Prejudice and Stereotypes Flashcards
DEFINITIONS OF PREJUDICE
“A negative attitude toward a socially defined group, and any person perceived to be a member of that group” - R. Ashmore
COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOUR COMPONENTS OF PREJUDICIAL ATTITUDE
- Stereotypes: Beliefs about social groups used to make inferences, predictions and attributions about individuals. A situation with ambiguity is influenced by stereotypes. It is a cognitive component.
- Individuating information is about a particular individual rather than the group they belong to. This is used when the situation is unambiguous.
- Discrimination: Differential treatment based on perceived group membership. It is a behavioural component.
- They can be negative or preferential (generally to out-group and in-group respectively).
AFFECTIVE ASPECT OF STEREOTYPES (why they can be positive)
- Stereotypes are not always inaccurate, negative, irrational, resistant to change and problematic.
- Swim (1994) showed that gender stereotypes are generally accurate; when not, underestimation of gender difference is more likely. Only inaccurate in nationality stereotypes.
- Evaluative tone can be negative (i.e. Women are bad drivers) or positive (i.e. Asians are better at math). However their implications can change +or-.
- When situation is ambiguous, there is generally preference to individuating information to stereotypes.
- An example of when stereotypes may help is diversity training in corporatations where the general idea to reduce discomfort and understand cultures.
THEORIES OF PREJUDICES: SOCIAL SOURCES
- Unequal status theory: In a community with a hierarchal system where there is inequality, a justifying ideology has to emerge. That is superiority and inferiority, which is why social stratification exists. Cognitive dissonance.
- Institutional supports
- segregation (i.e. segregated neighbourhoods based on race, roots from people wanting to be around people they are similar to)
- education that leans towards certain ideologies.
- language like derogatory terms for certain groups.
- media sources: in the past, when racism was persistent in mass media (i.e. blackface and inferior/evil roles)
- Conformity to social norms: When the majority exhibits stereotypical behaviour, we feel obliged to conform to the ideas. Cognitive dissonance occurs i.e. laughing at sexist jokes.
- Social Identity Theory: The in-group is seen as an extension of self and it is used to to organise social complexity and make sense of the word.
- minimal group paradigm by Tajfel where he created “random” in-groups and out-groups.
THEORIES OF PREJUDICES: AFFECTIVE SOURCES
- Frustration-Aggression Theory: directing aggression to another target.
- Realistic group conflict: Occurs when competition and struggle among groups generate hostility and bad feelings towards rivals.
- Evolutionary: Theory of adaptive and predisposition of xenophobia. Built in the inclination of ancestors marking territories, attacking and fearing strangers, etc.
- Personality factors: Those who score high in the following two tend to score high in most prejudices.
- Social Dominance Orientation: Believing that the concept of equality is against the natural. The need for status and control.
- Authoritarian Personality: Ex- The reason for may Germans going along with the holocaust— have an authoritarian personality and don’t like difference.
THEORIES OF PREJUDICES: COGNITIVE SOURCES
mechanisms of the brain that try to make it the most effective.
- Categorisation & Stereotyping: Our brain yearns for closure and boundaries and hence categorise things almost automatically as we see them.
- Out group homogeneity effect: Tendency to see out-groups as more similar to each other than they actually are. Explains tendency to distinguish faces from own race better.
- Accentuation: Our brains tendency to draw black and white distinctions leads us to view group difference more prominently than they actually are.
- Illusory correlation: seeing an association between two things which have no real relationship. Hamilton and Gifford’s A and B group study.
- Similarity attraction: People who have prejudice attitude tend to associate with people with the sae attitude which intensifies the attitude (group polarisation).
- Ultimate Attribution Error: Internal attribution for out group members and external attribution for in-group members.
THEORIES OF PREJUDICES: SUSTAINING INTERACTIVE SOURCES
- Self fulfilling prophecy: Prejudice being internalised by the victim and it coming true. Maintains prejudicial attitudes.
- Internalisation of negative stereotypes: Clark and Clark’s study that showed that black children tended to pick the white doll when presented with a white and black doll.
- Stereotype threat: The pressure to not conform to the stereotype increases the probability of this happening, especially when in minority
- Steele study: when people were told there was a gender difference, women performed worse. More care for doing better = more threat.
MINIMAL GROUP PARADIGM
Circumstance where experimenter creates fake groups to test the theory of in-groups and out-groups, in this case prejudice as well. study: blue eye brown eye study.
SELF REPORT MEASURES
Uses a modern racism scale where the questions implicitly and “subtly” test the extent of racism. Made under three factors in the :
- denial that the discrimination still exists (i.e. racism was a problem in the past but non longer exists/ is a problem)
- Antagonising demands of the oppressed (i.e. African Americans are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights)
- Resentment of the oppressed having “special favours” (i.e. African Americans have gotten more than they deserve over the years.)
denial of issue, thinking its too demanding, thinking they do not deserve it.
ROLE OF AUTOMATICITY
Explicit attitudes (conscious): Attitudes that we are aware of i.e. what is measured on the racism scale.
Implicit attitudes (non-conscious): Attitudes we are not aware of— below the conscious level. We cannot determine implicit attitudes with measuring explicitly ones.
STUDIES ON RACE-BASED PREJUDICE
Devine (1989):
