Social Psychology Chapter 10

Scapegoating

A phenomenon whereby people who feel inferior, guilty, anxious, or unsuccessful will blame an outgroup for their troubles.

Symbolic racism

A tendency to express negative biases held about a racial outgroup not at the group directly, but at social policies seen as benefiting that group. They might deny that minorities continue to face discrimination and believe that racial disparities result from the unwillingness of people in minority groups to work hard enough

Aversive racism

Conflicting, often nonconscious, negative feelings about African Americans that Americans may have, even though most do in fact support principles of racial equality and do not knowingly discriminate.

Is Prejudice a thing of the past?

Even if attitudes toward some groups have become more favorable over time, social and political contexts can bring about new hostilities that are simply targeted against different groups. Although overt expressions of discrimination and racial injustice are certainly declining, they are far from absent. In the fall of 2014, protests cropped up throughout the U.S. in response to police killings of African Americans that many people viewed as outrageous and unwarranted (Huffington Post, 2014)

A Kernel of Truth

Even when stereotypes are broad overgeneralizations of what a group is like, some (but not all) stereotypes may be based on actual differences in the average traits or behaviors associated with two or more groups. A complicating factor with the kernel of truth hypothesis is that even when facts seem to support a stereotype about a group, those facts don't necessarily imply trait differences.

Three Characteristics of Prejudice

First, prejudice involves judging an individual negatively independent of the person's actual attributes or actions. Second, any large category of people will include tremendous variability in virtually every possible attribute by which one might judge another person positively or negatively. The third reason social psychologists judge prejudice negatively is that it has so often led to appalling acts of violence against innocent people—including babies and children—who happened to be, or were presumed to be, members of particular groups.

Gordon Allport proposed three basic causes of prejudice, each based on fundamental ways that people think and feel.

Hostility plus categorization We tend to feel hostility when we are frustrated or threatened. When negative feelings are associated with a member of an outgroup, we tend to overgeneralize those negative feelings and associated beliefs to the entire group. Ingroup bias We prefer what is familiar, including people like us. A portion of our self-esteem comes from group membership, biasing us against those in outgroups. When our self-worth is threatened, we tend to derogate and blame members of other groups. Threats to one's world view Our ethnocentrism leads us to judge people from different cultures more negatively. Ethnocentric biases are more severe when we feel vulnerable or if we see another's worldview as threatening to our own.

Prejudice is probably the most heavily studied topic in social psychology, likely because of its historical pervasiveness and destructiveness.

In social psychology, prejudice is defined as a negative attitude toward an individual based solely on that person's presumed membership in a particular group. The people who hold prejudices usually justify them with stereotypes, overgeneralized beliefs about the traits and attributes of members of a particular group. Prejudices and stereotypes, held either consciously or unconsciously, often lead to discrimination: negative behavior toward an individual based solely on that person's presumed membership in a particular group.

Implicit prejudice

Negative attitudes or affective reactions associated with an outgroup, for which the individual has little or no conscious awareness and which can be automatically activated in intergroup encounters.

Discrimination

Negative behavior toward an individual solely on the basis of that person's membership in a particular group.

Stereotypes

Overgeneralized beliefs about the traits and attributes of members of a particular group. As we will learn, stereotypes can operate both as conscious justifications of prejudices against others and as implicit assumptions that guide how we think about groups and their members

How do stereotypes come into play?

Research has delved into the process by which we initially categorize a person as belonging to a group, activate stereotypes associated with that group, and then apply those stereotypes in forming judgments of that person. The categories we attend to most readily for people are gender, age, and other cues that might signal how we should treat another. But the categorization process isn't entirely objective. It's also influenced by our stereotypes and prejudices. One assumption is that stereotypes can be activated regardless of whether or not we want them to be activated. The take-away message seems to be that although low-prejudice individuals may be aware of culturally prevalent stereotypes about outgroups, they often do not activate those stereotypes. Once stereotypes are activated, we use them to perceive and make judgments about others in ways that confirm, rather than disconfirm, those stereotypes.

Interpreting behavior

Research shows that people interpret the same behavior differently when it is performed by individuals who belong to stereotyped groups. In fact, stereotypes influence the interpretation of ambiguous behaviors even when those stereotypes are primed outside of conscious awareness. When police and probation officers were primed beneath conscious awareness with words related to the Black stereotype, and then read a vignette about a shoplifting incident, they rated the offender as more hostile and deserving of punishment if he was Black, but not if he was White. Finally, stereotypes bias how we attend to and encode information as well as what we recall or remember. Stereotypes lead us to attend to information that fits those stereotypes and to ignore information that does not. When we do observe behaviors that are inconsistent with our stereotypes, we tend to explain them away as isolated instances or exceptions to the rule

Justification suppression model

The idea that people endorse and freely express stereotypes in part to justify their own negative affective reactions to outgroup members.

