POST MIDTERM LECTURES Flashcards
Why do we have cultures? What is cultural World view?
To help protect us the anxiety of death
A cultural world view manages death anxiety by providing meaning and purpose to life by delineating how life should live. Provides a sense of
Order
Meaning
Permanence
What is the Existential dilemma?
Instinct for self-preservation
Intelligence to know we will die
What does a threat to your cultural world view do when mortality is made salient?
Mortality is the threat you need to bolster your cultural world view (do the best you can to be good) they are harsher to someone that does not replicate their world view.
i.e; if you were a judge and your mortality was made salient, you were more likely to set a prostitute’s bail higher than if your mortality was not made salient.
What happens if you try to suppress thoughts? i.e; elephant on the screen - told not to think about it for 5 mins.
If we try to suppress the thoughts, you will think about it after trying not to think about it. You will not think about the bear for the five minutes but after that, you will think about the bear more than if you were not told to not think about it.
What is death thought accessibility (DTA) – Hayes?
DTA occurs when one’s anxiety buffer is threatened because the buffer functions to keep death-related cognition and associated potential anxiety at bay.
What happens to DTA if mortality is made salient? What does bolstering your worldview/self-esteem do to DTA?
Mortality salience increases unconscious DTA.
Bolstering cultural worldview and/or self-esteem decreases DTA.
How can DTA be managed?
Proximal defense
Distal defense
What is Proximal defense that manages DTA?
Conscious, rational, use distraction, reduce self-focus of attention, trivialize one’s vulnerability to death. Problem is thoughts may remain unconsciously accessible.
You realize you are thinking about it
Deny vulnerability
Engage in healthy behavior (social distancing, wearing a mask)
What is distal defense that manages DTA?
Unconscious, use cultural worldview, self-esteem
You don’t really realize you are thinking about it
What happens to DTA when your culture is threatened?
When you threaten the culture, you will increase death thoughts
What is denial coping?
I refuse to believe that the disengagement plan will be carried out.
I pretend that the disengagement plan isn’t really happening.
I act as though the disengagement plan will not happen.
Denial an effective short term defense
What is the Rubber-band effect?
not support violence otherwise
What is the terror management hypothesis after 9/11?
Increased patriotism
Search for meaning
Desire for justice and vengeance
Increased altruism, esp to ingroup
Lash out at those symbolically connected to the attackers.
Outgroups becomes Americans (Decreased prejudice toward African Americans and other ethnicities/cultures that are not the ethnicity/culture of the attackers)
Threaten cultural worldview; increase DTA
When mortality is made salient, what happens to people that report a low in meaning in life? What about those who report a high feeling of meaning in life?
People that were low reported more anxiety
People that were high reported less anxiety/protected against anxiety
With COVID and the mortality being more salient, did people have a stronger reaction to police killings of black people? Did it increase the will to go against this?
People had the need to do something of value
Felt meaning and significance derived from protest
This is a good thing that came out of mortality being salient during covid.
What will happen to your self-awareness if you are sitting in front of the mirror?
You will be objectively self-aware and you will answer the questions you are asked more objectively because you can reflect better
You will be more honest in front of a mirror (like with yourself too)
What happens to DTA when thinking about afterlife?
Pro-afterlife decreases death thought accessibility
Decreases the need to bolster people’s world views
What are intrinsic goals? Extrinsic goals?
Intrinsic – social connections
Extrinsic – money, reputation
What happens to your intrinsic and extrinsic goals when mortality is made salient?
There is an increase in intrinsic goals and a decrease in extrinsic goals
More you perceived risk – the more you shifted from extrinsic goals to intrinsic goals.
Why did prejudice decline over the years?
Became illegal (law teaches – change the law, things will follow in effect)
A lot of social change in terms of attitudes towards specific groups
Could be something going on implicitly that is different than what is going on explicitly
Expectations about attitudes might have changed
The contact hypothesis – put all these people together and they will eventually get along (Suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members )
Social desirability
What is an explicit attitude?
Attitudes that are at the conscious level, are deliberately formed and are easy to self-report
May be due to social desirability
Might be genuine but they can also be due to social desirability
May represent genuine but deliberative and personally desired attitude
What are implicit attitudes?
Unconscious thoughts - not easy to self-report
Less controllable, more automatic
Implicit measures – not aware in terms of measure
Implicit attitudes – can’t conjure up what your attitude is on the subject
Might influence how you engage in that behavior
What are automatic attitudes?
