psych 161 chapter 9 and lecture 9

outgroup

"them"- a group that people perceive as distinctly different from or apart from their ingroup

ingroup

"us"- a group of people who share a sense of belonging, a feeling of common identity

attribution

- group-serving bias - the more people assume that human traits are fixed dispositions, the stronger are their stereotypes and the greater their acceptance of racial inequalities

subtle forms of prejudice

- modern prejudice appears as race sensitivity that leads to exaggerated reactions to isolated minority persons- overpraising their accomplishments, over-criticizing their mistakes, and failing to warn them about potential academic difficulty - also appears as patronization - when students thought an essay writer was black, they rated it higher, and rarely offered harsh criticisms - inflated praise and insufficient criticism- may hinder minority student achievement - to protect their own self-image as unprejudiced, they bend over backward to give positive and unchallenging feedback

gender discrimination

- more people like women - men are 3x more likely to commit suicide and be murdered, and die 5 years sooner - males = majority of mental retardation or autism, and special ed - prejudice against women has lessened, but strong gender stereotypes and gender bias still exist in the world

frustration and aggression: scapegoat theory

- pain and frustration (blocking of a goal) evoke hostility - when the cause of our frustration is intimidating or unknown, we often redirect our hostility- "displaced aggression"- lynchings of blacks in the south - hate crimes haven't fluctuated with unemployment recently, but when living standards are rising, societies tend to be more open to diversity and enforcement/passage of anti discrimination laws - ethnic peace is easier to maintain during prosperous times - when 2 groups compete for jobs, housing, or social prestige, one group's goal fulfillment can become the other group's frustration --realistic group conflict theory - economically frustrated people express high levels of blatant prejudice towards minorities - opposition to immigration goes up/down w employment rate

self-perpetuating stereotypes

- prejudgments guide our attention and memories - people who accept gender stereotypes remember things according to those stereotypes - prejudgments are self-perpetuating - whenever a group member behaves as expected, our prior belief is confirmed, and we note it - when they behave inconsistently, we explain away/interpret the behavior as due to special circumstances - priming can activate stereotypes - misinterpretations are likely when someone expects an unpleasant encounter with you- people act nicer to a supposedly unfriendly person, but attribute the "unfriendly person"'s attitude reciprocal friendliness to their own "kid gloves" treatment of them- they "see" hostilities lurking beneath his "forced smiles" - subtyping -

social sources of prejudice

- social situation breeds/maintains prejudice- group that enjoys social/economic superiority will use prejudicial beliefs to justify its privileged position - children brought up in ways that foster or reduce prejudice- family, religion and broader society can sustain or reduce prejudice - social institutions support prejudice thru overt policies or unintentional inertia

religion and prejudice

- there may be no connection - maybe prejudice causes religion - vice versa - faithful churchgoers were less prejudiced than occasional ones - those who see religion as an end in itself express less prejudice - protestant ministers and priests support civil rights more than laypeople -

distinctive people who stand out

-people define you by your most distinctive traits and behaviors - people also take note of those who violate expectations- easier for highly capable job applicants from low-status groups to get noticed, but they must also work harder to prove their abilities are genuine -distinctiveness feeds self-consciousness - some majority group members have "meta-stereotypes" about how minorities stereotype them- as prejudiced, arrogant, or patronizing -stigma consciousness -

pessimistic position

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racism

1. an individual's prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given race, or 2. institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race

sexism

1. an individual's prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given sex, or 2. institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given sex

prejudice study - devine

1. measured explicit prejudice 2. shown brief flashes: a. stereotype activated b. control 3. rate ambiguous person on hostility hostility higher for stereotype activated condition no difference for high/low prejudice- doesn't matter what you BELIEVE! just if you KNOW it!

stereotypes bias judgments of individuals

1. people often evaluate individuals more positively than the groups they compose - given 1. general (base-rate) info about a group and 2. trivial but vivid info about a particular group member, the vivid info usually overwhelms the effect of the general info. especially when a person doesn't fit our image of the typical group member, or personalized, anecdotal info is given conclusion: 1. gender stereotypes are strong 2. they have little effect on people's judgments of work attributed to a man or woman- people ignore gender stereotypes when judging a particular individual 2. strong stereotypes matter - even when a strong gender stereotype is known to be irrelevant (equal # of men and women from each school), it's irresistible 3. stereotypes bias interpretations - we evaluate people more extremely when their behavior violates our stereotypes (an assertive woman is "rude"- women are supposed to be nice)

mixed position

1. stereotypes and beliefs are different cognitive structures 2. stereotypes can be automatically activated 3. an activated stereotype will influence behavior unless it is inhibited 4. reducing prejudice is a long, difficult process

how does stereotype threat undermine performance?

