Stereotypes - Midterm
Sleeper effect
- A message from a source with low credibility gets more credibility over time - We forget where the message comes from - Test of the process of forgetting, found that at time of exposure participants discounted material from "untrustworthy" sources - Over time, participants disassociated the content and the source and the original skepticism faded and the "untrustworthy" material was accepted - Some opinion changes in the direction of the communicator's position are larger after a lapse in time than immediately after the communication
Blue-eyed vs brown-eyed people experiment and self-fulfilling prophecy
- A teacher (jane elliot) conducted an experiment where she told the class that the blue-eyed kids and brown-eyed kids were smart and dumb, respectively - Kids performed as she predicted - Switched the roles of the experiment (blue-eyed = dumb, brown-eyed=smart), and, once again, performed as expected
Strategies for self-protection & self-esteem
- Attributing negative feedback to prejudice against their group - Stigma may provide "esteem protective strategies"; members can blame their failures on prejudice - Selectively comparing their outcomes with members of their own group - Selectively devaluing those attributes or domains which their group typically fares poorly while valuing those attributes which their group excels
Blacks' sexuality, romance, intimacy depictions
- Blacks are not likely to be shown in romantic relationships /acting intimately & loving - More likely to be sexualized
Disconfirming information
- Counter-stereotypic images or statements that directly contradict the prevailing stereotype - Being shown counter-stereotypic images or media can cue consistent interpretations of unrelated media events
Latino stereotypes: TV/radio news
- Depicted as poor, uneducated, criminals, buffoons, Latin lovers or law-enforcers - Primetime TV represents them as 3% of the population - Minimal representations of Latinos on TV due to their orientation to TV shows that feature Whites - Latinos have more crossover interest as evident by a survey that showed 13 of the top 20 highest rated shows in Latino households were among the top 20 programs watched by the general audience (4 for Blacks)
Comedies - racial stereotypes
- EX: chocolate news - dumping babies - how much a comedy like this impacts our stereotypes of certain groups - how might it be more impactful than television news: - people come into it with their guard down - makes people feel like it's acceptable to also use the stereotypes - comedy may actually be more harmful in reaffirming stereotypes - will forget that the stereotypical stuff came from a comedy source and that it was fiction it will now just become your beliefs - very impressionable
Subtyping
- Incongruence may cause the perceiver to form subcategories within stereotypes; see counter-stereotypes as the exception to the rule - View of a group, one person different, you think "he's not like the rest" rather than thinking your perception was wrong (expectancy violation) Ex: Black people suck, Osei is awesome, Osei is the exception to the rule but I still think black people suck
Context of interracial contact on entertainment TV
- Interracial interaction rarely occur in sitcoms since most take place in people's homes - in shows favored by White audiences, the interchanges between Blacks and Whites are restricted by unequal power relationships: over two-thirds of interracial exchanges are between characters in superior/ subordinate roles. - Mostly shown in places of work where there is no romance - Historically it is between black women and white men. - How to get away with murder: Annalise and her Husband
White racial policy reasoning
- Maintain that the news media present policies in terms of preferential treatment and reverse discrimination, white's racial policy reasoning is based on: 1. News media functions as sources of information for voter's policy reasoning 2. News media provide images and instances that function as exemplars involved in think about racial policies - "News coverage of blacks is filled with images of single mothers on welfare, drug addicts involved in a violent crime, and alcoholic homeless. "which lead to a view that certain policies give blacks unearned and undeserved advantages." 3. News media help to arouse, sustain certain emotional experiences related to an issue - 911 lead to citizen's rally around the president 4. News media frame policy issues in particular ways. For example, framing racial policy in terms of "reverse discrimination" - Economic policies as "preferences for the rich"
Minorities in subordinate ad roles
