Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
robbers cave experiment
1)competition and intergroup conflict: the competitive nature of the tournament was designed to encourage each group to see the other as an impediment to the fulfillment of its own goals and hence as a foe. boys who were either athletically gifted or who advocated a more aggressive stance toward the other group tended to gain in popularity. 2)reducing intergroup conflict through superordinate goals: goals that transcend the interests of any one group and that can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together. the hostility produced by five days of competition was erased by the joint pursuit of common goals, resulting in a happy ending. 3)lessons: neither differences in background nor differences in appearance nor prior histories of conflict are necessary for intergroup hostility to develop. another lesson is that competition against outsiders often increases group coherence. to reduce the hostility that exists between certain groups, policy makers should think of ways to get them to work together to fulfill common goals.
prejudice
a negative attitude or affective response toward a certain group and its individual members. prejudice involves prejudging others because they belong to a specific category.
priming
a procedure used to increase the accessibility of a concept or a schema.
the implicit association test (IAT)
a technique for revealing nonconsicous prejudices toward particular groups. in one study, participants in a brain-imaging machine were shown pictures of black and white faces. the participant's earlier IAT responses were significantly correlated with heightened neural activity in the amygdala in response to black faces.
realistic group conflict theory
a theory that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources. the theory also predicts the prejudice and discrimination should be strongest among groups that stand to lose the most from another groups' economic advance.
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 have toward one another.
stereotypes
beliefs that certain attributes are characteristic of members of particular groups.
reducing stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
contact between members of different groups can go a long way toward reducing group stereotypes and intergroup hostility. Intergroup contact is particularly likely to be beneficial when members of different groups interact as equals, work together to try to accomplish common goals, and come together on a one-on-one basis - and then these interactions are supported by broader societal norms.
evaluating the cognitive perspective
critics have said that although the approach has made strides in advancing psychologists' understanding of intergroup conflict, the recent emphasis on reaction-time methods and brief, reflexive phenomena may lead us to lose sight of the causes of the truly disturbing manifestation of prejudice and discrimination that are all-too-common elements or real-world experience. However, it's also important to keep in mind that a great deal of damage can be done on the basis of people's initial, quick responses, as the shooting studies just reviewed make abundantly clear.
explaining away exceptions/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. our expectations of what a group of people is like can lead us to process information in ways that make stereotypes resistant to disconfirmation, as we explain away information that violates a stereotype and subcategorize those who don't fit in the stereotype.
boosting status of in-group
feeling better about the group leads us to feel better about ourselves. those who had been allowed to engage in intergroup discrimination had higher self-esteem than those who had not been given the opportunity to discriminate.
construal processes and biased assessments
invoking the stereotype may save time and effort, but it can lead to mistaken impressions and unfair judgments about individuals. biased information processing can help explain why even stereotypes completely lacking in validity nevertheless develop and endure.
benevolent racism and sexism
many of our isms are ambivalent, containing both negative and positive features. by rewarding women and minorities for conforming to the status quo, benevolent sexism and racism inhibit progress toward equality. those who hold ambivalent attitudes tend to act positively toward members of out groups only if they fulfill their idealized image of what such people should be like - say, the happy housewife or the playboy centerfold.those who deviate tend to be treated with hostility.
self-fulfilling prophecy
people act toward members of certain groups in ways that encourage the very behavior they expect. victims of stereotyping can find it difficult to overcome a commonly held stereotype because others act toward them in a way that elicits behavior consistent with the stereotype and suppresses behavior inconsistent with the stereotype, making the stereotypes self-fulfilling.
stereotype threat
people's fear of confirming the stereotypes that others have regarding a group of which they are a member.
modern symbolic racism
prejudice directed at other racial groups that exists alongside rejection of explicit racist beliefs.
stereotypes and conservation of mental reserves
stereotypes are useful cognitive categories that allow people to process information efficiently. if the use of stereotypes conserves intellectual energy, then encoding information in terms of relevant stereotypes should furnish extra cognitive resources that can be applied to other tasks.
expectations and biased information processing
stereotypes can be self-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. Information consistent with a group stereotype typically has more impact than information that is inconsistent with it.