Ambivalent racism

The influence on White Americans' racial attitudes of two clashing sets of values: a belief in individualism and a belief in egalitarianism. If people are thinking about values related to individualism, they tend to be more prejudiced, but if thinking about values related to egalitarianism, they tend to be less prejudiced.

Realistic group conflict theory

The initial negative feelings between groups are often based on a real conflict or competition regarding scarce resources. If individuals in one group think that their access to land, water, jobs, or other resources is being threatened or blocked by another group, the resulting sense of threat and frustration is likely to generate negative emotions about the perceived rival group.

Ambivalent sexism

The pairing of hostile beliefs about women with benevolent but patronizing beliefs about them.

Infrahumanization

The perception that outgroup members lack qualities viewed as unique to human beings, such as language, rational intelligence, and complex social emotions.

The stereotype content model

The stereotype content model extends the basic logic of social role theory by positing that stereotypes develop on the basis of how groups relate to one another along two dimensions. The first is status: Is the group perceived as having relatively low or high status in society, relative to other groups? The second is cooperation in a very broad sense that seems to encompass likeability: In a sense, is the group perceived to have a cooperative/helpful or a competitive/harmful relationship with other groups in that society? With higher status come assumptions about competence, prestige, and power, whereas lower status leads to stereotypes of incompetence and laziness. Groups that are seen as cooperative/helpful within the society are seen as warm and trustworthy, whereas groups that are competitive/harmful within the larger society are seen as cold and conniving. These two dimensions of evaluation, warmth and competence. Groups that are stereotyped as personally warm but incompetent (e.g., the elderly and physically disabled) elicit pity and sympathy. Groups perceived as low in warmth but high in competence (e.g., rich people, Asians, Jews, minority professionals) elicit envy and jealousy.

Ultimate attribution error

The tendency to believe that bad actions by outgroup members occur because of their internal dispositions and good actions by them occur because of the situation, while believing the reverse for ingroup members. When men succeed on a stereotypically masculine task, observers tend to attribute that success to the men's dispositional ability, but when women perform well on the same task, observers tend to attribute that success to luck or effort.

Dehumanization

The tendency to hold stereotypic views of outgroup members as animals rather than humans.

Shooter bias

The tendency to mistakenly see objects in the hands of Black men as guns. Follow-up studies using the same shooter-game paradigm have revealed that the shooter bias is affected by a number of additional factors. People show a stronger shooter bias if the context itself is threatening, say, a dark street corner rather than a sunlit church

Sexual objectification

The tendency to think about women in a narrow way as objects rather than full humans, as if their physical appearance is all that matters.

Outgroup homogeneity effect

The tendency to view individuals in outgroups as more similar to each other than they really are. The primary explanation for the outgroup homogeneity effect is that we are very familiar with members of our own group and therefore tend to see them as unique individuals. We have less detailed knowledge about members of outgroups, so it's easier simply to assume they are all alike.

Although overt discrimination is declining, modern, subtler forms of prejudice persist.

Theories of modern prejudice Evidence of institutional discrimination reveals how biases can be so embedded in the structure of our society that discrimination can occur without intention. Ambivalent and aversive racism Ambivalent racism is the coexistence of positive and negative attitudes about Blacks resulting from clashing beliefs in individualism and egalitarianism. Aversive racism occurs when people have nonconscious, negative feelings even when they consciously support racial equality. Implicit prejudice Implicit prejudice refers to automatically activated, negative associations with outgroups. These associations can be revealed through physiological or cognitive measures, such as the IAT.

Intergroup anxiety theory

Theory proposing that intergroup prejudice leads individuals to experience anxiety when they think of or interact with members of an outgroup. This anxiety can result from fear of rejection, domination, exploitation, or violence; guilt over past treatment of the group; or uncertainty about how to behave toward members of the group. This anxiety fuels prejudice because these negative feelings become associated with outgroup members.

Objectification theory

Theory proposing that the cultural value placed on women's appearance leads people to view women more as objects and less as full human beings.

Institutional discrimination

Unfair restrictions on opportunities for certain groups of people through institutional policies, structural power relations, and formal laws.

Ethnocentrism

Viewing the world through our own cultural value system and thereby judging actions and people based on our own culture's views of right and wrong and good and bad.

Social Role theory

We infer stereotypes that describe who people are from the roles that we see people play. Men are stereotyped to be agentic—assertive, aggressive, and achievement oriented. Women are stereotyped to be communal—warm, empathic, and emotional. The moral here is that social roles play a large part in shaping our stereotypes. But because social pressures can shape the roles in which various groups find themselves, differences in stereotypes follow suit.

