Chapter 11: Stereotyping, Prejudice, Discrimination

Self-fulfilling prophecies

-Stereotype expectations lead us to treat groups in ways that encourage them to confirm our original expectation -Pygmalion effect: shows that teacher expectations influence student performance. Positive expectations influence performance positively, and negative expectations influence performance negatively. Rosenthal and Jacobson originally described the phenomenon as the Pygmalion Effect. Erroneous(wrong/incorrect) stereotypes can also be unknowingly maintained through self-fulfilling prophecies, when a person acts toward members of certain groups in ways that encourage the very behavior they expect.

Motivational perspective

-a theory to explain why, once the us/them distinction is made, we are treated better than they some divisions into us and them have the kind of material or economic implication discussed earlier and those implications often provide motivation enough for people to treat ingroup members better than outgroup members

1. Benevolent racism and sexism 2. Benevolent sexism *hostile sexism

1. consist of attitudes the individual thinks of as favorable toward a group but that have the effect of supporting traditional, subservient roles for members of disadvantaged groups 2. (a chivalrous ideology marked by protectiveness and affection toward women who embrace conventional roles) often coexists with hostile sexism (dislike of nontraditional women and those viewed as usurping men's power).

The Economic Perspective 1. realistic group conflict theory 2. ethnocentrism

1. realistic group conflict theory- A theory that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources -theory predicts that prejudice and discrimination should increase under conditions of economic difficulty, such as periods of high unemployment when there is less to go around or when people are afraid of losing what they have competition intensifies.

Conserving Cognitive Resources

Bodenhausen (1990) "Morning people" More likely to stereotype at night "Night people" More likely to stereotype in the morning participants with a stereotype that could be applied to a person they read about recalled more trait infroamtion about that person, as well as more infromation about Indonesia on another test Conserving Cognitive Resources-Invoking stereotypes facilitates the recall of stereotypically consistent information, thereby conserving mental energy for use in performing other tasks. -People are more likely to fall back on to stereotypes when they lack mental energy!

RANDOM INFO....

Contradictory evidence about group members may not change people's ideas about a group because people often consider such evidence an exception that proves the rule. Behavior consistent with a stereotype tends to be attributed to the dispositions of the group members, whereas behavior that is inconsistent with a stereotype is often attributed to the situation.

Illusory correlations (Dave Hamilton)

False beliefs about groups are created or maintained because we better remember the pairing of distinctive events people see correlations(relationships) between events, characteristics, or categories that are not actually related by definition minority groups are distinctive to most members of the majority so minority groups stand out negative behaviors(robbing, murdering) are also distinctive- therefore negative behaviors on the part of minority group members is therefore doubly distinctive and double memerable Distinctive groups (because they are in the minority) are often associated with distinctive (rare) behaviors. This paired distinctiveness results in attributing illusory properties to such groups, creating illusory correlations.

modern racism

Prejudice directed at racial groups that exists alongside the rejection of explicitly racist beliefs Blatant, explicit racism in much of the world is now relatively rare. But modern racism, whereby people consciously hold egalitarian attitudes while unconsciously having negative attitudes and exhibiting more subtle forms of prejudice, still exists. many people hold strong egalitarian values that lead them to reject prejudice AND discrimination, yet they also hold unacknowledged negative feelings and attitudes toward minority groups that stem from ingroup favoritism and a desire to defend the status quo ex: REJECTION OF EXPLICITLY RACIST BELIEFS- blacks being inferior to whites, while feeling animosity toward African Americans or being highly suspicious of them and being uncomfortable dealing with them

Minimal group paradigm (Henry Tajfel)

Researchers create groups based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria and then examine how the members of these "minimal groups" are inclined to behave toward one another members of arbitrarily defined groups favor their fellow group members over members of the other group. EXPERIMENT allows investigators to determine whether participants seem most interested in assigning points equally to ingroup and outgroup members, in maximizing the total payour regardless of group membership or in maximizing the relative advantage of what's given to the ingroup experiments have shown that a majority of participants are interested in maximizing the RELATIVE gain for members of their ingroup than in maximizing the absolute gain for their ingroup.

