Week 3: Stereotypes

Question 1

What are stereotypes?

Answer 1

A cognitive representation of a social group that people form by associating particular characteristics with that group

Stereotypes may be positive, negative, or neutral

Question 2

Main features of stereotypes

Answer 2

1. Define people in terms of their social category membership
2. Stereotypes are socially shared (more than one person’s opinion)

Question 3

Why do people ‘stereotype’?

Answer 3

1. Cognitive function; limited resources; comprehension
2. Ego-defensive function; derogate others to feel better

Question 4

Cognitive Function of Stereotypes

Answer 4

Two people hit someone: Jane, the house wife, and John, constrcution worker.

But the context of the behaviour varied in terms of clarity - ambiguous, high aggression, low aggression.

How aggressive is John and Jane?
> No differences between John and Jane in aggressive and non-aggressive conditions
> But, in the ambiguous condition, John is perceived to be more aggressive than Jane

Question 5

Ego Defensive Function of Stereotypes

Answer 5

Participants (students) received good or bad course grade, by a male or female instructor
Bad grade: threat to self and self-esteem needs to be repaired

DV: evaluate course and instructor

Findings:
When students received good grades, they evaluated female or male teachers positively and similary.

When students received bad grades, they evaluated both teaches less positively, but especially female teachers much less positively than male teachers.

They stereotyped female teachers as incompetent.

Question 6

Stereotypes vary along two dimensions

Answer 6

Warmth: groups that do not compete with the ingroup for resources

Competence: groups that are high in status, economically or educationally successful

Question 7

Where do stereotypes come from?

Answer 7

Power and status relations determine groups’ representation on these dimensions:
> competing groups = low in warmth
> cooperative groups = high in warmth
> high status groups = high in competence
> low status groups = low in competence

Question 8

Stereotype Content Model - High Warmth, Low Competence

Answer 8

Paternalistic prejudice, low status, not competitve, pity, empathy

Question 9

Stereotype Content Model - High Competence, High Warmth

Answer 9

Admiration, high status, not competitive, pride, admiration

Question 10

Stereotype Content Model- Low warmth, low competence

Answer 10

compemptuous prejudice, low status, competitive, contempt, anger, disgust

Question 11

Stereotype Content Model - High competence, low warmth

Answer 11

envious, prejudice, high status, competitive, envy, jealousy

Question 12

Social Role Theory

Answer 12

> Stereotypes are observations of what people do
Group stereotypes are correlated with attributes of their members’ typical occuptional roles

This happens even if the individuals themselves do not fall into these roles

> The remedy for stereotyping is that you observe the groups engaging in different roles that require different attributes

Question 13

Stereotypes are polictical

Answer 13

> Stereotypes can justify inequality and the status quo
qroups with high status/power tend to hold stereotypes that rationalise and reinforce the outgroup’s lower status/power

Question 14

Stereotypes are political - historical examples

Answer 14

Oppressive stereotypes of Black people as lazy, stupid, loyal, benevolent -> justified slavery

Oppressive stereotypes of Native Americans as ‘backwards’, uncivilized, savages, naive, justifed colonialism

Question 15

Stereotype Activation

Answer 15

Dormant stereotype becomes active, ready for use, and capable of influencing person’s thoughts and behaviours

Stereotype activation processes:
- automatic - triggered simply by observing stimuli associated with stereotyped groups
- motivated - rooted in goals and needs

The two processes operate simultaneously and can affect one another

Question 16

Automatic Stereotype Activation - Do we always activate and use stereotypes when judging category members? Study 1.

Answer 16

Study 1: Stereotype knowledge
- white american participants; measured level of prejudice; list all stereotypes you know about

Findings: there was no difference between high- and low-prejudiced participants’ knowledge of stereotypes
implies that stereotypes are automatically activated in response to a stereotyped group

Question 17

Automatic Stereotype Activation - Study 2

Answer 17

P.1. participants were subliminally primed with words related to stereotypes of Black people (e.g., lazy, poor, athletic), and neutral words (e.g., sentence, number, animal)
> 1/2 participants - 80% of words related to Black people
> 1/2 participants - 20% of words related to Black people

P.2. read story and rate person on various traits (including hostile and aggressive traits)

critically, ‘hostile’ was not among the primed stereotypic words

no difference between high prejudice and low prejudice participants

Question 18

Automatic Stereotype Activation - Study 3

Answer 18

Controlled application of stereotypes

prior to experiment - level of prejucie was measured

asked to write down labels they knew for the category - black people

write down their own person associations - these responses were coded

Findings:
> initial level of prejudice is associated with the application of stereotypes
> people high in prejudice generated more negative traits about Black people, whereas people low in prejudice generated more positive beliefs about Black people

