WEEK 7 - Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination Flashcards
What are stereotypes
cognitive beliefs or associations linking a whole group of people with certain traits or characteristics
* can distort our perceptions and often resistant to change
* resolve ambiguity (contributes to stereotype persistence)
What are self-fulfilling prophecies
expectations influence interaction and therefore
produces changes in behaviour in line with assumptions
What is stigma
feeling negatively evaluated due to group membership
What is prejudice
negative feelings towards certain people based on
their group membership
What is discrimination
behaviour directed against people based on
their group membership
What is sexism
prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s gender or institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one gender over another
What is ambivalent sexism
- hostile sexism: negative, resentful feelings about women
- benevolent sexism: chivalrous feelings that can be patronising
What is racism
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
experiments designed to detect well-concealed racism
- Duncan’s (1976) study coding of ‘lightly shoving’ act by either White/Black male: if Black male, more
likely coded as ‘shove’ vs. if White male, coded as ‘playful’ - use of methods like Implicit Association Test (IAT) to reveal unconscious bias
- reaction times for positive/negative adjectives (see graph)
WHat is aversive racism
mixed feelings between being fair and unconscious prejudices
What are microaggressions:
everyday, typically subtle forms of discrimination
What is ageism
prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s age
What is abelism
prejudice and discrimination towards people with a disability
Aspects of sexual idenity
- recent changes: historical roller-coaster - less/more levels of acceptance
- context-specific: sectors of community (especially rural)
- 1980s..link with HIV (‘GRID’: gay related immune deficiency) enabled prejudice and discrimination
- Inclusivity and diversity: legislation, safe spaces
Effects of prejudice and discrimination
- 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
- dehumanisation (stripping people of their dignity and humanity)
- violence + genocide, including cultural (exterminating a whole social group
Why are people prejudice and discriminatiory
- innate reaction: human’s inherent fear of the unfamiliar
- learned reactions: role of parental attitudes
- frustration aggression – leads to scapegoating as outlet
- authoritarian personality: harsh parental treatment so respect for authority and displaced anger leads to prejudice… or dogmatism: rigid cognitive style
- relative deprivation theory
- realistic conflict theory
What is relative deprivation
The belief that a person will feel deprived or entitled to something based on the comparison to someone else. People feel like they are missing out on what the other person has.
WHat is realistic conflict theory
hostility between groups caused by direct competition for
limited resources
What is the main findings in Sherif’s (1949) ‘summer camp’/’Robbers cave’ study (in relation to conflict)
boys in separate cohesive groups at summer camp caused cooperation and conflict
What are superordinate goals
shared goal only achieved by cooperation between groups
Social identity theory (Tajfel & colleagues)
Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s)
* theory of group membership and intergroup relations
* social vs. personal identity
Social identity theory aims to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members.
What are the outcomes of social identity/identification:
- ethnocentrism/ingroup favouritism
- conformity to group norms
- stereotyping of own (‘ingroup’) and other (‘outgroup’) group members
Self-categorization theory (Turner & colleagues)
Self-categorization theory seeks to understand and explain how people form cognitive representations of themselves and others in relation to different social groups. The underlying premise behind this theory is that people place themselves and others into social categories on the basis of the underlying attributes that are particularly salient
- categories based on cognitive representations of groups
- use of prototypes to:
- MINIMISE differences within groups
- MAXIMISE differences between groups
referent informational influence
kind of like the process when conformity occurs
process to discover ingroup norms, cognitively
represent them, assign ingroup norms to self, then adhere to ingroup normative behaviour (conformity)
What is outgroup homogeneity effect
assume greater similarity among members of outgroups
than ingroups
e.g. “they are alike; we are diverse”.
Strategies to create harmony between 2 groups
- propaganda and education: messages to create norms denouncing prejudice
- superordinate goals (Sherif’s summer camp)
- communication and conciliation
- Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis: contact leads to intergroup harmony
Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis: contact leads to intergroup harmony.. but you need….
- prolonged, co-operative activity
- officially sanctioned
- equal social status
- similarities emphasised (as long as real)
- outgroup members seen as typical
- superordinate goals (Sherif’s summer camp)
- communication and conciliation
