Stereotypes Flashcards
Stereotypes
Collection of traits that society associates with a particular social group
Prejudice
A negative attitude held towards a social group
Discrimination
Negative behaviours towards a person because of their group members
Social categorisation
Assigning people to groups based on social categories
How do we socially categorise
Fuzzy boundaries and revolving around a central prototype
Prototypes are cognitive representations of the most typical features of a category
Category members vary in terms of typicality
Why do we socially categorise
Understand- informative for a person perception- allow judgments about disposition
Survival- evolutionarily adaptive, identify members of allied groups
Outgroup Homogeneity Effect
JONES, WOOD & QUATTRONE (1981)
View members of an outgroup as more similar to each other than members of the jngorjoc
KASSIN, FEIN & MARKUS (2017)
Ingroup- individual feels a sense of membership, belonging and identity
Outgroup- does not feel a sense of membership, belonging and identity
QUATTRONE & JONES (1980)
Video of person from their own or other university makes a decision
Likelihood of average member of that university making the same decision
More likely to predict average uni student would respond in same way in outgroup
Social explanations
Kernel of truth
Stereotypes based on actual differences between different social groups
Tendency to exaggerate these differences, extend them to all members of group leads to development of stereotypes
Social explanations
The stereotype content model
FISKE ET AL (2002)
Princeton trilogy studies- tracked stereotype change for 70 years
Most ethnicity and nationality based stereotypes have changed
Stereotype content reflects changes in society
Classified along 2 dimensions: competence and warmth
Low warmth, low competence= low status, competitive
High warmth, low competence= low status, not competitive
Low warmth, high competence= high status, competitive
High warmth, high competence= high status, not competitive
Cognitive explanations
illusory correlation
HAMILTON & GILFORD (1976)
2 statistically infrequent events are paired, correlation overestimated due to their distinctiveness= false illusory correlation
Minority groups perform negative behaviour- better encoding- minority group associated= formation of negative stereotype
Group B negative behaviours should be most distinctive- overestimate number of negative behaviours
Stereotype activation
KUNDA & SPENCER (2003)
Degree to which a stereotype is accessible in the mind
Measuring= lexical decision task
-decide whether stimuli presenter in black text are real words or not non-words as quickly as possible, ignoring stimuli in red
Stereotype application
KUNDA & SPENCER (2003)
Actual use of activated stereotypes in judgements
e.g., forming an impression
Measuring= measures that assess whether someone uses stereotypes in judgment
e.g., ask ppt to form impression of outgroup member, rate degree they possess certain stereotypic traits
Why do people stereotype
‘Energy saving device’- simplified processing, reduces cognitive load
Judgement heuristics- mental shortcut for streamlining social perception
MACRAE ET AL (1994)
Dual task paradigm- cognitive resources divided between 2 simultaneous tasks
Ppts given names and personality traits- formed impressions whilst listening to audio task
- given category labels, use stereotypes
- not given category labels, couldn’t use stereotypes
=if using stereotypes saves cognitive resources, ppt remember more of the audio
Biases in exposure to information
JOHNSTON & MACRAE (1994)
Impression formation task- presented with list of qs from interview with physics students
- read all questions and answers
- select as many as needed to form impression
Controlled condition view more stereotype confirming questions- rates physics students higher on stereotypic traits
Biases in interpretation to information
Negative/stereotypic behaviours attributed to disposition
Positive/ counterstereotypic attributes to situation
HEWSTONE (1990)- negative behaviours attributed to disposition, positive behaviour explained away in outgroup
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Expectancies lead us to behave in a way that encourages stereotype consistent behaviour
CHEN & BARGH (1997)
Perceiver condition- subliminally primed with faces of African Americans or Caucasians on dot counting task
=paired perceiver and targets played game of catch phrase, rated verbal behaviour on degree of hostility
Is social categorisation automatic?
For-
- cognitive misers- simplify to reasonably deal with info
- categories are basis for normal prejudgment
- categorise salient social categories so much
Against-
- shouldn’t do it when it’s not needed or irrelevant
- categorisation should be ‘goal-dependent’
Stereotype threat
STEELE & ARONSON (1995)
Concern experienced when possibility may act consistent with negative stereotypes
Black ppts performed worse on intellectual ability- but performed equally as well when no reference was made to intellectual ability
FRANZ ET AL (2004)
IAT to measure racial attitudes
Assigned to threat, no threat or no instruction
=explicit threat higher score indicating white implicit bias
disengagement
DAVIES ET AL (2002)
Women exposed to gender-stereotypic TV ads reported less interest in pursuing qualifications/careers in fields involving quantitative skills
Reducing stereotype threat
MIYAKE ET AL (2010)
Ppts on introductory physics course completed intervention twice during semester
Values affirming: choose most important value and why it is important to you
Control group: choose least important value and why it is important to others
=women performed significantly better when opportunity to self-affirm personal values
Reducing threat
Reframing and repraisal- tests reframed as challenging learning experiences- anxiety seen as helpful
De-emphasise- threatened social identity/ domain
