognitive load)
Suggests it’s not useful to shove rhetoric of don’t stereotype.
What is stereotype threat?
When individuals fear being reduced to the stereotype (e.g., women in science). Produces anxiety, distraction, decline in performance in that domain.
How did Steele and Aronson show stereotype threat?
Huge difference in scores due to stereotype threat from Black students who were primed that the test was an intelligence test. In another study, this test was pre-dated by a demographic test where Ps were asked about race. Black students that got the race question performed worse.
