Predjudice and discrimination Flashcards
Predjudice definition
unfavourable attitude towards a social group and its members
Dehumanisation definition
stripping poeple of their dignity and humanity
Genocide definition
the ultimate expression of prejudice by extermination an entire social group
Predjudice: Three component attitude model
- Cognitive - beliefs about a group
- affective - strfeelings about a group and qualities it is believed to posess
- conative - intentions to behave in certain ways towards a group
How are target groups formed
by social categorizations
which positions do target groups have
lower positions in society
On what are target groups based on?
race, ethnicity, sex, age, sexual orientation, physical and mental health
Sexism definition
predjudice and discrimination against people based on their gender
Social stereotypes of gender
Men more competent and independent
Women more warm and expressive
(Men´s sterotypical traits more valued)
Stereotype definition
widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members
Sex roles
behaviour deemed sex-stereotypical appropriate behaviour deemed sex-stereotypical appropriate
Role congruity theory
because social stereotypes of women are inconsistent with people’s schemas of effective leadership, women are evaluated as poor leaders
why do sex stereotypes persist
because the role assignment to gender persist
Glass ceiling
An invisible barrier that prevents women, and minorities, from attaining top leadership positions
Glass cliff
A tendency for women rather than men to be appointed to precarious leadership positions associated with a high probability of failure and criticism
Face-ism
Media depiction that gives greater prominence to the head and less prominence to the body for men, but vice versa for women (facial prominence signify ambition and intelligence)
Attribution
process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour, and that of others
ambivalent sexism inventory
differentiates between hostile and benevolent attitudes to women on dimensions relating to attractiveness, dependence and identity
benevolent attitudes
heterosexual attraction, protection, gender role complementarity (sexist attitudes towards traditional women in public settings -> less negatively perceived)
hostile attitudes
heterosexual hostility, domination, competition (sexist attitudes towards non-traditional women in private settings -> socially unacceptable)
Anti-discrimination legislation
making higher positions more attainable for minorities and changing the perception of those
Racism definition
Predjudice and discrimination against people based on their ethnicity or race
Aversive/Modern racism
people experience a conflict between deepseated emotional antipathy towards racial groups in contrast modern egalitarian values pressuring behaviour in a non-predjudiced manner
cognitive dissonance resolution process
denial of racism thus opposition to address racial disadvantage
Ageism
Prejudice and discrimination against people based on their age
how and why are elderly people predjudiced
treated as worthless and powerless
have prescriptive stereotypes by ageists which they have to follow
small integrational encounter remain isolated
intergroup anxiety with handicappd people
feeling uneasy in presence uncertain how to interact emphasising handicap
reluctant to help in predjudice
- > refusing to help groups improving position in society
- > combination of racial anxiety and antipathy with belief that disadvantage is overstated encourages people not to offer help
Tokenism
The practice of publicly making small concessions to a minority group in order to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination
Reverse discrimination
the practice of publicly being prejudiced in favour of a minority group in order to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination against that group
Stigma definition
Group attributes that mediate a negative social evaluation of people belonging to the group
Visible/concealable and controllable/uncontrollable stigmas
Visible: cannot be concealed in order to cope with stereotypes
Concealable: avoid the experience of predjudice
Controllable: are believed to be chosen rather than assigned having chosen them
Uncontrollable:people believe other having little choice in possessing
self-evaluative advantage
having a downward comparison with stigmatised groups which give people positive sense of self and social identity
effects of stigma
- > legitimising inequalities
- > discrediting and degrading different world view giving controllability
- > adaptive cognitive process avoiding poor social exchange partners who could threaten access to resources
Stigmatised group´s self-esteem
- > internalised negative evaluations depress self-esteem
- > often individual resilient in sustaining positive self image
Stereotype threat
Feeling that we will be judged and treated in terms of negative stereotypes of our group, and that we will inadvertently confirm these stereotypes through our behaviour
Combat stereotype threat
- > knowing about it
- > reduce the degree to which one’s identity is tied to a performance that may attract negative feedback
- > identify strongly with one’s stigmatised group
- > have extensive favourable intergroup contact with the anxiety- provoking outgroup
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Expectations and assumptions about a person that influence our interaction with that person and eventually change their behaviour in line with our expectations
Dehumanisation
denies people human uniqueness and human nature
Essentialism
Pervasive tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and immutable, often innate, properties of people or the groups they belong to
Self dehumanisation
when we behaved in a way one is considering as immoral in order to protect the integrity of our larger conception of self
Absence of institutionalised or legislative support
- > systematic acts off mass discrimination
- > violence against outgroups
cultural assimilation
Genocide in which entire cultural groups disappear as discrete entities through systematic suppression of their culture
mere exposure effect
Repeated exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object
-> unfamiliar objects are feared of
Transmission of parental predjudice
parental modelling, instrumental/operant conditioning and classical conditioning
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
all frustration leads to aggression, and all aggression comes from frustration
-> target of aggression perceived as agent of frustration
Scapegoat
: Individual or group that becomes the target for anger and frustration caused by a different individual or group or some other set of circumstances
Displacement
Psychodynamic concept referring to the transfer of negative feelings on to an individual or group other than that which originally caused the negative feelings
Collective behaviour
The behaviour of people en masse – such as in a crowd, protest or riot
Relative deprivation
A sense of having less than we feel entitled to
Authoritarian personality
Personality syndrome originating in childhood that predisposes individuals to be prejudiced
Ethnocentrism
Evaluative preference for all aspects of our own group relative to other groups
Dogmatism and closed-mindness
Cognitive style that is rigid and intolerant and predisposes people to be prejudiced
Authoritarianism with three components
