Stereotypes Flashcards
Stereotypes in children as young as 5-6
Stereotypes - definition:
- Generalised beliefs about or expectations from members of a group
- Not necessarily “fixed” or “inaccurate”
- Stereotypes can be changeable and sometimes describe groups on average accurately
- Category-based beliefs applied to individual people
Defining stereotypes:
- Stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination - not interchangeable - refer to different aspects of people due to group membership
- Stereotypes - the cognitive component of attitudes towards a social group, beliefs about what a particular group is like
- In contrast, prejudice is affective (feeling) and discrimination is behavioural (action) component of an attitude
Why do we form and use stereotypes?:
- Schemas - cognitive frameworks for organising, interpreting and recalling information (Fiske and Taylor, 2008) - easier way to understand social information
- Categorising for efficiency - sometimes we act as “cognitive misers” where the least cognitive effort is preferable - quicker decisions
- Motivational purpose - feel positive about group identity in comparison to other social groups (Social Identity Theory; Tajfel and Turner, 1986) - make us feel better about ourselves
Stereotyping and limited resources - Bodenhausen, 1990:
· Participants presented with information from a legal trial
- Designed so that it drew on stereotypes that would suggest defendant’s guilt
- Objectively, information was ambiguous
· Participants were either ‘morning’ people or ‘evening’ people (pre-tested)
- Tested either early morning or in the evening
- Morning – “evening” people have little resources
- Evening – “morning” people have little resources
· Are we more likely to draw on stereotypes when we have little resources?
Stereotyping and limited resources - Bodenhausen, 1990 2:
· Stronger reliance on stereotypes when cognitive resources are scarce.
Stereotype content model:
· Early approaches to stereotyping largely descriptive:
- Which groups are stereotypes and how?
- Reliance on ad hoc and endless lists of traits
· More recently, researchers have attempted to identify a smaller set of stereotypic dimensions
· According to Fiske et al (2002), stereotypes about most groups contain just two underlying dimensions
Costs of “positive” stereotypes - Deutsch, Lebaron and Fryer (1987):
· What are the consequences of being stereotyped as “warm”?
· Are members of “warm” groups (e.g., women) penalized for not living up to these stereotypes?
· Deutsch, LeBaron & Fryer (1987) examined this possibility by asking participants to rate how warm, happy, carefree and relaxed a number of people were based on a verbal description accompanied by:
- No Photo
- Smiling Photo
- Non-Smiling Photo
Negative consequences of “positive” stereotypes:
· When not smiling, women were perceived as less happy, carefree, and relaxed than men
· Nonsmiling women were rated less happy, warm, relaxed, and carefree than women with no photo– whereas this wasn’t the case for men
· Double standard applied to men and women – if women don’t express warm nonverbal behaviour as expected by benevolent stereotypes, they face harsher critique
· Positive stereotypes have costs – one gets penalized for no confirming them
Stereotypes influence cognitive processing:
· Where we direct attention (e.g., Cohen, 1981)
- Attend to stereotype-consistent information
· How we interpret information (e.g., Darley & Gross 1983)
- Interpret ambiguous information in line with stereotypes
· What we remember (e.g., Snyder & Uranowitz, 1978)
- Recall more stereotype-consistent information, forget otherwise
· How we gather information (e.g., Snyder & Swann, 1978)
- Ask questions to confirm our beliefs
Stereotypes influence how we gather information (Snyder and Swann, 1978):
· Participant ‘interviewers’ were led to believe that an interviewee was either introverted or extroverted
· They selected questions from a prepared list
· Chose questions likely to confirm expectation