Question 19

Automatic Stereotype Activation

Answer 19

Suggests that everyone automatically activates cultural stereotypes but only those who are motivated (low prejudiced people) will inhibit those associations and replace them with their own personal beliefs

Question 20

Stereotype Activation - Seeing Black

Answer 20

Police officers primed with crime

Dot-probe task:
> shown two faces (one black and one white) simultaneously
> the faces disappeared quickly and were replaced by a dot
> asked to detect position of the dot

DV: dot detection

When crime is primed, police officers visually attend more to Black faces

In a follow-up study, police officers reported that highly stereotypical black faces ‘looked more criminal’

Question 21

How can stereotypes be inhibited?

Answer 21

Make sure stereotypes are
1. not activated
2. not applied

Question 22

Can stereotypes be stopped? But?

Answer 22

1. Controlling stereotypes uses up executive control
2. efforts to suppress stereotypes can backfire
   e.g., trying to suppress stereotypes can lead to greater stereotyping and discrimination in a subsequent task

Question 23

Can stereotypes by stopped? Is stereotype activation completely automatic? Study 1.

Answer 23

Asian and White Female research assistant show participants word fragments

Cognitive capacity manipulation - asked to remember 8-digit number or not

low cognitive capacity (busy) -> there is less stereotype activation

high cognitive capacity (not busy) -> there is more stereotype activation

Question 24

Can stereotypes be stopped? what about stereotype application? the differential role of cognitive busyness - study 2

Answer 24

Stereotypes are activated (same as study 1)

application phase:
> form an impression of Asian vs. White person
> Cognitively busy or not

DVL rate person on trait dimensions (stereotypic or not)

findings:
people who are cognitively busy (vs. not busy) are more likely to rate asian person with more stereotypic qualities

Question 25

Cognitive busyness in short

Answer 25

> less stereotype activation when people are cognitively busy (low capacity)
more stereotype application when people are cognitively busy (low capacity)

Question 26

Stereotype inconsistent information - what happens when people are presented with stereotype inconsistent behaviour?

Answer 26

Stereotype might adjust to reality (book-keeping)

If counter-stereotypical information is dramatic enough, might cause attitude change (conversion)

Stereotype might survive despite inconsistent information (sub-typing)

Question 27

Stereotype inconsistent information - sub-typing

Answer 27

stereotype inconsistent information can produce a sub-type

outgroup stereotype becomes more complex, but superordinate sterotypes stays the same

Question 28

Stereotype Threat

Answer 28

fear that ones behaviour may conform a negative stereotype held about a group that one belongs to

causes arousal/anxiety which impairs performance

when we are aware of stereotypes, we might live up to them

Question 29

Does making salient the stereotype that women are bad in mathematics lead to lower test scores amongst women?

Answer 29

Male and Female participants - control condition: no gender differences typically found on test
- experimental condition: gender difference in favour of men
DV: performance in maths test

Findings:
when the test was described as one that yield gender differences, it aroused stereotype threat among the female participants, and their performance dropped.

Question 30

Does makign salient that Black people don’t do well in school lead to lower test scores amongst black people?

Answer 30

Black and white participants; experimental condition (threat) - this test is diagnositic of your intellectual ability; control condition (no threat) - this test isa tool for studying problem-solving; DV: performance on a difficult verbal reasoning test

Findings:
when the test was framed as highly diagnostic of intellectual ability, Black participants experienced stereotype threat and did worse on the test

Question 31

Stereotype Threat Harms

Answer 31

harms performance of any individual for whom the situation invokes a stereotype-based expectation of poor performance

examples:
> students from low socioeconomic background compared to students from high socioeconomic backgrounds on intellectual tasks
> men compared to women on social sensitivity
> elderly compared to young on memory tasks

Question 32

Self-Stereotyping

Answer 32

Social identity research shows people even self-stereotype themselves based on salient group memberships

It can be internalised: people see themselves in line with the stereotyped characteristics of their group

e.g., stereotypical self-categorisation can affect people’s career decisions - people tend to self-select into fields that are consistent with stereotypical self-characteristics

lack of fit perceptions:
> engineers and soldiers - > associated with agentic traits - men self-select into them

> nurses and teachers-> associated with communal traits -> women self-select into them

Question 33

Self-stereotyping - job advertisements

Answer 33

job advertisements in male-dominated positions (e.g., management) typically use more agentic traits

women more likely to apply to positions when the job advertisements use more communal traits