Social Psych Exam 3 - final Flashcards
Biases against others
- Prejudice: attitude/emotional component
- Stereotyping: thought/belief component
- Discrimination: behavioral component
Prejudice
- Generalized attitude toward members of a social group
- Generally negative attitudes
Explicit: social norms shape which forms of prejudice people tend to find problematic
Implicit: Attitudes towards groups are conditioned
Stereotyping
- Beliefs about a group
- Traits are thought to be characteristic of the entire group
- Positive or negative traits
Established from shared beliefs within culture (learned from media, peers, parents, observations, etc)
Descriptive “this group is like ____” - often negative
Prescriptive “this group should be like ___” - often positive - however could be problematic
Discrimination
- Unfair treatment of members of a particular group simply because of their membership
Interpersonal discrimination: explicit or implicit
Organizational/institutional/systematic discrimination: policies/procedures in an organization that systematically disadvantage some groups
Privilege
unearned favored state conferred simply because of one’s race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, etc
Motivation to deny privilege: Violates our sense that society functions fairly & that everyone has what they deserve
Social inequalities
Unequal status, behavior –> attitudes rationalize inferior status of lower-status groups in society
Social Dominance Orientation
Motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups
* View people in terms of hierarchies
* Once inequalities exist, prejudice helps justify the economic & social superiority of those who have wealth & power
Group-based dominance vs Opposition to equality
Social Sources of Prejudice
Conformity - frequent & repetitive exposure to hate speech leads to desensitization & increasing outgroup prejudice
Social norm intervention
Race
The concept that some people are distinct from others because of physical appearance, typically skin color
- categorization based on physical appearance
- social construction
- very large genetic diversity within a “racial category”
- flawed & destructive construct
Ethnic group
people whose ancestors were born in the same region. Usually share a language, culture, and/or religion
Scapegoat Theory
prejudice is the result of one group blaming another innocent group for its problems; Frustration and aggression
Realistic Group Conflict Theory
prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources; economic theory
- intergroup competition over resources often results in animosity – but does not always result in overt conflict
- Includes competition over cultural resources
Motivational sources of prejudice
- Frustration and Aggression (scapegoat theory)
- Economic theory, competition (Realistic group conflict theory)
- Social Identity theory
Realistic Group Conflict Theory Situational Antecedents
- Group desiring to increase resources at the expense of another group
- Perception of or actual scarcity of resources
- Subordinate groups advocating for fairer distribution of societal resources
–> Backlash to growing power of marginalized groups
Social Identity
part of the self-concept that consists of our group memberships
* We Categorize into ingroups vs. outgroups
* We Identify with our ingroup
* We Compare against the outgroup
Minimal groups: ingroup preference, but no outgroup hate
Group status + self-esteem
Cognitive sources of bias
- People don’t have enough cognitive resources to keep track of what is going on around them (e.g., attentional blindness)
- cognitive misers: People don’t expend enough mental capacity on judging others
- schemas and heuristics - used by people which affect how they perceive, judge, and treat others
Theories:
- Activation of one element of a schema activates the whole schema (stereotype)
- Schemas are applied to incoming information (encoding) and to remembered information (retrieval)
Distinctiveness & Illusory Correlations
- Distinctiveness captures attention
- easy to associate minority-group members w/ negative traits
- people tend to associate novel groups with rare attributes (behaviors that set them apart from the population at large)
Prototypicality
extent to which someone fits the observer’s concept of the essential features characteristic of that category
Hypodescent
a person of mixed race is classified as a member of the minority or socially subordinate group
Subtyping
creating a subgroup within a stereotyped group, exception to the group
Costs of Racial Color Blindness
- When people avoided referring to race in situations, others perceived them as more racially biased
- Color blindness makes children less likely to identify overt instances of bias
- not an effective tool for reducing bias
- People exposed to arguments promoting color blindness have been shown to subsequently display a greater degree of both explicit and implicit racial bias
Remedies to prejudice
Colorblindness vs multiculturalism
- multiculturalism has more positive outcomes for people of color compared to color blindness
(Recognizes that race should not dictate outcomes—without denying that race represents a distinctive social identity that is real and often does matter in society)
* However, both approaches have some potential pitfalls
Essentialism
view that group differences are based in sort of natural and deep differences within people
* Leads us to really think of the boundary between groups as very rigid and strong
* Linked to prejudice when there are status differences
- Racial essentialism
- Gender essentialism
Social Trap
when groups each rationally pursue its own self-interest to the destruction of its own self-interest and that of other groups
* Mutually destructive behavior
Examples:
* Prisoner’s Dilemma (card game)
