Chapter 13: Prejudice

As soon as people have created an "us," however, they perceive everybody else as

"not us."

Research has shown that white Americans attribute what kind of qualities to African Americans

"super-human" (ie. exceptional strength)

Gordon Allport (1954) described stereotyping as

"the law of least effort."

the perception of out-group homogeneity is the belief that

"they" (the outgroup) are all alike

The jigsaw approach was first tested in ____ (year)

1971

the result of trying to argue with emotional reasoning against prejudice

Allport observed, is that "defeated intellectually, prejudice lingers emotionally."

ethnocentrism

The belief that your own culture, nation, or religion is superior to all others

social identity threat

The feelings and behaviors elicited by knowing that you are being evaluated as a member of your group

Why do we use stereotypes?

The world is too complicated for us to have highly differentiated attitudes about everything; we maximize our cognitive time and energy by constructing nuanced, accurate attitudes about some topics while relying on simple, error-prone beliefs about others.

A stereotype is

a generalization about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members.

Prejudice

a hostile or negative attitude toward people in a distinguishable group, based solely on their membership in that group

the bogus pipeline

a phony lie-detector device that is sometimes used to get respondents to give truthful answers to sensitive questions

The self-fulfilling prophecy is

an expectation of one's own or another person's behavior that comes true because of the tendency of the person holding it to act in ways that bring it about

Some prejudiced people suppress their true feelings to

avoid being labeled as racist, sexist, or homophobic by others, whereas other prejudiced people suppress their true feelings out of a genuine desire to change and be non-prejudiced.

why was the phenomenon stereotype threat renamed to social identity threat

because the experience seems to extend to any situation where you feel at risk of being devalued on the basis of your identity.

And when empathy is absent, one can easily fall into the attributional trap of

blaming the victim

One reason for the success of jigsaw classrooms is that the process of participating in a cooperative group

breaks down in-group versus out-group perceptions and allows the individual to develop the cognitive category of "oneness."

how do jigsaw classrooms work effectively

by placing them in small, multiethnic groups and making each child dependent on the other children in the group to learn the course material.

For the target of the stereotype, positive stereotypes mean that you are still being interpreted as a _________ instead of as an __________, and possibly mistreated as a result.

category; individual

One of the most obvious sources of conflict and prejudice is

competition

although the effectiveness of contact varies across different groups, more intergroup contact is associated with (decreasing/increasing) prejudice in 94% of the more than 700 samples where it has been investigated.

decreasing

Most people, simply by living in a society where stereotypical information abounds and where discriminatory behavior is the norm, will

develop prejudiced attitudes and behave in discriminatory ways to some extent.

It is primarily the __________ aspect of attitudes that makes a prejudiced person so hard to argue with

emotional

jigsaw learning also produces positive outcomes because it encourages the development of

empathy

Prejudices often support the what of the in-group

feelings of superiority, its religious or political identity, and the legitimacy of inequality in wealth, status, and power.

In 2015, police shot ____x times as many unarmed black people as unarmed white people.

five

We make sense out of our social world by grouping people according to characteristics that are important, most notably:

gender, age, and race

When the schools were desegregated in 1954, social psychologists believed the increase in contact between white and black children would

herald the beginning of the end of prejudice

some people hold ____________ prejudices that they might not even be aware of consciously

implicit

Social psychologists have developed a variety of ________ _________ to try to identify the prejudices that people don't want to admit—to others or to themselves.

implicit measures

ethnocentrism is universal because it aids survival by

increasing people's attachment to their own group and their willingness to work on its behalf.

negative consequences of in-group bias

it often leads to unfair treatment of others merely because we have defined them as being in the out-group

Realistic conflict theory holds that

limited resources lead to conflict between groups and result in prejudice and discrimination.

emotional reasoning is impervious to

logic or evidence

Discrimination can subtly occur through

microaggressions

In-group members tend to perceive those in the out-group as

more similar to each other (homogeneous) than they really are.

