Slides Session 6 Flashcards
What is the difference between
prejudice
discrimination
stereotyping
prejudice
Negative emotional responses based on group membership.
discrimination
Differential (usually negative) behaviors directed toward members of different social groups.
stereotypes
Beliefs about social groups in terms of the traits or characteristics that they are believed to share. Stereotypes are cognitive frameworks that influence the processing of social information.
What does risk adversity mean?
How does it apply to racial tension?
According to Kahneman and Tversky’s (1984) prospect theory (for which the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded), people are risk averse—they tend to weigh possible losses more heavily than equivalent potential gains.
To take a monetary example, the possibility of losing a dollar is subjectively more negative than the possibility of gaining a dollar is positive.
In racial terms:
- Majority groups tend to respond more negatively towards action towards equality for all and estimate that a lot has changed already towards equality
- Minority groups, however, are inclined to see changes as insufficent
- Both groups may eventually respond with increased prejudice
glass ceiling
Barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified females from advancing to top-level positions.
e.g. Hilary and Trump. One of the arguments against Hilary was that she cannot be a president because she is a female.
glass cliff effect
Choosing women for leadership positions that are risky, precarious, or when the outcome is more likely to result in failure.
e.g. A woman was placed as the judge for the Oscar Pistorius because she was a woman, so if something went wrong, a woman can be blamed.
tokenism
Tokenism can refer to hiring based on group membership. It can concern a numerically infrequent presence of members of a particular category or it can refer to instances where individuals perform trivial positive actions for members of out-groups that are later used as an excuse for refusing more meaningful beneficial actions for members of these groups.
e.g. Hiring black actors just to provide the appearance of multiracialism but not actually using them in main roles.
Shifting standard-
Although the same evaluation ratings can be given to members of different groups, stereotypes may have influenced those ratings.
Using the same words but differing according to the idea of standard of each group e.g. They have a “nice” car (person living in a township) and someone else also has a “nice” car (person living in a suburb) But the suburb owned car is much more expensive.
Therefore a subjective rating scale can conceal stereotyping WHEREAS an objective rating scale can expose stereotypes (e.g. an NBA player selected based on performance numbers (objective) not words (subjective)
Glass escalator
Men often experience the opposite of the glass ceiling effect and in female dominated positions rise up the ladder much faster
e.g. Male social worker is given a managerial position instead of a normal case worker, because the men are favoured
Gender Stereotypes
every overgeneralisation of characteristics, differences and traits of a certain group
e.g. a man who doesn’t contribute towards the household is seen as less of a man.
What is prejudice
Prejudice -
1. is the feeling component of attitudes towards the members of a group based solely on their membership in that group.
2. Therefore, prejudice is not personal – it’s an affective reaction towards a particular group
3. As an ATTITIDE prejudice FUNCTIONS AS SCHEMAS i.e. info associated with the prejudice gets more attention, processed more carefully and remembered
RASICM is a type of prejudice (e.g. gender prejudices etc.)
What are the origins of Prejudice?
1) Threats to self-esteem easily leads to prejudice. Perceived Threat (material or symbolic) - to group image and interest can also lead to prejudice against foreigners e.g. xenophobia
2) Competition can also lead to prejudice – competition among people and groups over valued commodities or resources. Realistic conflict Theory suggests that the more people compete for resources the more negatively they view the out-group
3) Social categorization leads to prejudice as explained by Tajfel’s Social identity theory – we identify with groups that can enhance our self-esteem because a part of our self-esteem is derived from our group membership but in order to enhance our self-esteem, we glorify our group and degrade the out-group thereby leading to prejudices
4) The Social learning view of prejudice suggests that prejudice is acquired through direct and vicarious experiences in a similar manner as other attitudes (According to South African Social Psychologists)
How can implicit racial attitudes be measured?
One technique that makes use of priming to study implicit or automatically activated racial attitudes is known as the bona fide pipeline (Banaji & Hardin, 1996; Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2001).
With this procedure, participants see various adjectives and are asked to indicate whether they have a “good” or “bad” meaning by pushing one of two buttons.
Before seeing each adjective, however, they are briefly exposed to faces of people belonging to various racial groups (blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos).
It is reasoned that implicit racial attitudes will be revealed by how quickly participants respond to the words that have a negative meaning.