1. stress- fMRI shows that it impairs brain activity of math processing and increases activity of emotion processing 2. self-monitoring - worrying about mistakes disrupts focused attention 3. suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions- effort required to regulate one's thinking takes energy and disrupts working memory

self-perpetuating nature of stereotypes

1. subtyping 2. illusory correlation - lump together rare events as mutually exclusive 3. the ultimate attribution error - when we see ppl doing something positive we attribute it to situations, but negative to personality 4. stereotype suppression effects

stereotype

a belief about the personal attributes of a group of people. sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information (and sometimes accurate)

stereotype threat

a disruptive concern, when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. unlike self-fulfilling prophecies that hammer one's reputation into one's self-concept, stereotype threat situations have immediate effects

social dominance orientation

a motivation to have one's group dominate other social groups - view people in terms of hierarchies- like their own group to be high status - more negative attitude towards minority persons with strong racial identities - status may breed prejudice, but some more than others seek to maintain status - social inequalities also breed mistrust- groups receiving more unequal distributions exhibit less trust and cooperation - societies wit greatest income disparity tend to exhibit less communal health and more anxiety, obesity, homicides, drug use, prisons, teen births, and police

stigma consciousness

a person's expectation of being victimized by prejudice or discrimination

authoritarian personality

a personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of out groups and those lower in status - judgmental ethnocentric people shared intolerance for weakness, punitive attitude, and submissive respect for their group's authorities - prone to engage in stereotyping and prejudice

prejudice

a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members

subgrouping

accommodating individuals who deviate from one's stereotype by forming a new stereotype about this subset of the group - whites with "desirable" black neighbors can form new stereotype of "professional, middle-class Blacks" - modest change in the stereotype as it becomes more differentiated - acknowledged as part of the overall group

subtyping

accommodating individuals who deviate from one's stereotype by thinking of them as "exceptions to the rule" - helps maintain stereotype - exceptions to the group

social ID- feeling superior to others

ancestors tell us to help ourselves survive, not others - we categorize- put ppl into categories, - identify- associate ourselves with creation groups (in-groups) and gain self-esteem doing so, and -compare- contrast out groups with ours with a favorable bias toward our own group - we evaluate ourselves by our group memberships - strengthens our self-concepts- feels good -- we seek respect for ourselves but also pride in our groups- seeing our groups as superior helps us feel even better - lacking a positive personal identity, people seek self-esteem by identifying with a group- why youths find power/security/pride and identity in gangs

chen burrows prejudice study

asked if flash occurred on left or right a. subliminally shown black faces b. subliminally shown white faces - measured hostility - black faces more hostile

ethnocentric

believing in the superiority of one's own ethnic and cultural group, and having a corresponding disdain for all other groups

optimistic position

clear decline in pessimistic attitudes about blacks from whites - over time, became less socially acceptable to be overtly racist- maybe not that people got more positive views, but that they stopped publicizing them

what can we do about stereotype threat?

education study: 3 conditions 1. problems described as a problem-solving task (no threat bc no stereotype) 2. problems described as a math test (stereotype threat) 3. problems described as a math test (stereotype threat) but participants educated about stereotype threat and its (lack of) accuracy

motivation to avoid prejudice

even automatic prejudices subside when people's motivation to avoid prejudice is internal (because prejudice is wrong) rather than external (because they don't want others to think badly of them)

group-serving bias

explaining away out group members' positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one's own group).

vivid cases

given limited experience with a particular social group, we recall examples of it and generalize from those (when asked are japanese good at baseball? recall hideki and ichiro) - vivid instances seldom represent the larger group- not best basis for judging distribution of talent among an entire group - numerical minority- more distinctive- often overestimated by the majority

distinctive events

illusory correlations - features that most distinguish a minority from a majority are those that become associated with it - study: group B and undesirable acts were less frequent, so people judged group B more harshly - even single co-occurrences of an unusual act by someone in an atypical group can embed illusory correlations in people's minds - adds to the illusion of a large correlation between 1. violent tendencies and 2. homosexuality or mental hospitalization

the princeton trilogy

is racism getting better worse or mixed? study - check adjectives representing blacks - check adjectives you believe - measure explicit, self-reported prejudice - even people low on prejudice still KNOW the stereotype, even if they don't BELIEVE it! the 2 don't have to OVERLAP!! but just being aware will affect our behavior, etc.