Under conditions of institutional discrimination, prejudice will seem

normal

Each of us develops a personal identity that is based on

our particular personality and unique life history

For the person holding the stereotype, it is more maladaptive to mistakenly view someone ___________ than to mistakenly view them ___________.

positively; negatively

People who are usually reasonable about most topics become immune to

rational, logical arguments when it comes to the topic of their prejudice

A jigsaw classroom is a classroom setting designed to

reduce prejudice and raise the self- esteem of children

Research shows that social identity threat _________ our working memory capacity, so you do not have as many cognitive resources left to enable you to perform at your best.

reduces

Well-intentioned members of the majority will sympathize with groups that are targets of discrimination, but true empathy is difficult for those who are

routinely judged on the basis of their own merit and not their racial, ethnic, religious, or other group membership.

the tendency to blame victims for their victimization is typically motivated by a desire to

see the world as a fair and just place, one where people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

Social identities give us a

sense of place and position in the world.

implicit prejudices

slight biases and rarely activated stereotypes as well as fuzzy attitudes of a group having more "goodness" or "badness."

Even when people have almost nothing else in common, a bond can form immediately between them if they share

social identities

This experience of being evaluated through the lens of negative stereotypes about your group used to be termed

stereotype threat

desegregation of schools did not go as smoothly as most knowledgeable people had expected. Far from producing the hoped-for harmony, it frequently led to

tension and turmoil in the classroom, where minority students were thrust together with white students whose educational experience was entirely different from their own.

microaggressions

the "slights, indignities, and put-downs" that many minorities routinely encounter.

Methods such as ____ _______ ___________ are employed based on the assumption that people know what they really feel but prefer to hide those feelings from others

the bogus pipeline

we also develop a social identity based on

the groups we belong to, including our national, religious, political, and occupational groups

Legal scholar Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow (2012) has called what the newest form of legal segregation?

the mass incarceration of black men ("war against drugs")

Wherever a majority group systematically discriminates against a minority to preserve its power, they will claim that their actions are legitimate because

the minority is so obviously inferior and incompetent.

Social Identity

the part of a person's self-concept that is based on his or her identification with a nation, religious or political group, occupation, or other social affiliation

Out-Group Homogeneity

the perception that individuals in the out-group are more similar to each other (homogeneous) than they really are, as well as more similar than members of the in-group are

in-group bias

the positive feelings and special treatment we give to people we have defined as being part of our in-group

the Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures

the speed of people's positive and negative associations to a target group.

blaming the victim is

the tendency to blame individuals (make dispositional attributions) for their victimization, typically motivated by a desire to see the world as a fair place

normative conformity

the tendency to go along with the group to fulfill the group's expectations and gain acceptance

the contact hypothesis

the view that social interactions between social groups would reduce prejudice

An understanding of normative conformity helps explain why people who hold deep prejudices might not act on them, and why people who are not prejudiced might behave in a discriminatory way:

they are conforming to the norms of their social groups or institutions.

In addition, the cooperative strategy places people in a "favor-doing" situation, which makes them feel more favorably

toward the people they helped

true/false: The emotional component, its deep-seated negative feelings, may persist even when a person knows consciously that the prejudice is wrong.

true

true/false: the jigsaw approach to teaching is now generally accepted as one of the most effective ways of improving relations between ethnic groups, increasing acceptance of stigmatized individuals such as people with mental illness, building empathy, and improving instruction.

true

Discrimination

unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group solely because of his or her membership in that group.

ethnocentrism rests on a fundamental category:

us

institutional discrimination

when companies and other institutions are legally permitted, or socially encouraged, to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, or other categories,

One method to identify suppressed prejudices is to send identical résumés to potential employers, varying only information that indicates gender, implies race, mentions religious affiliation, or describes an applicant as obese. Does the employer show bias in responding?

yes

The extra burden of representing your whole social group creates an apprehension that interferes with

your ability to perform well.