Ch. 11 - Stereotyping, Prejudice, Discrimination

Coalitional psychology

"Us vs. them" mentality

How does the IAT work?

1. A series of words or pictures are presented on a computer screen 2. Respondent presses a key with the left hand if the picture or word conforms to one rule and another key with the right hand if it conforms to another rule. 3. Researchers then look at how fast participants responded based on the "rules" to see what associations they make more quickly (i.e. associate female with "weak" versus "strong" words)

How does abstract and concrete coding work with stereotypes?

1. Abstractly encoding events that fit one's stereotypes lends them greater import (e.g. "lifting" to "helping" to "altruism") 2. Concretely encoding events that violate one's preferences or expectations renders them less consequential (e.g. simply "lifting") Feeds the tendency to perceive ingroup as more favourable.

What construal processes occur when people are known to belong to particular groups?

1. Assume their beliefs are more similar to other ingroup members than outgroup members 2. See less variability within their groups, and more variability between two different groups (even group membership is based on something meaningless) 3. Think of outgroups as homogeneous (more likely to form prejudices about them and discriminate against them) 4. Outgroup homogeneity effect 5. People see more variability of habit and opinion among members of the ingroup than they do among members of the outgroup 6. Think of an ingroup as more diverse, multifaceted, and nonconformist than other gro

What are 3 burdens that come with knowing others may be prejudiced towards your group?

1. Attributional ambiguity 2. Stereotype threat 3. Psychological costs of concealing identity

Based on people who have taken the IAT online, what are some general findings?

1. Both young and old people prefer young over old people 2. 2/3 of white respondents show a strong or moderate prejudice for white over black 3. 1/2 of all black respondents show some prejudice in favour of white faces

What is concealment of sexual orientation for gay men associated with?

1. Cardiovascular stress 2. More depression 3. More rapid deterioration from HIV

What is necessary for contact between different groups to be more positive?

1. Community's broader social norms must encourage intergroup contact 2. Groups must have equal status 3. Positive interactions facilitated by common goal that requires cooperation 4. Encourage one-on-one interactions between different group members

What are the conflicts might underly modern racism?

1. Competing beliefs about what you say or feel and what you THINK you should say or feel 2. Competing beliefs and values about wanting equality and fair treatment for all but also wanting revenge for past injustice 3. Competing abstract beliefs and gut-reactions that are hard to shake

How might stereotype threat be reduced in educational settings?

1. Developing awareness 2. Communicating (and having) high expectations 3. Social support 4. Positive (counter-stereotypic) role models

How does realistic group conflict theory explain how group conflict pans out?

1. Development of pronounced ethnocentrism 2. Loyalty to ingroup increases 3. "Circle the wagons" mentality develops

What are the important lessons of the Robber's Cave Experiment?

1. Differences in background and appearance, or prior histories of conflict are necessary for intergroup hostility to develop 2. Intergroup conflict can be diminished by uniting groups over common goals (get them to work together)

What are the 3 general perspectives of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination?

1. Economic 2. Motivational 3. Cognitive They make up complementary elements of a complete analysis of these phenomena and influence each other.

Are responses on the IAT predictive of behaviour?

1. Evidence IAT responses correlate with some measures of prejudice (e.g. IAT responses correlated with heightened neural activity in amygdala (i.e. fear) in response to black faces) 2. IAT scores shown to predict how much a person engages with or smiles at a white versus black experimenter

What are the assumptions of social identity theory?

1. Explains ubiquity/commonality of ingroup favouritism 2. People's self-esteem also derives from the groups they are associated with/belong to (specifically the status and accomplishments of those groups) 3. We boost the status of our ingroup 4. We bask in reflected glory 5. We denigrate outgroups so that our ingroup looks better

When do people tend to prefer a female leader? What about a male?

1. Female in times of peace or when dealing with within-group conflict 2. Male in times of war or when dealing with conflict with another group

How does stereotype threat undermine performance?

1. Increased arousal, which can directly interfere with performance on complex tasks 2. Serve as a source of distraction that interferes with concentration on the task at hand 3. Knowing that one's group is "suspect" in the eyes of others tends to elicit negative thinking (can directly undermine performance or cause people to "play it safe")

What are the result of minimal group paradigms?

1. Ingroup favouritism emerges 2. Majority more interested in maximizing relative gain for their ingroup (i.e. gain in comparison to outgroup) 3. Focus on "beating" the outgroup

What can help reduce stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination in general?

1. Legal interventions 2. Economic developments 3. Increased daily interactions between members of different groups

What are some research examples of modern racism in which people were able to "mask" their prejudice?

