Chapter 10: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Match each concept related to the motivational perspective to the correct definition.

- basking in reflected glory: One takes pride in the accomplishments of others in one's group. - social identity theory: Individuals form their self-concepts and self-esteem based on both personal and group identities and accomplishments. - minimal group paradigm: Researchers assemble arbitrary groups to study how the members behave toward one another.

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage about the cognitive perspective.

According to the cognitive perspective, the necessity of using categorization to take in and process the incredible volume of stimuli around us makes stereotyping a necessity in our lives. It is a natural result of the way our brains are wired to store and process information.

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage about the motivational perspective.

According to the motivational perspective, intergroup conflict resulting in an "us versus them" mentality can result merely because two groups exist—even in the absence of competition. This occurs in the minimal group paradigm, in which members of arbitrarily defined groups favor their fellow group members over members of the other group. Ingroup favoritism as such can be understood with the social identity theory, which states that we derive self-esteem from the status of the groups we belong to in addition to our personal identity.

Which of the following statements about stereotyping are accurate and which are not?

Accurate Statements: 1. A stereotype involves projecting what you think you know about a group onto your expectations about members of that group. 2. A stereotype involves thinking about people in a particular group not as individuals, but as members of that group. Inaccurate Statements: 1. Stereotypes are always entirely false. 2. Stereotypes can be negative, but not positive.

Which of the following statements about so-called positive or benevolent stereotypes and ambiguous "-isms" (sexism, racism, ageism, heterosexism) are accurate and which are not?

Accurate Statements: 1. Many people believe that as long as a stereotype isn't negative, it cannot be harmful. 2. A study found that benevolent sexism in individuals often exists alongside hostile sexism. Inaccurate: 1. Ambivalent sexism, ambivalent racism (and any other ambivalent "-ism") occurs when a person possesses neither positive nor negative attitudes about these specific groups.

Which of the following statements about the social identity theory are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. Criticizing another group makes people feel better about their own group—and hence themselves. 2. People derive self-esteem not only from their own accomplishments but also from those of groups to which they belong. 3. People may be tempted to boost the statuses and fortunes of the groups to which they belong and of their fellow group members. Inaccurate: 1. Whether the ingroup performs well or poorly does not affect our incentive to identify with the ingroup. 2. Its effects are seen only in situations where a strong economic motive for ingroup favoritism is present.

Which of the following statements about lessons learned from the Robbers Cave experiment are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. Differences in background, differences in appearance, or prior conflicts do not need to be present for intergroup conflict to arise. 2. The tendency for groups to become more cohesive through competition from outsiders can be exploited by politicians to distract attention or solidify a group for a cause. 3. Ingroups often become more cohesive when they compete with an outgroup. 4. When two groups compete to achieve a goal, conflicts arise. Inaccurate: 1. Simply being in the same space can serve to reduce intergroup conflict between competing groups. 2. One way to reduce intergroup tensions is to get groups to compete against each other.

Which of the following statements about measuring prejudice and stereotypes about groups are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. Given that so many forms of prejudice are ambivalent, uncertain, or hidden—even from the self—they're not likely to be revealed through self-reports. 2. Surveys of attitudes toward certain groups can't always be trusted because respondents may not think it's acceptable to express what they really feel. Inaccurate: 1. Whether attitudes toward groups are assessed directly through surveys or indirectly through the IAT, the results are similar. 2. Surveys are less straightforward for assessing attitudes than methods such as IAT and priming.

Which of the following statements about how stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination relate to one another are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. Research suggests that it is possible to discriminate without being prejudiced. 2. People are more inclined to injure (discriminate against) those they hold in low regard (believe negative stereotypes about or are prejudiced against). 3. If someone discriminates, but claims to be doing so without prejudice, the person might be covering up underlying bigotry. Inaccurate: 1. People can be prejudiced and not discriminate, but only in instances when an individual reaches the conclusion that discrimination is morally wrong.

Which of the following statements about concepts related to faulty stereotyping and the difficulties in erasing them are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. Subtyping is a technique people use to cling to their faulty stereotypes even in the face of evidence against them. 2. Faulty stereotypes can be maintained through self-fulfilling prophecies. 3. People abstractly encode positive evidence about ingroup members. Inaccurate: 1. Negative actions of an outgroup member are described in a concrete way to fit one's stereotypes. 2. People attribute behavior consistent with a stereotype to external causes, and they attribute behavior inconsistent with a stereotype to internal dispositions.

