Lecture 8: Attitudes About Others Flashcards
1
Q
need to evaluate (5)
A
- Our tendency to engage in evaluation;
- Describe events from previous day;
- Use more positive or negative words (e.g. friendly, mean);
- And have more accessible attitudes towards everyday objects (e.g. butterfly, spinach).
- However, the Need to Evaluate Scale (Jarvis & Petty, 1996) was developed to measure our attitudes towards things, not people.
2
Q
Tormala & Petty (2001) (10)
A
- Found that the need to evaluate produces differences in our tendency to evaluate others.
- High: Engage in careful evaluation after each stimulus.
- Low: Prone to make a global judgement in the moment it’s required.
- Participants read 20 sentences about a hypothetical person, half good and half bad.
- Completed attitude (if the person is good/bad) & recall (as many things as possible about person), and individual difference measures (need to evaluate).
- On-Line: Form impression of target; will be asked later.
- Memory-Based: Note how complex sentences are.
- For on-line condition and high need to evaluate: No association between recall valence & attitudes towards target.
- For memory-based condition and low need to evaluate: More positive recall index → more positive attitude.
- Problem: Situations where this is not the case (e.g. more realistic or personally relevant scenarios).
3
Q
attitudes from stereotypes (3)
A
- The first things we notice about others is their gender, race, and age.
- We tend to assume people are representative of the group we perceive them to be in.
- In other words, our beliefs about someone’s group become part of our attitude toward that person.
4
Q
Locksley et al. (1980) (6)
A
- Found that having more information than just gender reduces stereotype effects.
- Participants read about 6 students (3M, 3F), varying the description provided, all relating to assertiveness.
- Control: no scenario given (name only).
- Nondiagnostic description: a situation that had nothing to do with assertiveness (e.g. going for a haircut).
- Diagnostic description: a situation regarding assertiveness (e.g. having an in-class debate).
- After reading the diagnostic description of a student, participants rated him/her as equally assertive (regardless of the gender).
5
Q
Kunda & Sherman-Williams (1993) (6)
A
- Participants read about a construction worker or a housewife who “hit someone who annoyed him/her.”
- Were given info that indicated high or low aggression, or no info.
- Asked how aggressive he/she is.
- When participants were given either unambiguous description of the behaviour, they ignored the stereotype.
- But when the behaviour was ambiguous, the construction worker was viewed as more aggressive.
- Problem: Were the construction worker and housewife really viewed the same? Were stereotypes really not activated?
6
Q
Kunda et al. (1997) (9)
A
- Did a follow-up to Kunda & Sherman-Williams (1993).
- Participants read about John, who walked away from someone taunting him without saying anything (low aggression).
- Half told John is a construction worker, other half told he is an accountant.
- Both conditions rated John as equally unaggressive.
- But participants in construction worker condition rated John as more likely to engage in other stereotypically working-class aggressive behaviours (e.g. get into bar fights, make rude comments at women).
- Demonstrates that expectations can be influenced by other aspects of the stereotype that remain unchallenged.
- Individuating information only goes so far.
- Specific, unambiguous individuating information can undercut effect of stereotypes for judgments that directly relate to the individuating information.
- But any stereotypes that are activated can still influence formation of one’s overall concept & collection of beliefs about that person.
7
Q
stereotype content model (SCM) or Fiske et al. (2002)
A
8
Q
consequences of intergroup bias (9)
A
- Information processing: Stereotypes can influence how we interpret others’ behaviour & events.
- Can also affect our behaviour towards those groups, via:
- Blatant discrimination resulting in significant disadvantages and severe emotional and/or physical harm;
- Subtle/aversive discrimination (e.g. benevolent sexism);
- Limiting our interaction with outgroup members.
- Our behaviour can, in turn, affect outgroup members’ behaviour.
- Attitudes can also determine how we interpret social situations, how we treat people, and how they respond.
- In turn influences who we get to know better and what info we’re exposed to.
- Thus, many people are motivated to change their negative attitudes toward others.
9
Q
Word et al. (1974) (5)
A
- White participants interviewed White and Black job applicants (confederates).
- Interviewers treated applicants differently regarding: physical distance, speech errors, and interview length.
- Follow-up study where White confederate interviewers gave people the “White treatment” or “Black treatment”.
- Other participants viewed tapes of the interviews and rated those who got the Black treatment as less qualified for the job.
- Shows how stereotypes can influence behaviour of the person holding the stereotype and, consequently, the person being stereotyped (thereby reinforcing the original stereotype).
10
Q
Macrae et al. (1994) (6)
A
- Found that we can consciously suppress stereotypes, but this may lead to more intense activation and application later on.
- Participants shown photo of a male skinhead, asked to write a description of a typical day in his life.
- Half instructed to suppress stereotype of skinheads; controls were not.
- Descriptions written by the suppression group were less stereotype-consistent.
- However, on a subsequent lexical decision task, suppressed participants were faster to respond to stereotypic words.
- Also, when told that they were going to meet the skinhead from the photo, suppression participants sat further away from the chair with the person’s jacket.
11
Q
contact hypothesis (4)
A
- Contact must be among people of equal status in pursuit of common goals (Allport, 1954).
- Further research indicated that we also need:
- Opportunities to get to know each other;
- Exposure to evidence that disconfirms stereotypes;
- And active cooperation.
12
Q
Shook & Fazio (2008) (6)
A
- Can having a Black roommate reduce implicit bias?
- White 1st years randomly assigned to share a room with a Black student or White student.
- Assessed level of satisfaction with roommate & implicit prejudice (using the evaluative priming measure) at begining & end of term.
- White students with Black roommates reported lower roommate satisfaction scores at both sessions.
- But also scored lower on implicit prejudice in 2nd session.
- Conclusion: Increased contact led to more positive implicitly measured attitudes, despite less (explicit) satisfaction.
13
Q
when we don’t disconfirm stereotypes (4)
A
- When we encounter individuals that disconfirm stereotypes, can hang onto stereotype by creating exception/subtype.
- Particularly likely when:
- All disconfirming examples have another shared attribute.
- Individuals are consistent with stereotype in other ways.
- Stereotype violation is more extreme.
14
Q
when we do disconfirm stereotypes (4)
A
- Stereotypes can change over time, as people encounter more and more people who:
- Moderately violate the stereotype;
- Violate the stereotype in different and/or multiple ways.
- parasocial contact: e.g. Knowing friends who have outgroup friends.
- And also by forming a close relationship with people of outgroups before knowing they are a member of an outgroup.
15
Q
Onaret et al. (2007) (4)
A
- Found that low trait emotional intelligence (EI) correlates with higher Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and subtle racial rejudice.
- Participants completed questionnaires measuring their trait EI, RWA, SDO, and radical prejudice.
- Because low trait EI correlates with lack of perspective taking, this explains why individuals are more prejudiced.
- Low trait EI also correlates with seeing stressful events as threatening, explaining the relationship to RWA.
