Social Cognitive Approaches to Prejudice

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

The application of classical cognitive methods to social methods
Adopting methods and models of cognitive psychology and applying them to social psychology

Question 2

What framework is being applied to social perception?

Answer 2

Information processing framework
social object - people
social origins
socially shared - other members

Question 3

What are stereotypes the by products of?

Answer 3

Normal thinking proccesses

Question 4

What does limited attentional capacity mean?

Answer 4

Our brain cannot cope with all of the information out there, have to sort it out

Question 5

What does categorical thinking mean?

Answer 5

Tend to perceive things in categories

Question 6

What does confirmatory bias mean?

Answer 6

Theory driven processing - we perceive things in a way which confirms what we believe

Question 7

What are cognitive misers?

Answer 7

We put in the least effort we can to get away with perception - we prefer rapid solutions to slow accurate ones

Question 8

What does Allport believe?

Answer 8

The human mind must think using categories - we can’t avoid it - we cannot handle lots of events

Question 9

What is a stereotype?

Answer 9

Consensually shared definitions held by members of a group

Question 10

Why are stereotypes problematic?

Answer 10

Because they can be inaccurate, unrealistic generalisations, prototypical thoughts they apply to everyone

Question 11

What is the faulty reasoning argument?

Answer 11

Believes that stereotypes aren’t accurate, and are just unrealistic generalisations

Question 12

What is the kernels of truth?

Answer 12

Stereotypes haven’t come from no where - they are based on a situation a time in the past, no longer applies - some element of truth

Question 13

What do stereotypes guide?

Answer 13

Thoughts and behaviour - useful mental short

Allows perceiver to go beyond info given - usually undesirable - but allows prediction

Question 14

What is the debate around stereotypes?

Answer 14

That they are wrong and ungeneralisable or they are useful mental shortcuts

Question 15

What are the ways stereotypes used to be measured and what are the problems?

Answer 15

Historically, they would ask people about their own stereotypes or a likert scale
Problem with transparency - people know what you are trying to get and adjust answers, obvious what asking

Question 16

How are stereotypes measured now?

Answer 16

Implicit measures
priming: subliminal (flashed so quick so they don’t consciously see it but it activates category)
Supraliminal - see the prime
then do reaction time task - more closely associated two stimulus are associated in memory, faster will be the participants response

Question 17

What is an example of measuring stereotypes?

Answer 17

Dovidio, Evans and Tyler
Prime ppts with black or white
Present adjectives
Reaction time: can it ever be true
Results: if primed with black, RT faster for negative words
Faster if primed with positive words and white
Low EV as not to do with lives

Question 18

What is a real life way of measuring stereotypes? Study 1

Answer 18

Correll
Prime = newspaper article reporting armed robberies by black vs white
Videogame - targets either armed or unarmed, ppts have to decide shoot vs don’t shoot
Quicker to shoot black than white targets following black prime - no different for white prime

Question 19

What is a real life way of measuring stereotypes? Study 2

Answer 19

Study 2: prime = proportion of armed/unarmed targets in round 1 of game
Stereotype congruent: 20 armed B, 12 armed W; 12 unarmed B, 20 unarmed W
Stereotype Incongruent, other way round

When armed, faster RT to shoot black
When unarmed, take longer to decide not to shoot unarmed black than to not shoot white - when made armed black ppts rarer, got rid of the biases

Question 20

What effects to stereotypes have on thought?

Answer 20

Accuracy/inaccuracy issue and concern with what thy actually do - what we expect influences what we see, how we see it and what we remember after

1. Where attention is direct
2. How we categorise and interpret
3. How we attribute/explain
4. How we remember and recall
5. How we gather information
6. Our own behaviour

Question 21

How do stereotypes affect where our attention is directed?

Answer 21

More likely to attend to consistent info than irrelevant information

Cohen - video in a women in a house with a male, either said it was a librarian or a waitress. Had to remember things. Label given influenced kinds of things that were noticed and remembered. Waitress - remember serving beer
Librarian - glasses, different details depending on job

Question 22

How do stereotypes affect how we categorise and interpret?