Which of the following statements about superordinate goals and the Robbers Cave experiment are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. Superordinate goals transcend the interests of a single group. 2. These goals cannot be achieved by one group alone and require the cooperation of more than one group for accomplishment. Inaccurate: 1. Built-up hostility cannot be removed by working on superordinate goals. 2. Increased contact has been shown to be just as effective as superordinate goals in reducing intergroup conflict.

Which of the following statements about the motivational perspective on stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. The minimal group paradigm explains that members of arbitrary groups prefer members of their own group to members of the other group. 2. The mere fact that there are two groups can result in an "us versus them" attitude and poor intergroup relations. 3. Social identity theory explains that members of a group obtain their self-esteem from the group's performance via acts of ingroup favoritism, such as denigrating those in an outgroup. Inaccurate: 1. It calls into question, and in some cases refutes, core aspects of the economic and cognitive perspectives.

Which of the following statements about the outgroup homogeneity effect are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. The more people think of outgroup members as homogeneous, the more likely they are to stereotype them. 2. People tend to think that outgroup members are far more similar to each other than members of their own group are. 3. One likely cause is that we tend to have more contact with ingroup members than with outgroup members. Inaccurate: 1. We tend to think of a fellow ingroup member as representative of our group, but of an outgroup member as an individual. 2. Although we tend to think about members of the outgroup as all being the same, we will treat them as individuals if we actually meet them.

Which of the following statements about the use of the economic, motivational, and cognitive perspectives to explain stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. The three perspectives are not competing accounts, but rather complementary elements of a more complete analysis. 2. Elements from one perspective frequently influence elements from another perspective. 3. The causes of each phenomenon are many and varied, and any valid explanation must incorporate numerous elements. Inaccurate: 1. These perspectives are being used by psychologists to formulate a comprehensive theory for each type of intergroup tension.

Which of the following statements about the minimal group paradigm are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. There is a tendency for people to prefer a relative gain over a rival group to an absolute gain for their ingroup. 2. Some aspects of the Robbers Cave experiment results reflect the paradigm. 3. The paradigm shows that people have a strong willingness to adopt an "us versus them" mentality. Inaccurate: 1. Ingroup favoritism does not appear to be a factor in these "minimal" groups. 2. Hostility between groups cannot develop in the absence of competition.

Which of the following statements about illusory correlations are accurate and which are not?

Accurate: 1. They sometimes result from the way we process unusual events. 2. They are sometimes fueled by media depictions. 3. They result from paired distinctiveness. Inaccurate: 1. They are a form of stereotyping that arises from a combination of motivational and cognitive influences. 2. Studies indicate we can predict there will always be illusory correlations between any two variables that are jointly distinctive in the real world.

Match each example to the corresponding motivational theory.

Basking in Reflected Glory: 1. When a fellow Canadian is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jin says it is a great achievement for all Canadians. 2. Eddie and Cady go to a football game. After their team scores, they feel great and cheer, "We're number one!" Denigrating Outgroups: 1. Carla gets a higher grade than Marian. Marian makes a derogatory comment to Lee about Carla's sorority house. Boosting Ingroup Status: 1. Laura is proud to be a member of her cooperative house and devotes many hours to its upkeep.

While the literature overall suggests that multiculturalism is more effective in improving intergroup relations and members of marginalized groups generally prefer multiculturalism over color-blindness, there are still pros and cons of each ideology. Match each description as a con of multiculturalism or a con of color-blindness.

Con of Color-Blindness: 1. associated with stronger ethnocentrism 2. makes it easier for White people to see themselves as unprejudiced 3. can make people less able to detect cases of racial discrimination Con of Multiculturalism: 1. can be seen as an identity threat by high-status group members 2. increases race essentialism 3. creates the "minority spotlight effect"

The contact hypothesis—the idea that bringing together people of different races and ethnicities will lead to reduced prejudice and discrimination—does appear to have support, but only when certain conditions are met in addition to the straightforward bringing together of groups. Which of the following are among these required conditions for the contact hypothesis to work and which are not?