Ingroup Bias

We're familiar with how members of our own group look, sound, and act. In contrast, outgroups are less familiar, stranger, less known. They make us feel uneasy, anxious. They are harder to predict and understand. Allport noted that because of common backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge, it's also just easier to know what to say and how to behave around those who are members of the ingroup. Research has shown that ingroup pronouns such as us are associated automatically with positive feelings and that outgroup pronouns such as them are associated automatically with negative ones (Perdue et al., 1990). So pride in one's own group and preference for one's own group over others may be a natural extension of self-serving bias. Not only is my group great because I'm in it, but I am great because I am in this group! So I gain self-esteem by thinking highly of my own group and less highly of outgroups. Theory and research also suggest that in most cases the liking for the ingroup is stronger and more fundamental than the dislike of the outgroup. From a social identity perspective, people should be especially likely to laud their own group and derogate outgroups after a threat to their personal self-esteem.

Stereotypes can help promote and justify prejudice, even if they are positive.

Where do stereotypes come from? A kernel of truth that is overblown and overgeneralized. Assumptions about group differences in traits inferred from group differences in social roles. Generalizations about a group's warmth and competence that are based on judgments of cooperativeness and status. Illusory correlations that make unrelated things seem related. Why do we apply stereotypes? To simplify the process of social perception and to conserve mental energy. To justify prejudicial attitudes. To justify discrimination by dehumanizing, infrahumanizing, or objectifying others. To justify the status quo and to maintain a sense of predictability. To maintain and bolster self-esteem. How do stereotypes affect judgment? Categorization increases the perceived homogeneity of outgroup members, thereby reinforcing stereotypes. Stereotypes can be activated automatically, coloring how we perceive, interpret, and communicate about the characteristics and behaviors of outgroup (and ingroup) members. Stereotypes influence how we perceive and interpret behavior, as well as how we remember information. Because of these biases, stereotypes tend to be self-perpetuating, even in the face of disconfirming information.

Allport & Roots of Prejudice

"First, people are likely to feel hostility when they are frustrated or threatened, or when they witness things they view as unpleasant or unjust." Second, as we noted in our chapters on social cognition, people tend to form schemas or categories and then view new stimuli as members of these categories. Just as we routinely categorize objects, we also categorize other people as members of social groups, such as women, Asians, and teenagers, often within milliseconds of encountering them. Prejudice results from the combination of these two basic tendencies: the experience of hostile feelings linked to a salient category of people. For example, in Marseilles, a Frenchman robbed at gunpoint by another a Frenchman will likely experience fear and anger, hate that man, and hope he is caught and imprisoned. A Frenchman who is robbed by an Algerian man will experience the same emotions but is more likely to direct that hate toward Algerians, a prominent immigrant group in France, and may therefore want all Algerians expelled from his country. Because what is salient to the victimized individual in the latter example is the category Algerian, his negative feelings are overgeneralized to the category rather than being applied only to the individual mugger whose actions caused his negative experience.

Why do we apply stereotypes

1. People rely on stereotypes every day because they simplify this process of social perception. Stereotypes allow people to draw on their beliefs about the traits that characterize typical group members to make inferences about what a given group member is like or how he or she is likely to act. 2. People also are sometimes motivated to hang on to these beliefs to help justify their prejudices. People may have difficulty understanding why they are experiencing negative feelings when encountered with someone new; generating a negative stereotype of the group provides a simple explanation. 3. Stereotypes Help Justify Violence and Discrimination Against Outgroups 4. System justification theory proposes that people largely prefer to keep things the way they are. So from this perspective, stereotypes justify the way things are. In some ways this is the flip side of social role theory: We not only assume the traits people have by the roles they enact, but we also assert that they should be in those roles because they have the traits that are needed for those roles. 5. Other evidence also supports the role of stereotyping in boosting the perceiver's self-esteem

Prejudice

A negative attitude toward an individual solely on the basis of that person's presumed membership in a particular group.

Illusory correlation

A tendency to assume an association between two rare occurrences, such as being in a minority group and performing negative actions. Illusory correlations are the result of the mind's seeking out relationships. And when two unusual things co-occur, our mind automatically assumes a connection.

Linguistic intergroup bias

A tendency to describe stereotypic behaviors (positive ingroup and negative outgroup) in abstract terms while describing counterstereotypic behaviors (negative ingroup and positive outgroup) in concrete terms. When you use abstract adjectives such as generous, you are implying that the person behaves in a similar way at different times and in different types of situations. If, however, you describe the same behavior using more concrete verbs such as giving, you are not implying a behavioral tendency that generalizes across time and situations.

Terror Management Theory

According to the existential perspective of terror management theory, one reason is that people must sustain faith in the validity of their own cultural world-view so that it can continue to offer psychological security in the face of our personal vulnerability and mortality. In the first study testing this notion, when reminded of their own mortality, American Christian students became more positive toward a fellow Christian student and more negative toward a Jewish student (Greenberg et al., 1990). Similarly, when reminded of death, Italians and Germans became more biased toward their own cultures and against other cultures (Castano et al., 2002; Jonas et al., 2005). Reminders of mortality also increase prejudice against the physically disabled because they remind us of our own physical vulnerabilities (Hirschberger et al., 2005).