Prejudice Flashcards
Prejudice
hostile or negative attitude toward people in a distinguishable group based solely on their membership in that group
Components of prejudice
- Cognitive - stereotypes
- Affective - emotions
- Behaviour - discrimination
How do stereotypes work?
- Rely on perceptions of what people with similar characteristics have been like in the past to help us determine how to react to someone else with the same ones
- Thinking about a group → concepts associated with that group becomes more accessible
- Stereotype-consistent information is given more attention and remembered more easily
Positive stereotypes
Harmful or not?
- For person holding stereotype → more maladaptive to mistakenly view someone positively than to mistakenly view them negatively
- For target of stereotype → positive stereotypes mean that you are still being interpreted as a category instead of an individual and possibly mistreated as a result
Stereotype
generalisation about a group of people in which certain traits are assigned to virtually all member of the group, regardless of actual variation among members
Why do we use stereotypes?
Maximise our cognitive time and energy by constructing nuanced, accurate attitudes about some topics while relying on simple, error-prone beliefs about others
Affective Component: Emotions
- Emotional component of prejudice may persist even when a person knows consciously that the prejudice is wrong
- Group stereotypes can be classed along two dimensions: warmth and competence
Discrimination
unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group solely because of his or her membership in that group
Discrimination is activated when:
- Need to make quick decisions under conditions of extreme stress and have little time to stop and analyse
- Person is angered or insulted
People suppress true feelings to:
- Avoid being labeled as racist, sexist, or homophobic by others
- Genuine desire to change and be non-prejudiced
Ways of Identifying Suppressed Prejudices
- Send identical résumés to potential employers and vary only the group membership
- Bogus pipeline — participants hooked to a machine and told that it is a lie detector but the hardware actually did nothing → more racial prejudice expressed when bogus pipeline was used
Ways of Identifying Implicit Prejudices
Does it actually work?
Implicit association test (IAT): test that measures the speed with which people can pair a target face with positive or negative stimuli reflecting unconscious (implicit) prejudices
- May or may not reflect prejudices → could simple capture a stereotype
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
expectation of one’s own or another person’s behaviour that comes true because of the tendency of the person holding it to act in ways that bring it about
Social Identity Threat
threat elicited when people perceive that others are evaluating them as a member of their group instead of as an individual
What are effects of social identity threat?
- Reduces working memory capacity → do not have as many cognitive resources left to enable you to perform at your best
- Less self control in other areas — ate more unhealthy foods and behaved more aggressively
- Feeling more burnout and disengaged
Effects of Prejudice on the Victim
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Social identity threat