1. Not coming to the aid of black people, especially in the presence of others because they could blame it on the fact that "others were better suited to help" 2. Discriminating against black students application by focusing on one negative aspect that they "fell short" on and not paying attention to the good things on their application

What is an evolutionary explanation for prejudice and discrimination?

1. Parochial altruism 2. Pathogen avoidance

What research supports the tendency to denigrate outgroups to bolster self-esteem?

1. Participants who received negative feedback (i.e. self-esteem was threatened) rated others negatively 2. When a black doctor criticized participants, they saw him as a black man. When he praised them, they viewed him professionally as a doctor

What are two important points to keep in mind about illusory correlations?

1. Particularly impressive cause results were obtained in a lab 2. Fueled by media depictions (focus on more extreme members of minority groups)

What elements of human condition does the motivational perspective draw on?

1. People readily draw the "us versus them" distinction 2. People's identities are intimately connected to the groups to which they belong, so they tend to favour their own groups at the expense of all sorts of outgroups

What evidence supports the boosting of ingroup status?

1. People who highly identify with a group take criticism of the group as though it is criticism of the self 2. Higher self-esteem reported after an opportunity to exhibit ingroup favouritism 3. More pride, more ingroup favouritism

What are the problems with self-report measures for peoples attitudes about groups?

1. Self-report may lead to inaccurate information because people may feel as though they cannot report how they truly feel (i.e. social desirability effect) 2. Many prejudices are ambivalent, hidden, or unconscious, therefore they won't be revealed through self-report

What does the economic perspective predict?

1. That prejudice and discrimination should increase under conditions of economic difficulty, such as recessions and periods of high unemployment 2. Prejudice and discrimination should be strongest among groups that stand to lose the most from another group's economic advance

What happens when groups unite over superordinate goals?

1. The group or category an individual belongs to recedes in importance 2. What the individual can contribute to the group effort becomes more important

Robber's Cave Experiment

1. Two groups of fifth-graders participated in a study that demonstrated intergroup competition and cooperation. 2. During an early phase of the study, the two groups competed against one another (cohesion developed within each group) 3. This competition led to numerous acts of aggression 4. Self-glorifying and congratulatory comments about members within their own groups (i.e. ingroup favouritism) 5. Gave the boys superordinate goals that they had to work together to achieve, and intergroup conflict dissipated

Why does the outgroup homogeneity effect occur?

1. We have more contact with our ingroup members so we see more individuality 2. Sometimes all we know about an outgroup are the stereotypical characteristics (so we generalize) 3. We treat members of the outgroup as a representative of a group, as opposed to looking at the individual

What are examples of the effect of stereotype threat?

1. Women performed worse on a math exam when they were told that there was a gender difference in favour of men 2. African-Americans did well on an exam when they thought it was the exam being tested, but did poor when told it would be measuring their intelligence 3. Math performance in white males decreased when reminded of how good Asians are at math

What is the ABC of intergroup relations?

A - Affect (prejudice) B - Behaviour (discrimination) C - Cognition (stereotype)

What is benevolent sexism?

A chivalrous ideology marked by protectiveness and affection toward women who embrace conventional roles

Prejudice

A negative attitude or affective response toward a certain group and its individual members

Social identity theory

A person's self-concept and self-esteem not only derive from personal identity, but also from the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which the person belongs (social identities)

Artifact

A spurious research result arising from a faulty method of investigation.

IAT

A technique for revealing nonconscious attitudes toward different stimuli, including particular groups.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A test that measures unconscious stereotypes and prejudices toward particular groups (i.e. indirect measure)

Realistic group conflict theory

A theory that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources.

How are stereotypes reinforcing?

Actions that are consistent with an existing stereotype are noticed, deemed significant, and remembered, whereas those at variance with the stereotype may be ignored, dismissed, or quickly forgotten

Which group is particularly vulnerable to potential damage as a result of stereotype threat?

African-Americans. Can result in poor academic performance which reinforces the stereotype, decreases confidence, and creates a vicious cycle.

Minimal group paradigm

An experimental paradigm in which 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.

Explicit attitudes

Attitudes that people consciously endorse and believe

How does the self-serving attributional bias relate to subtyping?

Attributing behavior consistent with a stereotype to the dispositions of the people involved and attributing inconsistent behavior to external causes

How are stereotypes typically activated?

Automatically - they can be triggered even if we don't want them to be (these associations are present in our culture)

What did Devine find when she primed individuals with stimulus words and then had them assess a written description of someone?