Benevolent Racism & Sexism

STEREOTYPES ARE AMBIVALENT(both positive and negative) racism, sexism, all that are AMBIVALENT-containing BOTH negative and positive features Benevolent stereotypes HELP KEEP EVERYONE IN THEIR PLACE - it makes it seem like people are somehow balanced or that there is no prejudice ex: we may think that asians are colder and more rigid than whites and at the same time believe that they are more intellectually gifted another example: woman not as smart as men but have better social skills

Cognitive Perspective Stereotypes and the conservation of cognitive resources

Stereotypes as categorization Conserving Cognitive Resources Stereotypes facilitate recall of stereotypically-consistent information-- they conserve mental energy for use in performing other tasks -according to the cognitive perspective, stereotypes are a natural result of the way our brains are wired to store and process information

Can Stereotypes be Positive

Stereotypes do not have to be negative, they CAN be positive, they can also be neutral ex: African Americans are athletic/fast runners, Asians are smart/good at math Ex: Men are tall

Attributional ambiguity

Stigmatized groups may be uncertain if their treatment is due to personal characteristics or their group membership *stigmatized- person distinguished from others(minorities-black people) ex: when someone has to wonder whether an accomplishment is the product of an affirmative action policy-it can be difficult to completely "own" it and take pride in the accomplishment Members of stigmatized groups suffer from attributional ambiguity. They have to ask whether others' negative or positive behavior toward them is due to prejudice or to some factor unrelated to their group membership(THERE ACCOMPLISHMENT ARE SELF MADE AND NOT DUE TO EXTERNAL INFLUENCES) .

Stereotype

The belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE -persons belief about object ex: Believing that women with blonde hair are dumb

Stereotype threat (Claude Steele)

The fear of confirming stereotypes others have about one's group Example: Before administering an intelligence test, asking students their race or gender can hinder performance of African American and Female students Asking females to indicate their sex/gender before taking a MATH test hinders performance on test

Social identity theory

The idea that a person's self-concept and self-esteem derive not only from personal identity and accomplishments, but also from the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which the person belongs theory attempts to explain in-group favoritism, maintaining that self-esteem is derived in part from group membership and group success.

ethnocentrism

The other group is vilified(not looked fondly upon) and one's own group is glorified. ex: an opponent who's skills seem intolerable becomes more likable once that person becomes a teammate

paired distinctiveness

The pairing of 2 distinctive events that stand out even more because they occur together

additional info

The reminders of group membership lead the test takers to think about the stereotypes for their group (e.g. that African Americans aren't intelligent, that Women are bad at math) This makes the test takers anxious! In turn, the anxiety and fear distracts the test takers and consume cognitive resources, and undermine their performance! In addition, the test takers may fear that the stereotype is to some extent correct, and thus they may lower their expectations of success and may not try as hard which would also under mind performance. when a test is described as one that yields gender differences, it aroused stereotype threat among the female participants and their performance dipped

Outgroup homogeneity effect

The tendency for people to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups we think a group in which we dont belong to(they are more similar)-outgorup is more similar than the ingroup other kinds of people are very different than us (the outgroup are more similar within/among themselves) than we are similar to them ingroup" is a group to which someone belongs, and an "outgroup" is a group to which the person does not belong

Theoretical Perspectives

Three approaches to studying stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are the economic perspective, the motivational perspective, and the cognitive perspective. Economic perspective- identifies the ROOTS of much intergroup hostility in competing interests that can set groups apart from one another. motivational perspective- emphasizes the psychological NEEDS that lead to intergroup conflict. cognitive perspective- traces the origin of stereotyping to the same cognitive processes that enable people to categorize, say, items of furniture into distinct classes of chairs, couches, and tables. This perspective takes into account the frequent conflict between people's consciously held beliefs and values and their quick, reflexive reactions to members of specific racial, ethnic, occupational, sexual orientation, or other demographic groups.