the jigsaw classroom
students in the jigsaw classrooms like school more and develop more positive attitudes toward different ethnic groups than do students in traditional classrooms(p.420). prejudice can arise from realistic conflict between groups over scarce resources. the robbers cave experiment serves as an instructive model this sort of conflict, showing how otherwise friendly boys could turn into enemies when placed in groups competing for limited resources. the enmity between the groups evaporated when they had to cooperate to achieve superordinate goals of value to both groups. this result has considerable implications for managing potentially troublesome intergroup relations around the globe.
evaluating the motivational perspective
the strength of the motivational perspective is that is builds on two undeniably important elements of the human condition. first, people readily draw the us/them distinction, and the various groups to which an individual belongs are intimately connected to the motive to enhance self-esteem. second, people tend to react to frustration with aggression and often direct their aggression at the safest and least powerful targets in a given society. frustration is more likely result in aggression toward the relatively powerless.
evaluating the economic perspective
the success of integration in the military makes perfect sense in light of the lessons learned from the robbers cave experiment.
the out group homogeneity effect
the tendency for people to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for out groups than for in-groups. we typically have much more contact with fellow members of an in-group than with members of an out group, so we have greater opportunity to encounter evidence of divergent opinions and habits among in-group members.
basking in reflected glory
the tendency for people to take pride in the accomplishments of those with whom they are in some way associated, as when fans identity with a winning team.we have an incentive to identify with groups when they do well but to distance ourselves from them when they lose.
discrimination
unfair treatment of members of a particular group based on their membership in that group. Stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination refer to the belief, attitudinal, and behavioral components of negative intergroup relations. They often occur together, but not necessarily at all times. It is possible to be prejudiced and yet not discriminate, particularly when a culture frowns on discrimination.
concrete vs abstract construal
we might expect people to describe actions that are consistent with a stereotype in abstract terms, but to describe actions that are inconsistent with it in concrete terms. events that are consistent with preexisting stereotypes are encoded at a more abstract, and therefore more meaningful level than events that are inconsistent with preexisting stereotypes.
attributional ambiguity
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 reap the full measure of pride it would ordinarily afford.members of the stigmatized group live in a less certain world, not knowing whether to attribute positive feedback to their own skill or to other's condescension and not knowing whether to attribute negative feedback to their own error or to other's prejudice.
derogating outgroups to bolster self-esteem
(experiment on intelligence and jewish job applicant/doctor experiment, individuals who received praise from a black doctor would tend to think of him more as a doctor than as a black man, whereas who were criticized by a black doctor tend to think of him as a black man than as a doctor).
frustration aggression theory
a theory that elaborates the idea that frustration leads to aggression.
accentuating ingroup similarities and outgroup differences
although an arbitrary national border cannot affect the weather at a fixed location, arbitrary categorical boundaries can have significant effects on the human mind. what is troubling is that people make such assumptions even when the groups are formed arbitrarily or when they are formed on the basis of a dimension that may have no bearing on the particular attitude or behavior under consideration.
generalized to targeted aggression
by itself, the link between frustration and aggression cannot explain the origins of prejudice and discrimination because frustration leads to generalized aggression. however, often we cannot lash out at the true source of our frustration without getting into further difficulty, so we displace our aggression on a safer target.
ethnocentrism
glorifying one's own group while vilifying other groups,
stereotypical facial features and death penalty
individuals with stereotypically african features tend to receive harsher sentences than those with less stereotypically african features.
social identity theory
might it not reflect a purely cognitive tendency to divide the world into categories of us and them? no. a theory 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.
distinctiveness and illusory correlations
negative behavior on the part of members of minority groups is therefore doubly distinctive and memorable. and because negative behavior by the majority or positive behavior by the minority is not as memorable, negative actions by the minority are likely to seem more common than they really are.
automatic vs controlled processes
the activation of stereotypes is typically an automatic process; thus stereotypes can be triggered even if we don't want them to be. whereas a bigot will endorse or employ such stereotypes, a non prejudiced person will employ more controlled cognitive processes to suppress them.
paired-distinctiveness
the pairing of two distinctive events that stand out even more because they co-occur.to show that paired distinctiveness, rather than something about negative behavior, had produced their results, Hamilton and Gifford showed that an illusory correlation was also obtained when positive behaviors were less common. when you are especially aware of a person's ethnicity and that person proceeds to do something unusual, ethnicity is often the first thing that comes to mind to account for that action.