Because the stimulus words unconsciously activated their stereotypes, the nonprejudiced participants were caught off guard and were unable to suppress the automatic processing of stereotypical information.

Stereotype

Beliefs about attributes that are thought to be characteristic of members of particular groups

Negative behaviours by minority members

Both minorities and negative behaviours stand out and are distinctive on their own, therefore when they occur together they are incredibly easy to recall and can form basis for stereotypes based on how categorized this information. They seem more common than they really are.

What happened to the internal dynamics of the two groups in the Robber's Cave Experiment?

Boys who were athletic and/or aggressive gained more popularity (i.e. wanted tough leaders)

How can implicit measure of prejudice be derived?

By comparing a person's average reaction time to real and made-up words preceded by faces of members of the target category (compared with "control" trials)

"Jigsaw Classroom"

By dividing students and having them each complete a necessary portion of the lesson, they need to work with each other and learn from each other. This situation diminishes prejudice.

What is an example of people who discriminate but are not prejudiced?

Certain ethnicities or religions that are concerned about assimilation or preserving their cultural and way of life. They don't look down on other groups, though.

Is subtyping a conscious or unconscious process?

Conscious

Denigrating outgroups to bolster self-esteem

Criticizing another group to feel better about your own group

The fact that similarity and familiarity = liking is what kind of explanation for outgroup dislike?

Cultural

What is a cultural explanation for outgroup dislike?

Cultural dissimilarity. People felt most positive towards groups who were 1) geographically closer 2) culturally most similar to their group (Brewer & Campbell)

How might race-based judgments differ?

Depending on how intensely participants physical features conform to the stereotype

What do explicit attitudes predict?

Discrimination better when when conscious reflection is possible/desirable

What do implicit attitudes predict?

Discrimination when mental resources are taxed

Which aspects of stereotyping are likely due to unconscious processes?

Distinctiveness-based illusory correlations and the outgroup homogeneity effect.

Motivational perspective

Emphasizes psychological needs that lead to conflict. Prejudice and discrimination can arise from various threats to the self: loss of control, unpredictability, reminders of mortality, loss of self-esteem

Subtyping

Explaining away exceptions to a given stereotype by creating a subcategory of the stereotyped group that can be expected to differ from the group as a whole.

What is a result of priming methods that support implicit prejudices?

For example, people who are sure they aren't prejudiced against blacks nonetheless respond more quickly to negative words preceded by pictures of black faces, and more slowly to positive words preceded by pictures of black face.

Pathogen avoidance

Foreigners a source of potential harmful pathogens Studies show that 1) areas with high pathogen prevalence = more "ingroupish" 2) increased fear of pathogens = more prejudice and stronger immune reaction

Ethnocentrism

Glorifying one's own group while vilifying other groups.

Superordinate goals

Goals that transcend the interests of one individual group, and that can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together

What can high unemployment and economic recession result in?

Greater anti-immigrant attitudes

Realistic group conflict theory

Group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited desired resources (i.e. in line with the economic perspective)

What is the result of tensions that arise based on the economic perspective?

Groups develop prejudices about each other and discriminate against one another when they compete for material resources. Groups become ready to lash out at others in order to lash out at those they perceive to be threatening them.

How did Roger Brown explain the conflict between groups?

He likened conflict between groups to "a sturdy three-legged stool" because it rests on the pervasive human tendencies to glorify the ingroup (motivational), to form societies in which there are unequal distributions of resources (economic), and to stereotype members of different groups (cognitive)

What does benevolent sexism often coexist with? What is an example of this?

Hostile sexism (dislike of nontraditional women and those viewed as taking mens power). For example, men might love a woman who stays at home and cooks his dinner every evening while resenting an outspoken female author who writes about feminism. They only act favourably towards women who act in the manner they approve of.

Economic perspective

Identifies roots of intergroup hostility in competition over limited resources

When are individuals likely to act on prejudiced or discriminatory impulses?

If there is no "disguise" for their actions, they won't. However, if they are able to rationalize the behaviour, they will.

In general, how are people in an outgroup generally thought of?

In stereotyped ways and treated in a manner that is normally forbidden by one's moral code

In the U.S., where have integration of groups been successful?

In the military (they unite over common goals and have to cooperate as a team)

How do stereotypes affect the way people interpret details of an event?

Information that is consistent with a particular stereotype can have more of an impact, and play a role in how we interpret an event depending on the stereotypes that we hold (e.g. a black man shoves a white man and it is "aggressive" but vice versa it is "playful")

What are the cognitive consequences of concealment?

It can be mentally taxing. Decreased spatial ability, self-control, and physical stamina.

How can benevolent sexism or racism be harmful?

