WEEK 3 - Influencing Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination Flashcards
What are stereotypes
Generalised beliefs about a group often their characteristics e.g., traits, intelligence
What are descriptive steroytypes
Describe the characteristics that group are believed to have
Women talk more than men
What are Prescriptive stereotypes
Describe the characteristics that people expect members of that group to have.
Older people should share their life’s savings with their children
What is predjudice
Biased evaluations (good-bad) of a group and its members (“pre-judging”)
What are opinions
feelings and attitudes about person or group
How are prejudice and emotion linked?
“Defeated intellectually, prejudice lingers
emotionally
What is discrimination
- The differential treatment of groups or individuals on the basis of their group membership.
- Behaviours, policies, practices acting out prejudice or stereotypes
- Interpersonal discrimination
- Institutional discrimination
What is sterotype application
“the extent to which one uses a stereotype to judge a member of the stereotyped group”
What is the typical working model for stereotypes, prdudice and discrimination?
Stereotypes → Prejudice
Prejudice → Discrimination
usually, it starts with stereotypes which leads to prejudice and then from prejudice, it goes to discrimination.
What are other plausable models for stereotypes, prdudice and discrimination?
Stereotypes ← Prejudice
Prejudice ← Discrimination
can go the other way around. If you are observing discrimination it may feed into prejudices and then these prejudices can make you form stereotypes.
What was gamergate?
An individual (female but no binary) released a game kind of looking at her experience with depression. It was really popular but then the creator and game got heaps of backlash because she was a women.
Stereotypes and prejudice: example women in gaming
Stereotypes
men’s and women’s capacities and interests
Prejudiced attitudes
Men = interested in and good at games
Women = not interested in and bad at games
Discrimination
women’s fewer job opportunities
greater workplace harassment
Broader influence on society
What is Implicit bias
- Unconscious and/or automatic mental associations
- Refers to both “implicit stereotypes and implicit prejudices”
What is Implicit association test (IAT)
aims to uncover people’s implicit biases
measures on what implicit biases on big topics like sexuality, gender etc.
What is the impact of implicit bias on behaviour?
particularly given the potential for this to lead to discrimination in important domains (e.g., health care, law enforcement, employment, criminal justice and education).
Are stereotypes justified
- groups differ in real ways e.g., practices, norms, beliefs
- stereotypes may contain “grains of truth
- stereotypes may be Over-generalisation
–> applied to ALL group members where exceptions occur, ignore these or “bracket them off” (subtyping)
Are stereotypes valid/ what is motivated reasoning?
Motivated reasoning (e.g., by prejudice/ discrimination goals)
e.g., stereotyping to justify poor treatment
stereotypes may lead to biased hypothesis testing – we look for information that confirms stereotype
What are self-fufilling prophecies
When our actions contribute to stereotyped behaviour
Example:
Stereotype employee as lazy
–>
Treat employee as lazy
–>
Employee motivation and performance declines
–>
Employee actually becomes lazy
Is discrimination valid?
It is often easier to interact/exchange with in-group members than with outgroup members
- for outgroups, we may need to understand and negotiate different rules and expectations
But in-group bias can undermine benefits to society
- power differentials, marginalised groups, stratified society
- lose access to useful ideas and perspectives
Discrimination may contrast with other cultural values
- e.g., in Australia: equality and tolerance
Social identity perspective
- Our group memberships contribute to how we feel about ourselves (self-esteem or positive self-regard)
Group memberships are defined in relation to other groups
- “in-group” implies “outgroup”
- a specific comparison group (e.g., Australians v. NZ’s)
- a more general “not us”
We favour in-groups over outgroups
- good in-group outcomes contribute to our positive self regard
- findings in real settings are mixed-we don’t always favour in-groups
What are Intergroup approaches (APPROACHES TO REDUCE PREJUDICE & DISCRIMINATION)
Intergroup approaches aim to change group interactions and boundaries. Some examples are:
Contact hypothesis
Social identity approach
Interdependence
What are Individual approaches (APPROACHES TO REDUCE PREJUDICE & DISCRIMINATION)
Individual approaches target prejudiced beliefs and emotions. Some examples are:
Counter-stereotypes
Awareness raising
Perspective-taking
Normative influence
Dissonance
Self-affirmation
What is The Contact Hypothesis
Having members of antagonistic groups interact under certain conditions to try and help overcome the prejudice and discriminative behaviours.
The optimal conditions of contact are:
1. Equal status between groups
2. Common goals
3. Intergroup cooperation/no competition context
4. Support of legitimate authorities, laws or customs
Review of research on the contact hypothesis
- prejudice reduction is greatest when all conditions present
- some reduction is achieved when only some conditions present
- Personalisation - the potential to become friends with
outgroup members is an additional contact condition
What did the meta-analysis of the contact hypothesis find?
- 713 independent samples from 515 studies
- Intergroup contact significantly improved outgroup attitudes
- Although the effect was stronger when all prerequisite conditions present, contact also improved attitudes in their absence
What are the extensions of the contact hypothesis?