archival data

judges give blacks 3 more months in jail than whites - subconscious - not all judges are racist - more judges are white tho - IAT - black judges might do the same to themselves - prefer whites

institutional supports

may bolster prejudice through overt policies- segregation, or passively reinforcing the status quo- many banks declined mortgages to minorities and unmarried women- most homeowners were white married couples- political leaders may reflect/reinforce prevailing attitudes - schools most likely to reinforce dominant cultural attitudes- more male than female characters in stories- males are brave, etc.

gender genocide

more people want boys- bare branches - sex-selective abortions are a crime in china - overt prejudice far less common today

gender bias study

no overall tendency to devaluate womens' work - "face-ism": visual prominence given the faces of men and the bodies of women both reflects and perpetuates gender bias - people whose faces are prominent in photos seem more intelligent and ambitious - media maintains stereotypes- violent rap music from black people leads white people to stereotype blacks as having violent dispositions

hostile sexism

once a man commits, she puts him on a tight leash

racism shock study

people gave less or equal shocks to a black than a white person - except when they were angered or when the recipient couldn't retaliate or know who did it

terror management theory

people's self-protective emotional and cognitive responses (including adhering more strongly to their cultural world views and prejudices) when confronted with reminders of their mortality - thinking about your own mortality provokes enough insecurity to intensify in-group favoritism (even supporting racists) - ingroup bias disappears when primed with a sense of belonging (love, hug support = study words)

illusory correlations

perceiving relationship between variables even when no such relationship exists - false associations between members in a minority group - can lead people to expect and overestimate such correlations - our preexisting biases can lead us to "see" correlations that aren't there

outgroup homogeneity effect

perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another than are in-group members. thus "they are alike; we are diverse."

socialization

prejudice from unequal status and our acquired values/attitudes

conformity

prejudice is socially accepted- people follow- out of a need to be liked and accepted- people more likely to favor discrimination after hearing someone else do so - conformity maintains gender prejudice also - kids who have seen women outside kitchen have less stereotyped views of men/women -women students shown STEM experts express more positive IMPLICIT attitudes toward STEM studies and display more effort on STEM tests - if prejudice isn't deeply engrained in personality, as fashions change and new norms evolve, it can diminish

perceived similarities and differences

strong tendency to see objects within group as more uniform than they are - outgroup homogeneity effect - tendency toward ingroup bias - when the group is our own, we're more likely to see diversity (increases with greater familiarity - less familiarity = more stereotype - also "own-age bias"

social identity

the "we" aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to "who am i?' that comes from our group memberships

own-race bias

the tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race. (also called the cross-race effect or other-race effect).

just-world phenomenon

the tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get - merely observing another innocent person being victimized is enough to make them seem less worthy - people who are lucky are seen as better people

ingroup bias

the tendency to favor one's own group 1. expresses and supports a positive self-concept - when our group has been successful (yankees) we make ourselves feel better by identifying more strongly with it ('Cuse) - but after a defeat, students are more likely to say "THEY lost" 2. feeds favoritism - we are more prone to in-group bias when our group is small and lower in status relative to the out group - feel social ID more keenly and react accordingly 3. fosters outgroup disliking - ascribe uniquely human emotions to in-group members and reluctant to see them in out group members - denying human attributes to out groups - "infrahumanization" - seeing out group members as savages need for status, self-regard, and belonging - we need people below us - satisfy in others' failure- people who are higher/more secure status have less need to feel superior 4. definition of who you are- gender, race, religion, marital status, academic major- implies a definition of who you are NOT - circle that includes US excludes THEM - studies show that merely being formed into groups may promote in-group bias - people think their own race relations are good in their own neighborhoods than in the country as a whole

realistic group conflict theory

the theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources

discrimination

unjustified negative behavior towards a group or its members

spontaneous categorization

we find it especially easy and efficient to rely on stereotypes when we are: - pressed for time - preoccupied - tired - emotionally aroused - too young to appreciate diversity - study: prejudiced people took longer to categorized faces of ambiguous race

benevolent sexism

women have a superior moral sensibility