Conditions: 1. social norms in the community supporting intergroup contact 2. different groups working on a superordinate goal Not Conditions: 1. one group having a higher status than the other 2. emphasis on group membership and downplaying individual identity

Match each example to the corresponding key group dynamic as related to the Robbers Cave experiment.

Ingroup Cohesion: 1. Bolin frequently attends social events at the campus center for international students. He enjoys becoming closer to other international members of his school community. 2. The members of Stella's volleyball team regularly participate in bonding exercises that bring them closer to one another. Subordinate Goals: 1. Carlos and Elizabeth are the stars of their respective teams, which are bitter crosstown rivals, but they appear side by side at an "Independence Day at the Ballpark" event. 2. Brianne and Tess belong to rival high school cliques. Their cliques become friendlier after an event in which they visit residents of a local nursing home together. Intergroup Conflict: 1. Greg, a Protestant, gets increasingly angry and bigoted as his restaurant is losing more and more business to the restaurant next to his that is owned by Muslims. 2. Diane complains to her friend that affirmative action in college admissions is taking too many spots from "people like us."

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage about cognitive and emotional training interventions.

Loving-kindness meditation is an emotion-based intervention that reduces prejudice by directing positive, other-regarding emotions that are elicited by this type of meditation toward outgroup members. Perspective taking is a form of cognitive intervention that reduces prejudice by increasing a person's sense of self/other overlap, between that person and an outgroup member.

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage about conflict remediation at the Seeds of Peace summer camp.

Palestinian and Israeli teens are brought together for a three-week summer camp experience known as Seeds of Peace, where, like their Robbers Cave counterparts, they work together to achieve superordinate goals. Researchers found that at the end of the three-week experience, attitudes were more mutually favorable and more favorable toward each other's ethnic group. These results were found to remain stable many months later, after the camp was over.

Identify each description as relating to discrimination, prejudice, or stereotyping.

Prejudice: 1. the attitudinal and affective component of bias in intergroup relationships 2. an attitude or affective response toward a group and its individual members Discrimination: 1. unfair treatment of individuals based on their membership in a particular group 2. the action component of bias in intergroup relationships Stereotypes: 1. believing that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group 2. the belief component of bias in intergroup relationships

Jamie has been asked to be the new manager of a struggling professional soccer team. Match each scenario to the appropriate term.

Prejudice: Jamie feels that Drew, the team's goalie, isn't up to the job because Drew is English. Discrimination: Jamie refuses to let Drew, the team's goalie, play because Drew is English. Stereotyping: 1. Jamie believes that Americans make the best goalies. 2. Jamie believes that English people cannot be good goalies.

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage.

Studies on gender bias and stereotyping found that identical essays were rated less favorably with a woman's name attached as the author versus a similar man's name (e.g., Danielle and Daniel). One explanation for this result may be that due to nameism, in which people with more desirable names are rated more favorably, the women's names used in the studies were simply less desirable than the men's names. However, this does not suggest that sexism does not exist. For example, when orchestra directors had musicians audition while hidden behind a screen, there was a sharp increase in women selected for a position. Furthermore, societal sexism may exist in how names are created. Nearly all pairs of similar men's and women's names are a result of women's names being derived from men's names.

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage about the three general perspectives used to help analyze and understand the underlying causes of stereotyping and other intergroup tensions.

The economic perspective identifies the roots of much intergroup hostility as resulting from competition over interests, such as resources, that can pit groups against each other. The motivational perspective emphasizes the psychological needs that lead to intergroup conflict. The cognitive perspective traces the origins of stereotyping to the same processes that enable people to categorize, for instance, items of furniture into distinct classes of chairs, couches, and tables.

Match each dimension of productive intergroup contact to the consequence it appears to have on reducing prejudice.

personalization: perceiving outgroup members as individuals, and feeling empathy with and perceiving similarity to the outgroup positive feelings for particular outgroup members: generalizing to the outgroup as a whole solidification of positive intergroup sentiments: sharing a common intergroup identity

Match each concept or experiment related to the economic perspective on intergroup tensions to the correct definition.

realistic group conflict theory: the idea that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources Robbers Cave experiment: a classic social psychology study that involved 22 fifth-grade boys and explored intergroup conflict ethnocentrism: the glorification of one's own group while vilifying other groups superordinate goal: an objective that transcends the interests of any one group and can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together