Implicit attitudes
What are the automatic response to black faces?
Faster response to negative adjectives than positive adjectives primed with Black faces but not when primed with White faces
What are the automatic responses to white faces?
Moderate for both positive and negative
What is the Affective Misattribution Paradigm (AMP)?
Distractor slide
Target slide
Do you like the target slide?
Don’t let the distractor influence you.
How does group level (community level) bias affect black people’s lifespan?
Correlated with death from cardiovascular disease within blacks (added stress to your daily life putting you at greater risk)
Correlated with the frequency of police shootings of blacks. (also possible that the police shootings of blacks give rise to the community level biasses)
What describes someone with high explicit prejudice?
People that are unrestrained, unmotivated to inhibit, blatant discrimination, maybe even seek opportunities to act against an outgroup
What describes someone who has low explicit, high implicit prejudice?
People that are guardedly good, careful deliberative judgments but spontaneous behaviors less controlled, maybe also influence on social perception
What describes someone who has low explicit and low implicit prejudice?
People that still know the cultural stereotype and context may prime the stereotype and increase the chance that it will be applied
Why is it suggested that the first policeman on the scene should not engage with the suspect and wait for the second policeman?
He will have lots of adrenaline – more likely to act out in a bad way (shoot when not necessary)
What does dehumanization lead to?
It leads to moral exclusion - treat someone like they are an animal
Moral rules and values do not apply if this person is being dehumanized
What is the difference between black faces and white faces IAT with animals?
We have this implicit association that dehumanizes blacks – more readily associate black with ape than any other animal and we will do it when we are primed with black – not with white faces
You will take less time to recognize the ape if you are primed with black faces.
Does dehumanization predict behaviour?
Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide.
Dehumanization and donations.
We are more likely to donate to the Boston marathon than to victims of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Yemen because we see the victims of the boston marathon as more human/in our ingroup rather than our outgroup
How can prejudice be reduced?
Cooperative learning (teamwork), peer influence, contact (contact hypothesis), Entertainment (reducing prejudice in the media and in movies), diversity training, multicultural education, sensitivity
How does multiculturalism help with prejudice reduction?
Different cultural groups bring different perspective to life
People Low in Prejudice benefited – measure warmth toward target, liking, breadth of disclosure, intimacy of disclosure
However, this backfires for people High in Prejudice
How does colourblindness help with prejudice reduction?
It does not unfortunately
Definition of colourblindness theory - We must look beyond skin color, understand the person within, at our core we are the same
Did not do anything
How does anti-racism help with prejudice reduction?
Stamping out racism is essential if we are to achieve harmony amongst many ethic
Increases evaluative concerns for Low in Prejudice people and High in Prejudice people and decreases interpersonal warmth/responsivity for Low in Prejudice people
Separated the blue and brown eyed kids - results?
Brown-Eyed kids in better position at first - started bullying Blue-Eyed kids and Blue-Eyed kids actually started to perform more poorly at school
Next week, Blue-Eyed kids were the ones with privileges
Were way less vicious to the Brown-Eyed kids than they had been to them
Prime heterosexual schema - materialized women.
The men that had the prime were more likely to sexualize the woman interviewer - would more likely remember super-facial clues than what kinds of question she asked.
What did the likelihood to sexually harass scale experiment show for priming power?
For guys high on this scale, if you prime power – you increase the accessibility of sex and vice versa
Meaning that power and sex are cognitively linked for men high on this scale.
What is the reaction of a guy that is likely to sexually harass in an interview/what will they remember of the interview?
Proximity
Sexualized Behavior
Memory about appearance
Memory about qualifications
Competence of the confederate
Friendliness and attractiveness of confederate
Hireability
What will the sexualized prime do to a guy in the midpoint whether he is likely to sexual harass or not?
The prime will increase his sexualized behavior.
Things in the environment that can influence a person even if they are not high on the scale.
How does likeliness to sexually harass influence the target of prejudice and discrimination?
Body image
Self as an object
Knowing the stereotype of my group and that you may be applying it
How does the sexualized ads affect the women?
There is a much larger effect on sexualizing behaviour of men in women than women in men when viewing sexualized ads.
What is the Self-Objectification Theory – Fredrickson et al., 1998?
Whenever people’s bodies, body parts, or sexual functions are separated out from their identity and reduced to the status of mere instruments or regarded as capable of representing them.
Traits vs. State effects.
Trait is, you do this across days, weeks, months, you generally think of yourself in a more objectifying way
State is, you are thinking of yourself in a more objectifying state.
