Social Cognitive Approaches to Prejudice Flashcards
What is social cognition?
The application of classical methods and theories of cognitive psychology in social psychology. Essential idea is stereotyping and prejudice as by-products of the ‘normal’ thinking process.
What is key concepts in the theory of social cognition?
Have limited attentional capacity, and therefore have to categorise it to make sense of it. Tend to perceive things in a confirmatory bias - not likely to attend to things that aren’t consistent with out expectation. Idea of humans as cognitive misers - put in as little effort as possible (e.g. focus on heuristics).
What is a stereotype?
Many different definitions.
A consensually shared definition held by members of a group. Inaccurate generalisation, faulty reasoning argument - give you an inaccurate assumption. Stereotypes haven’t come from nowhere - at some point may have had some accuracy behind them = kernels of truth which get exaggerated. A more neutral definition is it is a knowledge structure about a group, or a theory that guides thoughts and behaviour. Bring to mind helpful information about a person - a useful mental shortcut of how we should behave.
What is the methodology of studying stereotypes?
Simply ask them. Then become more sophisticated (use Likert scale), however people know what it is you are trying to get at and therefore will adjust their response.
Therefore want to introduce implicit measures to measure stereotyping and prejudice: priming (e.g. subliminal or supraliminal) and reaction times (judgement task, measuring how quickly they respond. The faster that a characteristic with a stereotype is associated).
What did Dovidio, Evans and Tyler (1986) find?
Presented with the prime black or white. When primed with black, reaction time for negative words were significantly faster compared with white. The opposite was seen when primed with white. Uncover hidden stereotypes.
What did Correll et al (2007) find?
Priming study. Primed participants by giving newspaper to read reporting armed robberies by black vs. white people. Then played video game - decided to shoot or not. Participants were quicker to shoot black than white targets when read paper when the perp was black. In second study used game to prime participants - manipulated armed vs unarmed targets in the game. When armed, have faster reaction time when primed to shoot. When unarmed, took longer to decide whether to shoot black target. Quicker to shoot black than white targets. Have real world considerations.
Cognitive bias 1 - What are effect of stereotypes on thought?
Early research focused on the content of stereotypes (accurate or not). Then attention moved to what stereotypes do. What we expect influences what we see, how we see it, and what we remember about it afterwards.
Stereotypes influences what we attend to - Cohen (1981) gave ppts video to watch, and told a label about the woman’s occupation. This influenced what they remembered and were able to report about the video.
Cognitive bias 2 - How do stereotypes influence how we categorise and interpret behaviour?
Darley and Gross (1983). Gave ppts a video about a girl called Hannah in home environment - either in wealthy or working class setting. Then asked ppts how intelligent they thought Hannah was. Were reluctant to do this, didn’t feel like they had enough information. Then given 2nd video of exam. Then asked once more about her intelligence. If upper class, said she had high ability and remembered she got most answers right. If lower class, said she had low ability and remembered she got about half wrong. Socio-economic background changes how they judge her academic performance.
Cognitive bias 3 - how does it affect how we attribute/explain?
The Ultimate Attribute Error (Pettigrew, 1979) - how we use our attribution bias to explain positive and negative outcomes for our in-group vs. outgrips members. Positive in-group/negative ou-tgroup behaviour is attributed to internal stable causes. Positive out-group (and negative in-group) behaviour is attributed to unstable situational causes (luck/situation).
Cognitive bias 4 - how does it affect how we remember and recall?
Snyder and Uranowitz - had participants read a passage about Betty’s life. Then told we was married vs. lesbian vs. control. One week later came back and given memory test - half of this was to do with sexuality and relationships (many hadn’t come up in the passage). Participants misremembered info consistent with knowledge they knew about Betty. These are called memory intrusions - misremembered based on stereotypes they had.
Cognitive bias 5 - how does it affect how we gather information?
Snyder and Swann (1978) - participants led to believe they will be interviewing other ppt, and given information that the interviewee was either introverted or extroverted. Then selected questions from prepared list. Found people tended to choose confirming questions based on personality.
Cognitive bias 6 - how does it affect our own behaviour?
Self-fulfiling prophecy - you elicit the behaviour you expect. e.g. Word et al - had people come in (black and white confederates) and trained to behave in the same way. Played interviewer. Found was a difference when interviewing white compared to black confederates (more negative with black confederates). Then switched roles, and confederates adopted more unfriendly interviewing style - judged as less suitable for the job.
What are the benefits of stereotype use?
Bodenhausen suggest they act as heuristics (mental shortcuts). Helps classify people more quickly, provide a logical organised structure for memory, so they are useful simplifications of incoming information, and frees up cognitive space. We often need efficiency more than we need accuracy.
What did Macrae, Milne and Bodenhausen (1994) find about the benefits of stereotypes?
Presented ppts with a target and some personality traits, some of which were stereotypical with the job they held. Either written on the screen (supra) or flashed quickly on the screen (subliminal). Also told the computer was going to make a noise, and had to turn it off. Suggested if turn off sound quickly, have spare cognitive capacity due to using stereotypes. Found if primed ppts with occupational labels, they were quicker to respond to noise and were quicker to remember personality traits. When using stereotypes, more efficient.
What did Bodenhausen (1990) suggest about the benefits of stereotypes?
Ppts presented with info from a legal trial. Designed to draw on stereotypes. Stereotype - people who do sports are less gifted and more likely to cheat. Found ppts who were tested at their non-optimal time of day, more likely to draw on stereotype and rate the defendant as guilty.
