The Individual & The Group Flashcards
Explain social identity theory
- SIT is the theory that states that a person has several social selves that correspond to group membership
- These ‘selves’ may become more salient — a person is made more aware of a certain aspect
- Step 1: social categorisation — the process of classifying people based on similar characteristics like age, race, gender, or occupation
- Step 2: social identification — a person identifies with the values/beliefs of the group, with the creation of in-groups (inclusive pronouns) and out-groups (exclusive pronouns)
- Step 3: social comparison — a person seeks to achieve positive self-esteem by comparing in groups to achieve positive distinctiveness (favour traits, justify group membership)
STUDIES:
1. Tajfel (1970) - separate boys randomly and ask them to allocate points to their team and opposing team: in group favouritism
2. Abrams (1990): if participant will conform to group’s opinion of outlier line with in/out group and public/private condition
3. Hilliard & Liben: gender salience in elementary school children by measuring play time after 2 weeks of gender-biased language
Explain social cognitive theory
- Behaviour is learnt from the environment that the process of modelling reinforces — we don’t need to experience something personally to learn, as we watch other people
- Modelling is learning through the observation of others through imitation of behaviour and vicarious reinforcement (someone is praised for doing a certain act)
- All conditions must be met: attention, retention, motivation, and potential
STUDIES:
1. Bandura: Assessing if children will imitate adult models in aggressive behaviour to doll
Explain the theory of the formation/origin of stereotypes
- Stereotypes are schemas (mental representation) that one identity acquired from social norms and people, not from personal experience
- Stereotypes helps understand the world, can be positive/negative, heuristic generalisations, and are prone to confirmation bias
- Leads to prejudice (an attitude where we make negative judgments about individuals) or discrimination (a behaviour and action)
- Reasons include social identity theory (social categorisation), conformity, and illusory correlations
- Illusory correlations are perceptions of a relationship between events, actions, and behaviours when there is no such relationship — over generalisation, coincidental events, confirmation bias, limited info
STUDIES:
1. Hamilton & Gifford: Illusory correlation experiment to see what generalisations/info they would take when presented with a majority/minority group when recalling positive/negative behaviours
2. Hillliard & Liben: gender salience in elementary school children by measuring play time after 2 weeks of gender-biased language
Explain the effects of stereotyping
- Stereotype threat: the fear you will confirm a negative stereotype about a group you belong to.
- Spotlight anxiety: when people are faced with a stereotype threats w]they often get nervous and perform worse, thus confirming the stereotype
- Memory distortion: the retrieval of false memories and information
Studies:
- Steele & Aronson (1995): To see how the threat of stereotype confirmation would affect performance
● Involved African American and white college students who took a difficult aptitude test under a stereotype threat/non-threatening condition, also giving a questionnaire, making them salient of their race - Martin & Halverson: how schemas play a role in how children understand and learn about gender roles
● Studied gender stereotyping influence on memory recall in 5/6 year-olds
● Children were shown 16 pictures, half with gender consistent, or gender inconsistent activities, and asked to recall
Describe enculturation
Enculturation is the process of how we adopt behaviours that are the norms of our culture, via 5 methods:
- Direct tuition: parents tell you what you’re supposed to do
2.observational learning: social cognitive theory states we can learn through watching others - Participatory learning: children engage in an activity, and then transfer to other situations
- Vertical transmission: passion down cultural norms from one generation
- Horizontal transmission: learning from same-aged peers
Martin & Halverson: how schemas play a role in how children understand and learn about gender roles
● Studied gender stereotyping influence on memory recall in 5/6 year-olds
● Children were shown 16 pictures, half with gender consistent, or gender inconsistent activities, and asked to recall
Fagot: To see how parents would react to gender appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, naturalistic observation
Describe acculturation
- Acculturation is the process by which someone comes in contact with another culture and tries to adopt the norms and behaviours of that new place
- 4 different types: integrations assimilation,marginalisation, and separation
- Acculturative stress: psychological impact of adoption to a new culture —long term acculturative stress may lead to reduced mental physical health
- Acculturation gaps and dissonance: there are difference in understanding and values between parents and children as they go through the process of acculturation — when they have different acculturation statergies, spend free time/language/superstition different, leading to tension
STUDIES:
Lueck & Wilson: Semi-structured interviews, Random sample of 2095 immigrants. To investigate which linguistic and social constructs predict acculturative stress in a nationally representative sample of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans.