It can inhibit progress towards inequality and also lead individuals to perform poorly or and have self-doubts because of the treatment they receive.

Attributional ambiguity

Members of stigmatized groups live in a less certain world, not knowing whether to attribute positive feedback to their own skill or to others' condescension and not knowing whether to attribute negative feedback to their own error or to others' prejudice.

Cost of concealment

Members of stigmatized groups throughout history have often felt compelled to hide their true identity.

Discrimination

Negative behaviour towards members of a particular group based on their membership in that group

Is there any one theory to encompass and understand prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping?

No because the causes of each are many and varied and a single theory would have to include numerous elements of the intertwined phenomena

Are all stereotyping processes conscious?

No, some cognitive processes that give rise to stereotypes are unconscious as well

Are stereotypes only negative?

No, they can be positive as well. They are a way of categorizing people.

Egalitarian values

Of, relating to, or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities

What does the research show regarding our reactions to different groups of people?

Our reactions to different groups of people are, to a surprising degree, guided by quick and automatic mental processes that we can override but not eliminate

What are some ways in which researches measure explicit attitudes that people have about groups?

Particular attitude scales (e.g. Attitudes towards Blacks Scale, Modern Racism Scale, Sexual Prejudice Scale, Internal Motivation to Respond without Prejudice Scale, etc.)

Self-fulfilling prophecies and stereotypes

People act in ways towards people in particular groups that can encourage the stereotypical behaviour that they expect

Expectations and biased information processing

People are more likely to generalize behaviours and traits that they expect to be typical of a particular group

"One-drop rule"

People considered black if they have any trace of African-American ancestry at all

How do people encode information related to stereotypes?

People encode events consistent with their preexisting stereotypes at a more abstract, and therefore more meaningful, level than events that are inconsistent with preexisting stereotype.

Why are stereotypes difficult for people to give up?

People often remember the information that confirms stereotypes, and dampen information that contradicts them

What does subtyping reflect?

People tend to accept supportive evidence at face value, whereas they often critically analyze and discount contradictory evidence.

Modern racism

Prejudice directed at other racial groups that exists alongside the rejection of explicitly racist beliefs.

What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination?

Prejudice involves prejudging (attitudinal and effective) individuals because they belong to a particular group whereas discrimination involves the actual harmful behaviour (i.e. acting on prejudice)

What is implicit prejudice?

Prejudice that individuals may not know/be aware that they have or wish to deny

Priming stereotypes

Procedure used to increase the accessibility of a concept or schema (for example, a stereotype)

What major experiment is an example of realistic group conflict theory?

Robber's Cave Experiment (Sherif et al., 1961)

Illusory correlation

See correlations between events, characteristics or categories that do not actually exist

What is the purpose of categorizing?

Simplifies the task of processing the huge volume of stimuli we are exposed to

Parochial altruism

Small cohesive, cooperative but mutually hostile bands that had an innate dual tendency for 1) altruism towards ingroup AND 2) hostility towards outgroup

What is a main example of basking in reflected glory?

Sports fans when their team is winning (i.e. "we played great")

What did Steele and Aronson (1991) find regarding stereotype threat and test taking?

Studies 1 and 2 varied the stereotype vulnerability of Black participants taking a difficult verbal test by varying whether or not their performance was ostensibly diagnostic of ability, and thus, whether or not they were at risk of fulfilling the racial stereotype about their intellectual ability. Reflecting the pressure of this vulnerability, Blacks underperformed in relation to Whites in the ability-diagnostic condition but not in the non-diagnostic condition

What is the main hypothesis of Sherif (1961) realistic conflict theory?

That conflict happens when you combine negative prejudices with competition over resources

What did Goldberg (1968) find with respect to gender bias? What was an issue with this research?

That essays were rated more favourably when they were presumably written by men. May be more about "nameism" than sexism. Results don't tell much!

What does social identity theory predict about basking in reflected glory?

That our self-esteem is affected by the triumphs and failings of the groups that we affiliate with. Therefore, we have an incentive to associate with them when they succeed, but distance from them when they fail.

What did Greenwald and Banaji argue about the IAT? Why?

That participants will be faster to press one key for words stereotypically associated with that particular group, than to press the same key for words that contradict stereotypes of that group. Can also test implicit prejudices by having participants press the same key for related concepts (i.e. negative words and words associated with elderly) and then have them do the opposite (i.e. positive words and words associated with the elderly) to see which reactions were faster! Because it is easier to respond quickly when category members and things associated with them are signalled with the same hand than with different hands.

Why does the "Jigsaw Classroom" work?