In contrast, participants will respond more slowly to words with a positive meaning after being primed with the faces of those same minority group members because the positive meaning is inconsistent with the negative attitude elicited by the priming stimulus.
Research findings using this procedure indicate that people do indeed have implicit racial attitudes that are automatically elicited, and that such automatically elicited attitudes, in turn, can influence important forms of behavior such as decisions concerning others and the degree of friendliness that is expressed in interactions with them (Fazio & Hilden, 2001; Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2001). The important point to note is this: Despite the fact that blatant forms of racism and sexism have decreased, automatic preju- dice is very much alive, and, through more subtle kinds of reactions, continues to affect behavior.
What is racism?
Prejudice or Discrimination aimed towards the members of racial or ethnic groups, based solely on their membership of thise groups
What are techniques for countering the effects of prejudice
A) “Learning Not to hate”- if parents and teachers teach children about tolerance and are aware of their own prejudices then they can learn not to hate (Social learning view)
B) The general principle of contact – Creating optimal environments in which people can have direct contact with other racial groups can improve attitudes about race – Contact hypothesis – This exposure can reduce prejudice through 1) the recognition of similarities, 2) the norms of the in-group are not anti-out-group and 3) cross-group friendships signals that out-group members do not necessarily dislike the in-group
C) Recategorisation – Involves clearing the boundaries between what we see as our in-group and the out-group. Identifying and making salient the aspects to which both groups belong e.g. Human beings or South Africans. According to this theory of common in-group identity model – Recategorisation can be used to reduce prejudice
D) Guilt – Use peoples guilt to reduce prejudice (consider cognitive dissonance namely; discrepant-attitude-behaviour using direct methods namely attitude change), specifically - Collective guilt based on the actions of other in-group members – Increased feelings of collective guilt can REDUCE racism
E) Say no to stereotypes – People can say no to stereotypes by learning to not rely on the stereotypes they already possess (with possible added training against “fundamental/ dispositional attribution error” namely Corresponding Bias)
F) Social influence – Individuals can be convinced that the prevalent social norms are against the prejudices they hold, which may result in attitude improvement but it is unsure how long the attitude change would last
What are techniques for countering the effects of prejudice
A) “Learning Not to hate”- if parents and teachers teach children about tolerance and are aware of their own prejudices then they can learn not to hate (Social learning view)
B) The general principle of contact – Creating optimal environments in which people can have direct contact with other racial groups can improve attitudes about race – Contact hypothesis – This exposure can reduce prejudice through 1) the recognition of similarities, 2) the norms of the in-group are not anti-out-group and 3) cross-group friendships signals that out-group members do not necessarily dislike the in-group
C) Recategorisation – Involves clearing the boundaries between what we see as our in-group and the out-group. Identifying and making salient the aspects to which both groups belong e.g. Human beings or South Africans. According to this theory of common in-group identity model – Recategorisation can be used to reduce prejudice
D) Guilt – Use peoples guilt to reduce prejudice (consider cognitive dissonance namely; discrepant-attitude-behaviour using direct methods namely attitude change), specifically - Collective guilt based on the actions of other in-group members – Increased feelings of collective guilt can REDUCE racism
E) Say no to stereotypes – People can say no to stereotypes by learning to not rely on the stereotypes they already possess (with possible added training against “fundamental/ dispositional attribution error” namely Corresponding Bias)
F) Social influence – Individuals can be convinced that the prevalent social norms are against the prejudices they hold, which may result in attitude improvement but it is unsure how long the attitude change would last
How can we counter the effects of prejudice in the SA context?
- There is a particularly large body of research regarding contact and prejudice in SA.
- Contact must meet certain conditions before attitudes are likely to improve:
a) equal status between participants
b) cooperation and interdependence
c) participants should be able to know each other as individuals
d) norms favoring group equality must exist
e) institutional support
f) participants should view each other as typical of the respective group - In SA context, additional factors cannot be ignored:
A. importance of the experience of contact
- The experience (e.g. pleasant or unpleasant), rather than contact itself has proven to be the major determinant of attitudes for South Africans.
B. Different contact effects in different contact areas
- SA research shows, that contact is a less effective mechanism for attitude change in more contentious areas.
- In these situations, special, specific interventions are needed, such as Aronson’s jigsaw classroom procedures in schools