- > conventionalism: adherence to societal conventions that are endorsed by established authorities
- > authoritarian aggression: support for aggression towards social deviants
- > authoritarian submission: submission to society’s established authorities
Social dominance theory
Theory that attributes prejudice to an individual’s acceptance of an ideology that legitimises ingroupserving hierarchy and domination, and rejects egalitarian ideologies
System justification theory
Theory that attributes social stasis to people’s adherence to an ideology that justifies and protects the status quo
Belief congruence theory
The theory that similar beliefs promote liking and social harmony among people while dissimilar beliefs produce dislike and prejudice
Intergroup behaviour
Behaviour among individuals that is regulated by those individuals’ awareness of and identification with different social groups
J-curve
A graphical figure that captures the way in which relative deprivation arises when attainments suddenly fall short of rising expectations
Two forms of Relative deprivation
- > Egoistic relative deprivation: A feeling of personally having less than we feel we are entitled to, relative to our aspirations or to other individuals
- > Fraternalistic relative deprivation: Sense that our group has less than it is entitled to, relative to its aspirations or to other groups
Four factors involved in social unrest with Fraternalistic relative deprevation
- > strong identification with intergroup
- > collective action has to be considered practical and bringing about social change
- > perception of contributive or procedural injustice
- > intergroup-outgroup comparison has to be made
Social movement participation four steps
- > sympathiser believing change can be made through collective action
- > information
- > develop motivation
- > overcoming barriers to participate
Realistic conflict theory
Sherif’s theory of intergroup conflict that explains intergroup behaviour in terms of the nature of goal relations between groups
- > exclusive goals cause intergroup conflict and ethnocentrism
- > shared goals encourage intergroup harmony
Free-rider effect
Gaining the benefits of group membership by avoiding costly obligations of membership and by allowing other members to incur those costs
commons dilemma
Social dilemma in which cooperation by all benefits all, but competition by all harms all
Social identity theory
Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorization, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties
Self-categorization theory
: theory of how the process of categorizing oneself as a group member produces social identity and group and intergroup behaviours
Reductionism
: Explanation of a phenomenon in terms of the language and concepts of a lower level of analysis, usually with a loss of explanatory power
Meta-contrast principle
the prototype of a group is that position within the group that has the largest ratio of ‘differences to ingroup positions’ to ‘differences to outgroup positions’
Entitativity
The property of a group that makes it seem like a coherent, distinct and unitary entity
Depersonalisation
The perception and treatment of self and others not as unique individual persons but as prototypical embodiments of a social group
Salience
interactive function of chronic accessibility and situational accessibility on the one hand, and structural fit and normative fit on the other
Self-enhancement and positive distinctiveness
- > intergroup differentiation elavates self-esteem
- > collective self-esteem related to group processes
- > people in low status groups protect themselves from low self-esteem that comes with their membership of the group
- > uncertainty reduction through group identification
Social mobility belief system
: Belief that intergroup boundaries are permeable. Thus, it is possible for someone to pass from a lower-status into a higher-status group to improve social identity
Social change belief system
Belief that intergroup boundaries are impermeable. Therefore, a lower-status individual can improve social identity only by challenging the legitimacy of the higher-status group’s position
Cognitive alternatives
Belief that the status quo is unstable and illegitimate, and that social competition with the dominant group is the appropriate strategy to improve social identity
Social creativity
Group-based behavioural strategies that improve social identity but do not directly attack the dominant group’s position
Social competition
Group-based behavioural strategies that improve social identity by directly confronting the dominant group’s position in society
System justification theory
Theory that attributes social stasis to people’s adherence to an ideology that justifies and protects the status quo
Intergroup emotions theory
Theory that, in group contexts, appraisals of personal harm or benefit in a situation operate at the level of social identity and thus produce mainly positive ingroup and negative outgroup emotions
- > outgroup emotions may lead to predjudiced behaviour
- > ingroup emotions may lead to solidarity
Behavioural change in crowds (early theory)
- > members are anonymous lose responsibility for their actions
- > ideas and sentiments spread rapidly and unpredictably through a process of contagion
- > unconscious antisocial motives are released through suggestion
Deindividuation
Process whereby people lose their sense of socialised individual identity and engage in unsocialised, often antisocial, behaviours
Emergent norm theory
Collective behaviour is regulated by norms based on distinctive behaviour that arises in the initially normless crowd
Weapons effect
The mere presence of a weapon increases the probability that it will be used aggressively
Improving intergroup relations
- > reducing predjudice and intergroup conflict
- > Propaganda
- > Education of children
- > contact
- > superordinate goals
- > Multiculturalism/Cultural pluralism
four sources of anxiety in anticipation of intergroup contact
- > realistic threat (threat to groups existence)
- > symbolic threat (posed by values, beliefs, morals and norms)
- > intergroup anxiety (threat to self in intergroup interactions)
- > negative stereotypes
How intergroup contact might work
Bookkeeping, conversion, subtyping
Extended contact
Knowing about an ingroup member who shares a close relationship with an outgroup member can improve one’s own attitudes towards the outgroup
Superordinate goals in intergroup contact
improve intergroup relations (resistance to a shared threat) only if goal is achieved
Multiculturalism/cultural pluralism improving intergroup relations
celebrating diversity as a defining feature of their social identity can balance the superordinate identity and positive subgroup distinctiveness and may provide social harmony
Communication and negotiation
Bargaining, Mediation, Arbitration, Conciliation
Bargaining
Bargaining Process of intergroup conflict resolution where representatives reach agreement through direct negotiation
Mediation
Process of intergroup conflict resolution where a neutral third party intervenes in the negotiation process to facilitate a settlement
Arbitration
Arbitration Process of intergroup conflict resolution in which a neutral third party is invited to impose a mutually binding settlement
Conciliation
Process whereby groups make cooperative gestures to one another in the hope of avoiding an escalation of conflict