The dependency students have on each other decrease competition and increases cooperation toward achieving a common goal (i.e. mastering a body of material)

Stereotype threat

The fear of confirming the stereotypes others have about one's group.

From an economic perspective, which groups are the most prejudiced?

The groups who perceive themselves to be at most risk of another group's advance

The more concrete the description...?

The less it says about the person involved

What does stereotyping stem from cognitively?

The need to categorize the information that we process (i.e. make it easier/efficient to manage and retrieve)

Paired distinctiveness

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

What were the results of Payne's study on people's automatic reactions to particular groups?

The participants (all of whom were white) were faster to identify a weapon as a weapon when it was preceded by an African-American face and faster to identify a hand tool as a hand tool when it was preceded by a white face

Priming

The presentation of information designed to activate a concept (such as a stereotype) and hence make it accessible. A prime is the stimulus pr

What is the schism between conscious and unconscious that many people experience? What separates prejudiced and nonprejudiced people? (Devine)

The schism that exists for many people between their knowledge of racial stereotypes and their own beliefs and attitudes toward those same groups. Not their knowledge of stereotypes, but their ability/willingness to resist them.

Contact hypothesis

The straightforward idea that bringing together students of different races and ethnicities would reduce prejudice and discrimination.

Outgroup homogeneity effect

The tendency for people to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups.

Basking in reflected glory (Cialdini)

The tendency for people to go to great lengths to affiliate themselves with a group when that particular group is doing well. Taking pride in the accomplishments of other people in one's group.

How can stereotypes or "isms" be ambivalent?

They can have both positive and negative features

Why do we remember distinctive events better?

They capture our attention and we pay more attention to them

What does the research show regarding our automatic, unconscious beliefs and reactions to other groups versus our conscious thoughts and attitudes about particular groups?

They note that many people hold strong egalitarian values that lead them to reject prejudice and discrimination, yet they also harbour unacknowledged negative feelings and attitudes toward minority groups that stem from ingroup favouritism and a desire to defend the status quo

What is one problem with Hamilton and Gilford's illusory correlation work?

They predicted that people should be prone to develop an illusory correlation between any two variables that are jointly distinctive, but this doesn't happen as often as they predict (i.e. lots of uncommon things paired together don't become stereotypes)

How did Devine show that prejudiced and nonprejudiced individuals differ when it comes to controlled processes of stereotypes?

Those who are prejudiced believe the stereotypes and are sometimes willing to voice those beliefs (e.g. list more negative words), whereas those who are not prejudiced reject them.

What were Darley and Gross' findings about stereotypes?

Those who saw an upper-middle-class Hannah estimated she would perform better than average, while those who saw working-class Hannah assumed she would perform worse than average.

Implicit attitudes

Thoughts and beliefs that are outside of conscious awareness

In the Robber's Cave Experiment, how was intergroup conflict reduced?

Through the use of superordinate goals

What was the purpose of the Robber's Cave Experiment?

To explore the ethnocentrism that results from intergroup competition (and what can be done about it)

Cognitive perspective

Traces origins of stereotyping to the same cognitive processes people use to categorize information, taking into account frequent conflict between people's consciously held beliefs and values and their quick, reflexive reactions about particular groups.

Overall, what do prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination refer to?

Typically, the belief, attitudinal, and behavioural components, respectively, of negative intergroup relationships. They often go together.

What we the results of minimal group experiments?

When people were divided based on meaningless criteria, they still showed in-group favouritism!

When is biased information processing especially harmful?

When the stereotypes the bias are based on completely lack validity

When are we more inclined to use stereotypes?

When we are tired, mentally taxed, overloaded (i.e. when we need a shortcut)

Boosting status of the ingroup

When we do whatever we can to "boost" or feel better about our ingroup, we also feel better about ourselves.

What are the implications of Darley and Gross' findings from their study with "Hannah"?

Whenever the direct evidence about a person or object is unclear or ambiguous, background knowledge in the form of a schema or stereotype can increase the accuracy of judgments to the extent that the stereotype has some genuine basis in reality.

What research supports the self-fulfilling prophecies of stereotypes?

White undergrads who interviewed both white and black applicants, put black applicants at a disadvantage by sitting farther away, not paying as much attention, etc.; factors that can affect the smoothness of an interview

What can pathogen prevalence predict?

Xenophobia

Can intergroup hostility develop merely because another group exists?

Yes (i.e. "us versus them" mentality develops)

Do stereotypes help with multitasking?

Yes, research has shown that the use of stereotypes eases the burden of one task, thereby facilitating performance on the second task