Social Categorization Flashcards
Define prejudice
Having an unjustifiable and usually negative attitude towards groups or individuals
What are causes of prejudice?
1) Just world phenomenon
2) Social categorization
3) Group competition
4) Social influences
Define stereotypes
Widely held but fixed and oversimplified categorization of a group of people
Define social categorization
Process of identifying a person as a member of a certain group because of the features they share
Define self-fulfilling prophecy
When a stereotype directly or indirectly becomes true of a person due to positive feedback from others
Define just-world phenomenon
Tendency to believe the world is just and that people get what they deserve
E.g., viewing homeless people as at fault, as well as lazy and hopeless
Fishbein and Ajzen theory of reasoned action
We behave in certain ways based on our social values and personal attitudes towards the behavior and evaluation of benefits/costs of engaging in the behavior
Define conformity
A type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. Pressure can be real or implied
Identify and define the 3 types of conformity
1) Compliance: change of behavior without altering opinion
2) Internalization: change in behavior AND opinion
3) Identification: Changing opinion, behavior and now identifying with influencing group
Asch theory of conformity and findings
PP in a room with actors. PP asked to state what line matched the length of the another. Actors all stated wrong answers.
- Providing a friend decreases conformity
- Making task harder increases conformity
- Written responses decreases conformity
What did Crutchfield believe about conformity?
Believed people who conformed were: -Less intelligent -Less ego strength -Less leadership skills -More narrow minded (Widely disproven)
Festinger: Social comparison theory
We have an innate need to compare ourselves to others. We do this in 2 ways:
Upward: we look at groups/people who perform better than us and use them to evaluate our skills/worth
Downward: we look at people who don’t match our skill set and use them to feel more confident about our abilities
Why do we conform?
We conform to groups we believe we’re apart of.
- Need for social approval
- Avoid being embarrassed
- Publicly agree with the group but more likely to conserve opinions privately
Define obedience
A form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority of figure
Define compliance
Changing your behavior at the request of another person
Milgram’s obedience study and findings
-Learner + teacher (PP) placed in a room with a lab coated man (authority figure)
-Teacher had to give an electric shock to learner if word-pair was incorrect
Key finding: Diffusion of responsibility was found where responsibility was passed on to the authority figure
What is the bystander effect?
A person is less likely to help when passive bystanders are present in an emergency situation
What is diffusion of responsibility, what does it lead to?
The tendency to subjectively divide the personal responsibility to help by the number of bystanders, can lead to ‘the bystander effect’
Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment
Interested in why people act in certain ways in jobs- was it their personal characteristics or the job?
-24 males allocated either guard or prisoner
Conclusion: status given to people is internalized
What are factors that impact obedience?
- Social proximity
- Legitimacy of authority
- Group pressure
What is deindividuation?
When you become so immersed in the norms of the group that you lose your sense of identity and personal responsibility. Can lead us to acting less self conscious, less inhibited and not think about potential consequences