* Tragedy of the Commons (marbles game)
Resolving social dilemmas
- Regulation - Change the payoff structure
- Small group size limits - Diffusion of responsibility, Deindividuation
- Communication
- Appealing to Altruistic Norms
Conflicting-serving biases
- Self-serving bias
- Self-justify
- Fundamental attribution error
- Preconceptions
- Group polarization
- Groupthink
- Ingroup bias
- Stereotypes
- mirror-image perception
Mirror-image perception
reciprocal views of each other often held by parties in conflict
ex: each group views itself as
moral & peace-loving & the
other group as evil & aggressive
Peacemaking
- Contact
housing [decreased racial prejudice] vs school [mixed findings] desegregation –> self-imposted segregation - prejudice + anxiety minimize contact, pluralistic ignorance
When contact works: Friendship, equal status, cooperation - Cooperation
interdependence, shared external threats
Superordinate goals
Jigsaw groups - Communication
- Conciliation
Interdependence
a situation in which individuals need one another to succeed
Superordinate goals
goals that unite all members in a group & requires cooperative effort
Jigsaw Groups
each student relies on other students in their group to acquire information necessary to succeed
Bystander Effect
individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in presence of other people
* Diffusion of Responsibility
* Pluralistic Ignorance
Altruism
Prosocial behavior that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself
When do people (not) help
Situational factors: time pressures, Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance (bystanders)
–> helping:
1. make it clear you need help (counters pluralistic ignorance)
2. Identify someone to ask for help (counters diffusion of responsibility)
Diffusion of Responsibility
unclear who should take action when others are present
Pluralistic ignorance
in ambiguous situations we look to others to determine whether there is an emergency or not
Why do people help
Evolutionary theories: “selfish gene” - promote our own genes
- Kinship selection
- Reciprocity
- hidden egoism
- true altruism
Kinship selection
People are more likely to help a close relative than a distant relative
Reciprocity
Expectation that people will help those who have helped them
Hidden Egoism
people who help others are usually motivated by hidden egoism (social reward, reducing their own distress)
Low empathic concern for the other was associated with less helping
True Altruism
People who help others usually do so purely to help others, because they feel emphatic concern
High empathic concern for the other was associated with helping
Social Exchange Theory
human interactions are transactions that aim to maximize benefits and minimize costs
Benefits of Helping
- Increasing positive emotion
- Reducing negative emotion
–> Distress
–> Guilt
~ Private guilt
~ Public image
The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
Empathic Concern: an automatic, emotion-like impulse to help
* Feeling Empathic Concern leads to helping (not just to relieve our own distress
Cognitive empathy
putting oneself in another’s shoes
Emotional empathy
vicarious experience of another’s feelings
* Sympathy & compassion: motivate helping
Factors in friendship and attraction
Similarity
Proximity
Functional Distance (Interaction)
Mere Exposure
Mere exposure
evolutionary explanation - conditioned response: stimulus is safe (evolutionarily adaptive)
Sex
males & females as biological categories based on chromosomes, genitals, & secondary sex characteristics
Intersex
biological components of sex (chromosomes, hormones, & internal & external genitalia) do not consistently fit typical male or female pattern
Gender
characteristics people associate with males & females
Transgender
sense of being male or female differs from their birth sex
Gender _____ (5)
- Gender identity: sense of belonging to a sex category
- Gender stereotypes: beliefs about the qualities associated with gender
- Gender preferences: toy & play activities
- Gender roles: set of behaviors associated with gender
- Gender-based preferences: attitudes about people of different sexes
Gender Socialization
Attribute different qualities to infants based on gender
* Explain exact same behavior differently based on gender
* Reward gender consistent behavior & punish gender inconsistent behavior
* Children observe & copy behavior and attitudes of others
Cognitive-Development Theory
- Gender identity: develop by age 2-3 (After, children perform gender consistent behaviors to receive rewards)
- Gender stability: age 4-5, understanding sex remains (largely) unchanging
- Gender constancy: age 6-7, recognition that sex is (largely) fixed & does not change as a result of external, superficial feature changes
Gender Schema
Beliefs and expectations about what each sex is supposed to wear, feel, do, and think – formed through observation of traits, behaviors, roles
Gender schematic (see the world in terms of gender and regulate their behavior accordingly) vs aschematic (don’t place emphasis on gender, less likely to see the world through that lens gender)
Self-concept
individual’s beliefs, feelings & knowledge about the self
Developmental Intergroup theory
Children observe adult tendency to divide world based on sex, leads children to believe there must be inherent natural differences between male and female
Social-Role Theory of Gender Differences in
Social Behavior
Although biology predispose men & women to different tasks, the behavior of women & men is sufficiently malleable that individuals of both sexes are fully capable of effectively carrying out all roles
Nurture
Shared environmental influences explain 0-1% personality traits
Genetics explains 40% of individual variations in personality traits
Peer transmitted culture
