Prejudice & Discrimination Flashcards
What does prejudice mean?
Unjustifiable and usually negative attitudes towards a group and it’s members often based on insufficient/ incorrect information. Most common forms are based on uncontrollable factors such as race, age, and sex.
What is discrimination?
The action that expresses the attitude of prejudice
What are the 2 types of discrimination?
- Direct discrimination
- Indirect discrimination
Explain direct discrimination
Treating someone unfavourably based on a prejudice.
Eg. Yelling slurs at someone
Explain indirect discrimination
When a rule or policy that applies for everyone, but disadvantages a certain group of people.
Eg. To boost healthy choices in the workplace, a boss turns the power to the elevators off & puts up signs saying “Get healthy, take the stairs”. Elain (a wheel chair user) didn’t love that…
What are 4 ways prejudice can form?
- Social influence
- Intergroup competition
- Social categorisation
- Just world phenomenon
What is social influence?
Attitudes learned from others that may change your affective, behavioural and cognitive functions
Explain inter-group competition
The struggle between groups who are both working towards an unshareable goal.
Explain social categorisation
Placing people into groups based off shared attributes creating an “Us” & “Them” mentality.
Explain the just world phenomenon
Believing that people get what they deserve and are not impacted by other factors out of their control. Related to Fundamental Attribution Error (focussing on the individual’s choices, rather than their environment).
What are 4 ways to reduce prejudice?
- Intergroup contact
- Superordinate goals
- Mutual interdependence
- Equal-status contact
What is intergroup contact, and how does it reduce prejudice?
Increasing contact between groups in order to reduce prejudice. Interacting and sharing between groups can increase the awareness of shared ideals, values and goals between individuals. By finding similarities between the two groups, the frustration or fear that one may feel about an unfamiliar culture may be reduced.
Explain superordinate goals, and how they reduce prejudice
Superordinate goals are shared goals that no individual or single group could achieve on their own. Cooperation and teamwork are required in order to achieve the goal, thus groups must overcome their differences and work together. This causes groups to act as one, reducing conflict in order to complete their shared goal.
What is mutual interdependence, and how does it reduce prejudice?
Where people depend on another person or group to meet their shared goal. People must put trust in others in order to achieve their goal, putting prejudices aside in order to get what they want.
What is equal-status contact, and how does it reduce prejudice?
A.K.A. Equity, it suggests that social interactions need to occur where there is no power difference, and communication and actions are performed at an equal level.
Who conducted the robbers cave experiment?
Sherif
What was the aim of the robbers cave experiment?
Aimed to demonstrate the impacts of competition on prejudice formation, and strategies to reduce prejudice.
What were the methods of the robbers cave experiment?
Sherif randomly assigned 22 boys to one of two groups. All were11 years old, all white and had protestant backgrounds and did not know each other prior to experiment.The experiment had 3 stages (phases) to it:
- Group formation
- Competition
- Cooperation
Explain the group formation stage of the robbers cave experiment
Groups were kept separate from each other, each group performed team building and bonding activities, the groups, and were eventually made aware of each other.
Explain the competition stage of the robbers cave experiment
The 2 groups were made aware that they were competing to win a medal and a pocket knife for each member of the group – those who came second would receive nothing. A series of normal competitive camp activities were held. The competition quickly turned into prejudice, ad groups atarted lashing out at eachother. “Cooling off stage” the members listed features of their own group and the other group.
Explain the cooperation stage of the robbers cave experiment
The groups were told that the water had been cut off to the camp due to vandals. Both groups were sent to investigate the problem and had to work together to fix a blocked pipe. They also had to help a truck carrying the food for the camp which had become “stuck”. The shared goals ended the rivalry, the teams sharing the prizes
What was concluded from the robbers cave experiment?
Intergroup relations could be manipulated and there were real consequences to being in competing groups.