- Minorities are less likely to appear in the beginning or end of ad - Less likely to be main "character"
Blacks vs whites roles, frequency in ads
- Only 1.3 percent of the pictures in Time and Newsweek during the 1950s were of blacks, compared with 3.1 percent in the 1960s and 7.5 percent in the 1980s. - 10% of the blacks in ads in Time magazine in 1980 were either Africans or Americans in poverty, while none of the whites in these ads were shown poor. - Caucasians continue to be the predominant models in terms of numbers and in the types of roles they play - Numerical representation of minorities, especially Blacks, has improved - Minorities are more likely than Caucasians to have minor roles and to be portrayed in certain product categories, setting and relationships - Advertising fails to adequately reflect reality in terms of ethnic representation and its growing integration into the mainstream culture may alienate young consumers of all ethnic backgrounds - Caucasians appeared in 89% of weekend commercials and 96% of weekday commercials - About 7% of weekend and 3% of weekday commercials included blacks, although they represented more than 11% of population at the time - Blacks in snack/food commercials, only shown in 1% of toy ads (87% for white) -- black people used in ads for low value products, while whites for high value
Estimates of criminality
- Policy preferences for those who support spending money for prisons to lock up either "violent crimes" or "violent inner city criminals" - racial coding - Policy presences when whites are asked about "locking up violent inner-city criminals" policy preferences are more strongly based on their racial attitudes - More likely whites endorse black negative stereotypes the more likely they favor new prisons, when the words "inner city" are affected to statement - How easily opinion can be manipulated based on a few words - Television tends to over-represent portrayals of violent crime and under-represent portrayals of nonviolent or poverty crime - Whites are over-represented as crime suspects in comparison to actual crime statistics - However, most Black and Hispanic characters were portrayed as criminals or suspects rather than police officers, while white characters were more likely portrayed as police officers rather than criminals or suspects
Bookkeeping
- Proposes each discrepant encounter changes the existing stereotype incrementally - The more information you get about a group, the more your perceptions are adjusted based on that information
Conversion
- Proposes that even a single incongruent encounter can radically change a stereotype - Your original perceptions of a group change when something happens Ex: I like Muslims → Muslim kills my family member → now I don't like Muslims
Urban dictates
- Rules set by businesses that instruct ad agencies not to advertise on stations that appeal to blacks and hispanics - "Prospects" vs. "Suspects"
Expectancy violation
- Suggests that stereotypes are linked to evaluations about personal characteristics - People who have qualities that are more positive than expected are rated more favorably than others with similar characteristics - Example: large woman playing Lacrosse and outplaying other players. She is evaluated more positively than if another woman (avg size) did the same thing
How news media frame racial policies
- The news media suggests that undocumented immigrants engage in a disproportionate amount of crime - Harvard and Michigan studies demonstrate that immigrants committed fewer crimes than native- born citizens, and greater proportion of immigrants in a neighborhood was associated with lower rates of crime - Incarceration rates were 5x tighter for native-born than foreign born Hispanics - portrayal of blacks are far more negative, over-representing black perpetrators, under-rep. black victims and over-rep. white victims - send powerful message to whites that most blacks are violent, criminal, drug-addicted, and on welfare - bc these images come from the news media, which claim to represent reality and to provide unbiased info about society, anglos tend to believe the images are true
Stereotype threat
- a self confirming belief that one may be evaluated based on a negative stereotype - anxiety of conforming to negative stereotype - steele attempts to demonstrate how societal stereotypes about groups can influence the intellectual functioning and identity development of individual group members (examines women and blacks) - Those who identify with the stereotype can be self-threatening - Greatest effect on the better, more confident people being stereotyped against - more you identify w domain —> more fearful, anxious, etc.
