Week 7 Review - Stereotypes, Prejudice, Discrimination

Question 1

What are stereotypes?

Answer 1

The cognitive beliefs or associations linking a whole group of people with certain traits or characteristics.

Question 2

self-fulfilling prophecies

Answer 2

expectations influence interaction and therefore produces changes in behaviour in line with assumptions

Question 3

What is prejudice?

Answer 3

negative feelings towards certain people based on their group membership

Question 4

What is discrimination?

Answer 4

behaviour directed against people based on their group membership.

Question 5

What is sexism?

Answer 5

Prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s gender or institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one gender over another.

Question 6

What is Racism?

Answer 6

Prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s racial background or institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one racial group over another.

Question 7

What is Ageism?

Answer 7

Prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s age.

Question 8

What are some of the effects of prejudice and discrimination?

Answer 8

A reluctance to help minorities improve their position in society, tokenism (publicly making small concessions), reverse discrimination (publicly being prejudiced in favour of a minority group), social stigma, self-fulfilling prophesies, reduced self-esteem, disadvantage (access to resources), and violence and genocide.

Question 9

What are some explanations of prejudice and discrimination?

Answer 9

Innate reactions (human fear of the unknown), learned reactions from parents, furstration aggression leading to scapegoating, authoritarian personality, relative deprivation, and realistic conflict theory.

Question 10

What is relative deprivation?

Answer 10

Discontent from the belief one fares poorly compared to others.

Question 11

What is realistic conflict theory?

Answer 11

Hostility between groups caused by direct competition for limited resources.

Question 12

What is social identity?

Answer 12

A person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s).

Question 13

What are some of the outcomes of social identity?

Answer 13

ethnocentrism/ingroup favouritism

conformity to group norms

stereotyping of own (‘ingroup’) and other (‘outgroup’) group members

Question 14

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 14

The evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture.

Question 15

What is referent informational influence?

Answer 15

A process to discover ingroup norms, cognitively represent them, assign ingroup norms to self, then adhere to ingroup normative behaviour.

Question 16

What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?

Answer 16

The assumption that there is greater similarity among members of outgroups than ingroups.

Question 17

What are Superordinate goals?

Answer 17

Goals that are worth completing but require two or more social groups to cooperatively achieve.

Question 18

What is Allport’s contact hypothesis? (1954)

Answer 18

Contact leads to intergroup harmony…
given prolonged co-operative activity, officially sanctioned actions, equal social status, similarities emphasised (as long as real), and outgroup members seen as typical.

Question 19

What can propaganda do to dispell prejudice?

Answer 19

Produce messages to create norms denouncing prejudice.

Question 20

What communication methods are viable for reducing prejudice?

Answer 20

Bargining, mediation (3rd party facilitates), arbitration (3rd party decides), and conciliation: co-operative gestures.