Week 9 Flashcards
What are stereotypes?
Simplified but widely shared beliefs about the characteristics of groups and their members.
What is prejudice?
Any positive or negative evaluation of a social group or its members (most often discussed in terms of the negative affective reaction towards a group).
What does Discrimination mean?
Unequal treatment of different people based on the groups or categories to which they belong (most often discussed in terms of others being treated less well because of their group membership).
What is a social group?
Two or more people sharing common characteristics that are socially meaningful for themselves or others.
What are some example of social categories?
Religion, where you are born, age, life circumstances, and employment status.
What are cognitive misers? (Fiske and Taylor, 1991)
- people can be seen to have not enough space in working memory to process everyone as an individual. People rely on short-cuts or heuristics.
What does being ‘outcome dependent’ on another person do?
Means that they use stereotypes less and cognitive resources more.
What is illusory correlation?
A correlation between group membership and individuals’ characteristics even when there is not.
Why does illusonary correlation occur?
We have less contact with minorities and outgroups.
Illusory Correlation example: Hamilton and Gifford (1976)
Pps read sentences, each describing desirable to undesirable behaviour about a member of Group a and Group b. But there was more information to read about Group A. Found that pps liked group B less. They formed an illusory correlation by perceiving a link between the two relatively infrequent and distinctive characteristics.
What is social categorization?
The process of identifying individual people as members of a social group because they share certain features that are typical of the group.
Why does social categorization occur?
Perceiving people as members of social groups rather than as unique individuals.
What is a positive of social categorization?
Efficient - enables people to function in society by knowing how to treat others.
Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979)
Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self categorisation/ a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s).
What happens to individuals because of social identity theory?
- people derive their social identity from the groups which they belong.
- shared construction of a shared self-definition in terms of in-group defining properties.
What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?
- tendency to see people within a same group as being more “similar” than they really are.
Why does the outgroup homogeneity effect exist?
- because we like people who share characteristics with ourselves.
3 motives behind stereotyping?
1 - Mastery
2 - Connectedness
3 - Justifying the social structure
What is mastery in terms of motives behind stereotyping?
Personal experiences with group members/ understanding the world.
What is connectedness in terms of motives behind stereotyping?
Following social norms of our valued ingroups.
What is ‘justifying the social structure’ in terms of motives behind stereotyping?
Rationalisations and justifications for its hierarchies of inequality.
How do social roles trigger correspondence bias? (Eagly, 1987)
Social roles influence their behaviour. e.g. men are more likely to be in management roles, women are more likely to be in caring roles.
Social roles and stereotypes - Hoffman and Hurst (1990)
Student participants read descriptions of Orinthians vs. Ackmians: from planet X.
Most Orinthians = involved child care.
Most Ackmians = outside workers.
All childcare workers - no matter the group - were described as nurturing and gentle. Same with the outside workers - who were described as competitive and ambitious.
Pps then asked to guess the ‘creates’ typical characteristics attached traits to the group rather than roles.
All Orinthians = nurturing
All Ackmians = competitive
When does classical conditioning occur?
When a person or object is repeatedly paired with emotion or trauma.