The Robbers Cave experiment

Two groups of boys in competition at summer camp (Eagles vs. Rattlers) lead to Hostility Superordinate goals (need for cooperation) Reduction in hostilities subordinate-(shared goals that can override differences and can only be achieved through cooperation) The classic Robbers Cave experiment put two groups of boys in competition at a camp, and soon they were expressing open hostility toward each other. When the groups were brought together in noncompetitive situations where they had to cooperate to achieve shared superordinate goals, the hostility dissipated. -consistent with the economic perspective, prejudice can arise from realistic conflict between groups over limited resources

Biased information processing

We attend to and remember things consistent with our stereotypes, and fail to notice or remember things that are inconsistent People engage in biased information processing, seeing aspects of other groups that confirm their own stereotypes and failing to see facts that are inconsistent with them. ex: white people were asked to watch a video of a white man shoving a perosn and a black an shoving a person when a white man shoved the person it was considered more benign when a black man shoved the person, it was considered more serious action (agressive action)

Prejudice

a negative attitude or affective response toward a groups and its individual members AFFECTIVE COMPONENT -involves persons feelings/emotions about object ex: Disappointment that your brother is "dating a blonde chick"

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

a technique for revealing non conscious attitudes toward different stimuli particularly groups of people you may not consciously be aware that you associate females with being weak and that is what the test does-tests if you do(if you do indeed catergoraize typical characterisitcs of female with words relating to weakness.... IAT responses correlate with measures of prejudice press left key for words that pertain to being "weaK" or a "female" name and right key for words pertaining to "male" name and "strong" hypothesis: respondents would be faster to press one key for members of a particular group and words stereotypically associated with that group than to press the same key for members of that group and words that contradict the sterotype associated with that gorup easy to repsond quickly when the category members and the attributes assocaited with the group are signales with the same hand rather than different hands same test for prejudice: people prejudiced against older adults should be faster to press the appropriate key when the same key is used for old faces and negative words (because older people are viewed negatively) and slower when the same key is used for old faces and positive words.

experiment done with benevolent sexism

benevolent sexism- chivalrous ideology marked by protectiveness and affection toward women who embrace conventional roles this often coexists with hostile sexism(dislike of nontraditional women and those viewed as superior to men). by rewarding women and minorities for conforming to the status quo, benevolent sexism and racism inhibit progress toward equality those who hold ambivalent attitudes act positively towards members of outgroups if they fulfill their idealized image of what people should be like those who defiate are treated with hostility

superordinate goal

goals that could not be achieved by either group alone but could be accomplished by both working together

experiment done with modern racism

participants were in a position to aid a white or black person in need of medical assistance if the participants thought they were the only one who could help they came to help the black person somewhat more often than the white person but when they thought other people were present and their own inaction could be justified on nonracial grounds they helped the black person much less often than the white person

Implicit prejudice

prejudice (i.e., negative feelings and/or beliefs about a group) that people hold without being aware of it If people take LONGER to respond to female words when they are paired with the "good" key than when paired with the "bad" key (and opposite is true for male words) --- Implicit prejudice.

basking in reflected glory

taking pride in the accomplishments of other people in ones group such as when sports fans identify with a winning team how often students wore their school sweatshirts and T-shirts to class after their football team had just won or lost a game students wore the school colors significantly more often following victory than after defeat

priming and experiment

the presentation of information designed to activate a concept (such as a stereotype) and hence make it accessible A prime is the stimulus presented to activate the concept in question Experiment with priming: show you the word butter for example then right after show you the word bread and car you will recognize bread quicker than car--priming the concept of butter with words related to butter

Discrimination

unfair treatment of an individual because of the person's membership in a specific group BEHAVIORAL COMPONENT -the way the attitude we have influences how we act or behave ex: Refusing to hire a women with blonde hair