Answer 22

Darley and Gross
Video of Hannah in wealthy/working class setting
Then asked how she is acadmically
Half also got 2nd video of exam - ambiguous with her exam
Asked to predict her ability at school
1st video - reluctant
2nd video - if upper class, said high ability and remembered she got most answers right
if lower class, said low ability and remembered she got half wrong

Question 23

How do stereotypes influence how we attribute/explain?

Answer 23

Ultimate attribution error - how we use biases to explain positive and negative outcomes for in-group and outgroup

positive ingroup/negative outgroup behaviour is attributed to internal stable causes
our team wins - we are brilliant
other team loses - they are rubbish

positive outgroup and negative in-group behaviour is attributed to unstable situational causes (situation)
our team loses - off day
they win - lucky shot

Question 24

How do stereotypes impact how we remember and recall?

Answer 24

Snyder - Betty K study
Ppts read passage describing Bettys life
Then told she was married vs lesbian vs control
Half got MCQ memory test right after passage, rest got it a week later, 1/2 included answers consistent with either stereotype

Memory intrusions: ppts misremembered aspects of Betty’s life to fit the stereotype they now held of her - true whenever they got the information

Question 25

How do stereotypes affect how we gather information?

Answer 25

They impact the info we get in the first place
Snyder and Swann
Participant interviewers falsely led to believe that interviewee was either introverted or extroverted
Then selected questions from prepared list
They chose qs to confirm expectations - list set up to confirm
If thought extrovert, choose more than 7/10 extrovert questions
Introvert - choose more to elicit introvert confirming info
We aren’t good scientists - don’t want disconfirming info

Question 26

How do stereotypes affect our own behaviour?

Answer 26

Self-fullfilling prophecy - you elicit the behaviour you expect

Word, Zanna and Cooper
White ppts played interviewer of black and white confederates - had a more negative style when interviewing blacks
White confederates then trained in both styles and used each when interviewing white ppts applicants
White receiving the black treatments came across much worse than black - distant and hesitant
Judged as less suitable for the job - performs less well

Question 27

What are the effects of stereotypes?

Answer 27

These processes tend to reinforce the stereotypes that generated them - resistant to change
Perceptions, judgements and decisions that are unjustified, given the info available, reflect biases in our normal cognitive functioning - become stronger and stronger over time

Question 28

What are the benefits of stereotypes?

Answer 28

They are used as heuristics - mental shortcuts
help classify people more quickly
provide organised structure from memory
can be used as logical simplifications
energy saving devices - freeing up resources, efficiency gains, functional - frees up cognitive resources so we can do other things
we need efficiency more than accuracy

Question 29

Example of benefits of using stereotypes - Marcae et al

Answer 29

Target + ten personality traits - present ppts with a target and some personality traits
Prime – artist, skinhead, estate agent etc (either supra or subliminal) - occupational label
Half traits stereotypical, half not
Simultaneous probe task (turn sound off) - computer made a noise, needed to turn it off
Prime - better recall overall (i.e. even if you didn’t know you were being primed!)
Supraliminal prime - more stereotypic traits, and better recall on memory task, remembering personality traits
No prime - worst at probe task, very slow
Efficiency gains

Question 30

Bodenhausen 1990

Answer 30

Ps presented with information from a legal trial
Designed so that it drew on stereotypes that would suggest guilt
But actual info was ambiguous
Ps were either ‘morning’ people or ‘evening’ people (pretested)
Tested either early morning or in the evening
Ppts more likely to use stereotypes / rate him as more guilty at the time of the day that they are normally most tired
morning people tested morn - less guilt
evening test in morn - more guilt
less cog resources available, use stereotypes

Question 31

Does mood have an impact on stereotypes?

Answer 31

Bodenhausen, Kramer, Susser
Thought good mood, more inclined to think properly, so won’t use stereotypes
Good vs neutral mood induction - asked ppl to recall either pleasant vs neutral event
Disciplinary case for student
Name indicated hispanic vs no clear ethnic origin vs not - read transcripts
Name evoked stereotype
Happy people in stereotype condition assigned higher guilt ratings - 6/10
Neutral mood - no difference
good mood - don’t put in effort, don’t want to do anything to disrupt mood so use own
variation: added third stage, have to explain judgements. this wiped out the effects. if explain, biases go, make more effort

Question 32

Why does good mood mean people use stereotypes?

Answer 32

Don’t want to do anything to disrupt your mood, so more likely to use own stereotypes