What are the consequences of self objectification?
Cultural Practices of Sexual Objectification –> Self Objectification –> Psychological Consequences –> Mental Health Risk
How do women high and low in body shame react to the sweatshirt-swimsuit experiment?
Restraint = eat less than half a cookie
Symbolic restraint = eat more than half but not whole cookie
No restraint = eat at least one whole cookie
Women Low in body shame
They either ate or didn’t eat
Restraint or No restraint
Women High in body shame
Complete opposite
Restraint or Symbolic restraint
What do stereotypes do to an individual on the receiving end of the stereotype? (Stereotype threat)
Knowledge of a prevalent cultural stereotype about performance
Interferes with performance through fear of confirming the stereotype
Black and white students given verbal problems.
Half told it is diagnostic of verbal intelligence
Half told just some problem solving task.
What happens in both conditions?
When test of verbal intelligence:
Blacks performance goes way down – as if they crack under pressure
When told it is a problem solving task:
Performance is essentially the same for white and black students
Stereotype threat and women’s math performance. What effect do the super hard problems have on the reasonable problems? Why?
Women would get subconscious and do bad on the easier ones – stereotype threat (women supposedly bad at math) and she loses hope slowly because she was thinking about the stereotype
Men would just think “I’ve got to work extra hard on the next ones to get them right”.
Stereotype threat and men’s math performance. White men and Asian men - what effect is in place for white men?
Stereotype threat would also affect white males when they are in this situation doing the questions with Asian males.
Athletic performance and stereotype threat;
Sport intelligence vs. Athletic performance
White vs. Black men
Condition 1 – “sports intelligence”
Blacks performance would go down for this condition
Condition 2 – “natural athletic ability”
Whites performance would go down for this condition
How do role models of the same ethnicity affect perfomance?
Black student comes in and thinks “my group can’t do this” the Black TA comes in and says “Yes, you can I have done it”
Alleviate pressure to represent group
How does Self-affirmation reduce threat?
when individuals complete an activity that affirms their self-integrity they are less defensive and more accepting of information that is potentially threatening.
Writing self-affirmation every week improves student’s grades by the end of the school year.
Domain is less a self-evaluative threat
What is the introspection bias?
If I introspect, I will get beyond the biases because I reflect on that
What is Ego Justification ?
Develop, maintain favorable self-image and feel valid, justified and legitimate as an individual
What is Group Justification?
Develop, maintain favorable image of my group, defend and justify
What is System Justification?
Social and psychological need to justify the system, status quo
In general you find society to be fair.
In general, the political system operates as it should.
What are the implications of system justification? How is it different than group justification?
Disadvantaged groups still endorse status quo
Ego and/or group justification must overcome strength of system justification
In order to trigger efforts at social change
(experiment) Which do you like to play with? Which is the good doll and the bad doll?
Which one did the white kids choose? Black kids?
White kids liked the white doll
Black kids ALSO like the white doll
Effect was especially strong for Black kids that went to segregated schools (Black kids only in Black kids school)
Under what circumstances are people justifying the system?
If he is poor and unhappy – it is not fair because he has nothing
If he is rich and happy it is also not fair because he has everything
We want to believe the world is just - rich=unhappier than poor, poor=happier than rich
How competent and hireable is the applicant? John vs. Jennifer same qualities.
Voted John more competent than Jennifer (even though they had the same traits)
Starting salary for John was higher than for Jennifer
What is Benevolent Sexism?
Warmth and competence
See people in those two ways
Women do not lack competence – people just see her higher in warmth, purity things like that
Claim that they are just rating men more competent – they aren’t better than women
See members of a disadvantaged group as having positive traits on other dimensions.
Conclude not unequal, just different
Gender specific justifications when primed communal stereotype of women (considerate, honest, warm, moral). What will the reaction of men and women be on this description of women after this prime?
With men, it doesn’t matter if you prime the stereotype or not, men are going to endorse the gender status quo
Women will endorse the gender status quo when they are primed to think of the gender stereotype
Women described as are pure, vulnerable and ideal at making men feel complete
Women described as career oriented, active in social causes, athletic
Which Woman will the men prefer?
Guys rated them more positively when described like the first condition.
Sexism as an environment for self-objectification
Does benevolent sexism provide the sort of environment to give rise to self-objectification
Fulfill the gender stereotype
Men supposedly more competent and women more warm
Attention to appearance more than competence