Script, crime script
- argues that exposure to the racial element of the crime script increases support for punitive approaches to crime and heightens negative attitudes about Blacks among whites but not black viewers - A script is a coherent sequence of events expected by the individual, involving him either as a participant or as an observer (e.g., restaurant script) - Scripts tend to provide an orderly and quite predictable set of scenarios and roles - scripts allow a person to make inferences about events, issues or behaviors quite effortlessly - When people encounter incomplete versions of the script, they actually "fill in" the missing information and make appropriate inferences about what must have happened
Automatic activation process
- bc the stereotype has been frequently activated in the past, it is a well learned set of associations that is automatically activated in the presence of a member of the target group - Stereotype is automatically activated in the presence of a member (or some symbolic equivalent) of the stereotyped group - involve the unintentional or spontaneous activation of some well-learned set of associations or responses that have been developed through repeated activation in memory
Rothbart's 3 models of stereotype change
- bookkeeping - conversion - subtyping
Disposition theory
- employed to explore several attitudes associated with viewing and enjoyment of reality-based crime shows - viewer enjoyment of media messages is largely a function of dispositions toward the characters involved in portrayals of conflict and the outcomes that the characters experience - viewer gratification is strongest when liked characters experience positive outcomes (e.g., reward, victory, etc.) and when disliked characters experience negative outcomes (e.g., punishment, loss, etc.) - Applied to crime-related entertainment, enjoyment should be strongest among viewers who hold high levels of contempt for those characters judged as morally corrupt (i.e., the criminals) and high levels of admiration for those characters judged as morally upstanding (i.e., the police officers)
"South Park "Wheel of Fortune"
- episode where the guy things the word is the "n" word and not "naggers" - tries to show he isn't racist but he is doing things that make him look more racist - doesn't understand why people are continuing to label him as this - finally his son realizes he is white and will never understand the effects of the word and implications
Depictions of blacks VS Latinos on TV
- historically — when latinos appeared on TV they are depicted as poor, uneducated, criminals, buffoons, latin lovers or law-enforcers - in content analysis of primetime TV shows they found: 80% of main and minor characters are white 16% black 3% latino 1% asian america no native americans - w the exceptions of blacks, exclusion of ethnic minorities on prime time tv - dearth of ethnic minorities leads to narrowly defined portrayals, which suggest an adherence to and reinforcement of white, mainstream conventions - these conventions often ignore cultural diversity and instead promote notions of uniformity - they argue that the menial representation of nations on TV is due to their reiteration to TV shows that feature whites - latinos have more cross over interest as evident by a survey that showed 13 of top 20 high rated show sin latino households were among the top 20 programs watched by the general audile (4 for blacks)
High prejudice people responses to stereotypes
- likely to have personal beliefs that overlap substantially with the cultural stereotype - unintentional activation of the stereotype is equally strong for high and low prejudice persons
Controlled processes
- low-prejudice responses require controlled inhibition of the automatically activated stereotype - intentional and require the active attention of the individual - although limited by capacity, are more flexible than automatic processes - Their intentionality and flexibility makes them particularly useful for decision making, problem solving, and the initiation of new behaviors
How are stereotypes harmful?
- make a judgement too quickly and you don't get to know the person - discrimination and prejudice - leaves little room for perceiving individual differences within a group - simplistic, resist disconfirming evidence, and create self-fulfilling prophecies when mutual stereotyping groups interact - contribute to the development of ideologies that justify discriminatory behavior against out-group - development of ideology --> can effect voting - typically reflect disparaging views of others, which results in "the ultimate attribution error"
Social stigmas
- many social groups or categories of people are stigmatized in our society - members of groups that people hold negative stereotypes towards are relatively disadvantaged in american society - economic and interpersonal outcomes
Low prejudice people responses to stereotypes
- must create a cognitive structure that represents his or her newer beliefs - responses require controlled inhibition of the automatically activated stereotype - unintentional activation of the stereotype is equally strong for high and low prejudice persons - decided that the stereotype is inappropriate as a basis for behavior or evaluation — conflict between automatically activated stereotype and personal beliefs
Personal attitudes
- not related to impression management - influenced by privates standards and ideals
Priming
- occurs when a certain category or schema is activated and applied to other, even unrelated, objects or events - activation of one category or schema increases the likelihood that the same category will be used in subsequent judgments - by activating certain stereotypes, we can get people to act in line with other stereotypes pertaining to the same object - exposing your target to specific stimulus in order to predictably influence their behavior when exposed to future stimulus. - EX: participants who had been primed subliminally with stereotypic traits were more likely to rate Donald, an unrelated target person, as hostile-in keeping with the racial stereotype-than participants who were subliminally primed with traits unrelated to the stereotype
Internal or personal attribution
- on the one hand, when we look at homeless people, we want to attribute their homelessness to their internal traits (personal traits) — put it all on them - underestimating the external factors on someone
Association of Blacks and poverty
- over the past decades, the black urban poor have come to dominate public images of poverty - American public dramatically exaggerates the proportion of - African Americans among the poor and that such misperception are associated with greater opposition to welfare - Network TV news and weekly news magazines portray the poor as substantially more black than is really the case - Unflattering (and distorted) portrait of the poor presented in these news magazines is even more unflattering (and more distorted)for poor African Americans. - News media distortions coincide with public misperceptions about race and poverty and that both are biased in ways that reflect negatively on the poor in general and on poor African - Americans in particular - African Americans account for 29% of America's poor - Increases white Americans' opposition to welfare
Reality based TV
- perceived realism is associated w stronger cultivation effects, such as beliefs about crime and victimization - reality-based (ex: cops, america's most wanted) programs vis-avid fictional shows more frequently portray criminals as racial and ethnic minorities - because reality programs tend to over represent sites as police officers and blacks as criminals, white viewers who tend to endorse attitudes reflecting racial prejudice will find the shows especially enjoyable
Stereotypes: What are they and how are they formed?