(the other forms of contact where conditions can still be met)
- Extended contact
- Imagined contact
- Vicarious contact
- Virtual contact
What is extended contact
When you are apprehensive about a group and refuse to interact with them. However, your friend interacts with that group so you start to think if that friend can interact with that group then perhaps there is an opportunity for me to try and do the same - willgness to interact with that group is higher.
Uses a mediator as a bridge to question weather our apprehension is actually justified or not and this might help us overcome apprehension.
What is imagined contact?
-Imagined contact is when in your head you are trying to break down those barriers where you are trying to think of scenarios that will enable you to reach out to the other group.
- The imagined contact concept was met with sceptacism but a meta-analysis done found that there was a significant, small effect on…
- Implicit attitudes & explicit attitudes
- Emotions
- Behavioural intentions
- Actual behaviour
- Is it useful in conflict heavy situations?
- Short lived?
What was the imagined contact study?
- 129 white children (Age: 7 years to 9 years/11 months)
- Large drawn picture (park, birthday party, beach), laminated pictures of related objects (dog, cake)
- Photo of themselves and an Asian child (gender match)
Some information on Asian child provided (resembled
friendship)
- Significantly higher similarity between self and outgroup and significantly more willing to interact with outgroup
What is vicarious contact?
- Vicarious contact is where the proxy/mediator you might use to reevaluate your thinking about a group is further removed (for example someone in the public eye/ celebrity)
- Integrates ideas of extended contact with principles of social learning theory
- Observing the actions of another person (whom one
identifies with) - Inhibit or disinhibit inclinations, new knowledge, understanding and skills
E.g., TV, radio, internet, newspaper
Potential…
Longevity??
What is virtual contact
- Computer mediated communication enabling contact between individuals (who wouldn’t otherwise meet)
- Well-suited for optimal contact??
- Controlled and protected
- Multiple contact sessions across a longer time
- Growing support in literature
- Smaller effects than direct or extended contact
What are mediators/ how are mediators promoting change?
Affective processes - Effect how behaviours come about and how effective change is:
- Group based anxiety
- Empathy and perspective-taking
- Stronger mediators than enhanced knowledge of the other group
- Alteration of perceived norms for intergroup behaviour
- Learning that in-group member has positive outgroup contact – more inclusive norms!!
- > impact than altering individuals’ attitudes
What is a moderator?
- How typical are encountered outgroup members?
- “The strength of a perceiver’s associative link between a specific exemplar and the stored representation of the
respective social category”. (So the more typical the person is viewed of that out group, the better the relationship will be.If you can break down those barriers and actually get
this interaction going) - Contactless effective at improving attitudes when outgroup members are atypical.
Group Status
- Positive contact more effective (stronger and consistent) for advantaged groups toward disadvantaged groups (idea that the stronger group is more advantaged)
- Research is mixed
Valence of Contact
- Contact quality vs. quantity
sometimes it might be important to have a huge amount of meetings for people to interact or sometimes it can be 1 or 2 meetings of really high quality that can change behaviour.
Contact outcomes
Typically focused on explicit attitudes/stereotypes More recently - Implicit attitudes
Contact quality - explicit attitudes/stereotypes
Contact quantity - implicit attitudes
What ate the three social learning approaches?
Decategorization
Recategorization
integration
What is Decategorisation
downplay group identity and focus on individual identity
you do not think about them as a group anymore you think about them as individuals
What is Recategorisation
downplay separate group identities by focusing on shared superordinate group
example: instead of thinking of psych students vs fashion students you just recategorize them as QUT students (all part of the same group)
What is intergration
recognize both group differences and commonalities
What are interdependence
people can overcome prejudice in the short-term when their own outcomes depend on it
e.g., performing on a joint work-task
repeated experiences over time can change long-term
prejudiced views
What are counter stereotypes
- Present different, non-stereotypical images of group members
- highlight group members who don’t fit stereotypes
- highlight activities common in group that don’t fit stereotypes
What is awarness raising
- Make people aware of their own stereotypes or prejudice
- Tell people to suppress stereotypes (often counterproductive)
- Tell people to remember their past prejudiced behaviour
- can induce guilt and hence willingness to repair relationships
- Make people aware of stereotypes they take for granted
What is perspective raising
Encourage understanding of experiences of other
groups
What is Normative influence
- conveying that prejudice against target is not normative for
a relevant in-group - conveying general norms for tolerance in in-group
What is Dissonance
- Highlight how their prejudice is inconsistent with their other views and actions
- e.g., after being required to write a statement in favour of pro-black policies, white participants weakened anti-black attitudes
What is Self-affirmation - increased self-worth
When people feel good about themselves they’ll be less
likely to derogate others
Public communication (media)
- entertainment (e.g., sit-coms, performances)
- advertisements
What are Intervention strategies?
Public communication (media)
- entertainment (e.g., sit-coms, performances)
- advertisements
Interactions between prejudice agents/targets
- joint activities
Targeting prejudiced group members
- perspective taking interventions
- cultural awareness and diversity training
- one-on-one (conversations, counselling)