Outline the research method, aim, basic procedure, strengths and limitations, and ethical consideration for SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY STUDIES
Tajfel (1970): Experiment Investigating group discrimination based on being put into different groups
● Divided boys and asked them to award points
● Boys generally awarded more points to members of their ingroup,
showing in-group favouritism
● High control, confounding variables were minimised, can be replicated,
established reliability
● Highly artificial, lacked mundane realism, low ecological validity,
demand characteristics, sampling bias (British boys)
● No significant ethical considerations
Abrams et al (1990): Experiment To determine if in-group identity would affect one’s willingness to conform
● Participants were shown stimulus lines and asked to identify the outlier
● Had confederates that were purposefully saying the wrong answer,
and IV conditions of public/private, and ingroup/out-group
● Found that social categorisation can play a key role in one’s decision
to conform publicly, and conformity exceeded in the in-group condition
● High control, increases internal validity
● Low mundane realism, questions ecological validity, sampling bias
(WEIRD bias)
● Slight deception, must debrief, does not cause undue stress/harm
Outline the research method, aim, basic procedure, strengths and limitations, and ethical consideration for SOCIAL COGNTATIVE THEORY STUDIES
Bandura: Given that children are passive witnesses to aggressive displays by an adult, will they imitate this aggressive behaviour given the opportunity
● Children split based on gender modelling, aggressive/passive models and control, children were tested for levels of aggressiveness
● The children modelled the behaviour
● Matched pair sampling, less sampling bias
● Low mundane realism, low ecological validity, ethical
considerations
● Consider consent, undue stress/harm
Outline the research method, aim, basic procedure, strengths and limitations, and ethical consideration for STEREOTYPE ORIGIN STUDIES
Hilliard & Liben: Experiment To determine how social category salience may play a role on the development of stereotypes and intergroup behaviour in elementary school children
● A pre-test/post-test diesng measures gender flexibility, before observing the play to determine what extent they played with same/opposite sex peers
● School were randomly allocated condition – using gendered language or not, with high/low saleince conditions
● After 2 weeks, high salient children showed increased gender stereotypes, decrease play with other-sex peers
● High ecological validity, mundane realism
● Sampling bias
● Undue stress/harm
Hamilton & Gifford: Experiment To see what generalisations and information they would take when presented with a majority and minority group
● Created a majroity/minory group, and had a series of statement that were equally positive/negative, and participants were aksed to compare the traits between each group
● People overestimated the number of negative traits in the minority group, as their negative behviorus appeared distinct and representative of the entire gorup
● People formed over-generalising schemas about the negative aspects of the minority gorup
● Controlled, credible, can replicate
● Low mundane realism, questions ecologicial validity
Outline the research method, aim, basic procedure, strengths and limitations, and ethical consideration for STEREOTYPE EFFECT STUDIES
Steele & Aronson (1995): To see how the threat of stereotype confirmation would affect performance
● Involved African American and white college students who took a difficult aptitude test under a stereotype threat/non-threatening condition, also giving a questionnaire, making them salient of their race
● African American participants performed worse than their white counterparts in the stereotype/salient condition, but in the non-threat condition, their performance equalled their white counterparts
● Stereotype threat can affect any group, provided that the members are aware of the stereotypes, leading to spotlight anxiety
● Internal validity in the second condition, high mundane realism, ecological validity
● Sampling bias, maybe could have used a matched pairs design
Martin & Halverson: how schemas play a role in how children understand and learn about gender roles
● Studied gender stereotyping influence on memory recall in 5/6 year-olds
● Children were shown 16 pictures, half with gender consistent, or gender inconsistent activities, and asked to recall
● Children easily recalled gender-consistent, and often distorted the memory of gender-inconsistent
● Controlled, credible, can replicated, interval validity, avoided force responses, controlled for response bias (allowed to say idk and confidence elevel)
● Low mundane realism, highly artificial, low ecological validity
Outline the research method, aim, basic procedure, strengths and limitations, and ethical consideration for ENCULTURATION STUDIES
FAGOT:
- Naturalistic observation to see how parents would react to gender appropriate and inappropriate behaviour
- Toddler and parents were observed in their homes using an observation checklist – examine reaction when behaviour was not “gender appropriate.”
- parents acted more favourably when there were gender appropriate behaviour
- Parent’s perceptions did not correlate with observed -> not a conscious behaviour
STRENGTHS: High ecological validity, mundane realism, method triangulation,high inter-rather reliability
WEAKNESS: sampling bias, difficulty of generalisation (university, white American), demand characteristics
Outline the research method, aim, basic procedure, strengths and limitations, and ethical consideration for ACCULTURATION STUDIES
LUECK & WILSON:
- Semi-structured interview, random sample of 2095 immigrants
- To investigate which linguistic and social constructs predict acculturative stress in a nationally representative sample of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans.
- Interviews face-to-face or over the intent by intervewers with similar cultural/linguistic background
- participants was contacted to validate the data taken from the interviews
- (nterviews measured the participants’ level of acculturative stress, the impact of language proficiency, language preference, discrimination, social networks, family cohesion, and socioeconomic status on this stress
- Bilinguals had lower acculturative stress than those who were not. Negative treatment (racism) led to acculturative stress,) whereas sharing values with family and economic satisfaction decreased this stress
STRENGHTS: provides detailed (rich qualitative) information - provides insight for further research - permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations - high ecological validity
WEAKNESS: inability to generalise results to the wider population - researcher bias - difficult to replicate, time consuming