- the cognitive component of prejudice attitudes - they are functional for individual, allowing rationalization of his/her prejudice against a group - part of the social heritage of a society and no one can escape learning them - generalizations indiscriminately attributed to all members within a group
Schema
- the structure in our thought processes (mind categories) that we use to help us organize our complex social environment and world - they help us sort out our world without a lot of mental effort by telling us the basic characteristics of the phenomena we encounter (basically automatic)
How are stereotypes helpful?
- they allow for rationalization - people who counter stereotype we have — stop in our tracks and question ourself - quick judgement calls - economical way of viewing the world and can be very useful — stereotype of dark alleys —> keeps you out of harms way - bc we cannot personally experience most of the events in which we have an interest, we rely on outside info to enrich our impoverished knowledge of the environment - natural process and has a role to play in maintaining our sanity and that to arbitrarily reject it as unsavory or unworthy of our respect would be a mistake
Tide ad with black man
- this ad depicted a black father with his son laying on him - shows good family ties within black community - has a wedding ring on which was big - people really liked this
Implicit racial attitudes
- unconscious feelings and beliefs which are often different from personal or public attitudes - Primarily predict more spontaneous race related behaviors
Mastro & Greenberg, 4 elements of how social perceptions of racial groups are formed
1. Exposure to different types of programs (sit-coms, dramas, sports) 2. The frequency, duration or amount of the exposure (cultivation) 3. The extent to which television content is believed to be an accurate, real-life representation (realism) 4. The degree of similarity perceived by the viewer between TV representations and their real life counterparts
Capital sentencing and blacks
Blacks who have more stereotypically black features are more likely to get the death sentence than blacks who have more mainstream, "whiter" features
Deliberative processes
Controlled or deliberative processes are characterized by effortful and reasoned considerations about the pros and cons of a certain behavior
Depictions of blacks in news
More likely to appear in stories about crime and poverty than whites
Implicit racial subtext of meaning
Race-neutral text, when combined with stereotypical images, can reinforce implicit stereotyping
Bad boys 2
Stereotype of young black man (rap, smoking, sex)
Implicit visual propositioning
Subtleties that are inherent in racial/prejudicial messages that may come through in places like the news media (Welfare) - EX: Picture of black woman wasn't racist until placed in a news story about welfare which reinforces the stereotype the black people are on welfare
Prospects
an individual or organization that is a possible customer to buy your product and has gone through a qualification process
Explicit racial attitudes
at the conscious level, are deliberately formed and are easy to self-report
External or environmental attribution
attributing some of that to external factor/environmental factors --> homeless person might not be homeless just because of personal traits
Inevitability of prejudice approach
perspective that as long as stereotypes exist, prejudice will follow
Public attitudes
publicly expressed socially desirable (non prejudiced) attitudes, even though they actually own more negative attitudes
Boondocks "Itis"
term used when black people have eaten and are full and sleepy
the ultimate attribution error
the tendency to attribute negative acts by members of out-groups to innate characteristics while discounting positive traits as exceptional
Suspects
will only engage with you as long as it's safe
