Lecture_11_Prejudice Flashcards
Prejudice
A hostile or negative attitude toward people in a distinguishable group based solely on their membership in that group
3 Components of Prejudice
- Cognitive: Stereotypes
- Affective: Emotions
- Behavioral: Discrimination
Cognitive Component of Prejudice: Stereotype
A belief about the personal attributes of a group of people. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information (and sometimes accurate)
Stereotyping
– A cognitive process
– Can be positive or negative
– Technique we use to simplify our world
- “Cognitive misers” take shortcuts and adopt rules of thumb to understand people
– Better memory for information consistent with stereotypes
- Denies individuality of person
Adaptive Stereotypes
When accurately identifies attributes of a group well
Maladaptive Stereotypes
Blinds us to individual differences
Stereotypes of Gender
- Hostile sexism
- Benevolent sexism
Hostile Sexism
Stereotypical views of women that suggest that women are inferior to men
- E.g., that they are less intelligent, less competent, and so on
Benevolent Sexism
Stereotypical, positive views of women
Ambivalent Sexism
Gender attitudes frequently mix a benevolent sexism (“Women have a superior moral sensibility”) with hostile sexism.
Negative Outcome of Hostile Sexism
Increase gender inequality
Negative Outcomes of Benevolent Sexism
Discouraging the hiring of women in traditionally male-dominated occupations
Emotion Component of Prejudice
- Negative emotions about groups are often ingrained/firmly fixed.
- This makes such attitudes difficult to dispel
Behavioral Component of Prejudice: Discrimination
An unjustified negative or harmful action toward the members of a group simply because of their membership in that group
Racial Discrimination
Social Distance
– A person’s reluctance to get “too close” to another group
Gender Discrimination
Occupations segregated by gender
– People form stereotypes about the requirements of such careers
▪ “Female” jobs: require kindness and nurturance
▪ “Male” jobs: require strength and smarts
The Activation of Prejudice
Behave more aggressively toward stereotyped target when:
– Stressed
– Angry
– Suffered a blow to self-esteem
– Not in control of conscious intentions
Suppressing Prejudices
People hide prejudice.
– When situation becomes “safe,” their prejudice will be revealed
Suppress prejudices for two reasons
– Sincere motivation to become less prejudiced
– Avoid being labeled a sexist, racist, etc.
Identifying Suppressed Prejudices
- Bogus pipeline
- Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Bogus pipeline
- Participants believed a “lie detector” could detect true attitudes
- More likely to express racist attitudes
Explicit Attitude Change
Education
Implicit Attitude Change
- Implicit attitudes may linger
- Changing only as we form new habits through practice
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Measures the speed with which people can pair
- a target face (e.g., Black or White, old or young, Asian or White)
- with positive or negative stimuli (e.g., the words honest or evil) reflecting unconscious (implicit) prejudices
Limitation of IAT
IAT may be measuring bias OR…
– It measures a cultural bias or stereotype, not a personally held bias
– IAT could be due to common cultural associations, not prejudice
The Effects of Prejudice on the Victim
- The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Social Identity Threat (or Stereotype Threat)
Example of The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Prejudice
- White students displayed discomfort and lack of interest when interviewing African American candidates, not white (e.g., sat farther away, ended interview sooner)
- If a society believes that a particular group is stupid, uneducable, it will act in accordance with beliefs
- Educational resources will not be provided to that group
Social Identity Threat (or Stereotype Threat)
Experience of being at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s social group
- Can negatively impact their performance
Example of Social Identity Threat
Women are not as good at math as men
-> Anxiety
-> Reduced working memory
Stereotype Threat Model
- Cultural stereotype ->
- Stereotype threat ->
- Performance deficits <->
- Disidentification with stereotyped domain
Reversing the Effects of Stereotype Threat
- Alternative mindset:
- “I’m a good student” - Self-affirmation:
- Practice of reminding yourself of your good qualities
Causes of Prejudice
- Pressures to conform: Normative rules
- Social identity theory: Us versus them
- Realistic group conflict theory
Pressures to Conform
- Institutional discrimination
Cause: Normative conformity
Institutional discrimination
Practices that discriminate, legally or illegally, against a minority group by virtue
Normative conformity
Strong tendency to go along with the group in order to fulfill the group’s expectations and gain acceptance
Social Identity Theory
Self-concept that is based on his or her identification
- with a nation, religious or political group, occupation, or other social affiliation
- Part of our identity that stems from our membership in groups
Ethnocentrism
The belief that your own culture, nation, or religion is superior to all others
In-group Bias
The tendency to favor members of one’s own group and give them special preference over people who belong to other groups
Motive of In-group Bias
– Individuals enhance self-esteem by identifying with specific social groups
– Self-esteem is enhanced only if the individual sees these groups as superior to other groups
Out-Group Homogeneity
- In-group members perceive out group members as being more similar (homogeneous) than they really are
- Know one out-group member, you know something about all of them
- “They” are all alike
The Own-Race Bias
White subjects more accurately recognize the faces of whites than of blacks
- Vice versa
Personal Identity and Social Identity Together Feed Self-esteem
- Individual achievement + self-serving bias -> Personal identity and pride -> Self-esteem
- Group achievement + Ingroup bias -> Self-esteem
Passing on Prejudice to the Next Generation
Children often learn prejudice from parents and grandparents
Blaming the Victim
The tendency to blame individuals (make dispositional attributions) for their victimization, is typically motivated by a desire to see the world as a fair place
- Serves a self-protective function
- “Can’t happen to me, wouldn’t behave that way”
Scapegoating
When frustrated or unhappy, people tend to displace aggression onto groups that are disliked, visible, and relatively powerless
- Form of aggression dependent on what in-group approves of or allows
- Realistic group conflict theory
Economic and Political Competition
– Limited resources leads to conflict among groups, which leads to prejudice and discrimination
– The theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources
When times are tough and resources are scarce…
- In-group members will feel more threatened by the out-group
- Incidents of prejudice, discrimination, and violence toward out-group members will increase
Robbers Cave Experiment: Eagles versus Rattlers
- 2 groups of boy throughout the first week of the camp by doing various activities together
- 4 days of competitions -> group prejudice
- forcing the groups to work together to reach common goals -> eased prejudice and tension among the groups
Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice
- Social dominance orientation
- Authoritarian personality
Social Dominance Orientation
“Status breeds prejudice”
A motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups
- View people in terms of hierarchies
- To embrace prejudice and to support political positions that justify prejudice
Authoritarian Personality
favor obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status
Reducing Prejudice
The Contact Hypothesis
- Mere contact between groups not sufficient to reduce prejudice
- Can create opportunities for conflict that may increase it
- Prejudice will decrease when two conditions are met:
* Equal status.
* Share a common goal
Why does presenting people with information counter to stereotypes does not change beliefs
- Strengthen stereotypes
- Disconfirming evidence challenges them to come up with additional reasons
When Contact Reduces Prejudice
- Mutual interdependence
- Common goal
- Equal status
- Friendly, informal setting
- Knowing multiple out-group members
- Social norms of equality
Interdependence
The need to depend on each other to accomplish a goal that is important to
each group
Discussion Question: How might college campuses combat the negative effects of stereotype threat on the academic performance of some students?
Stereotype threat + the contact hypothesis
