Stigma and Prejudice Concepts

Who developed Stereotype Threat?

Steele & Aronson, 1995

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is situationally-based and arises when a person fears they may confirm a negative stereotype about their group. This stereotype does not have to be personally endorsed, rather people simply have to fear they many confirm it by their (typically poor) performance. Stereotype threat may result in worsened performance, self-handicapping, disidentifying with the group, or devaluing the domain. Stereotype threat is particularly troubling and has real consequences for minorities (e.g. Hispanics and Blacks) in academic settings.

stigma

Stigma refers to the disapproval and shame felt by people exhibiting characteristics that society considers wrong or unusual. These characteristics may be related to racial or cultural identity, sexual identity, social status, physical appearance, disease or disability, or other personal traits. For example, unwed teenage mothers, ex-convicts, mental health patients, and obese people are all groups that face stigma. Members of these groups often experience stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination that can be difficult to overcome.

Terror Management Theory

TMT posits that people are motivated to self-protect from negative emotions (in particular, anxiety) that arise when they are made aware of their mortality. People under mortality salience threat will internally protect by bolstering self-importance (e.g. making lasting impact/contributions in the world) and latching onto the ingroup's cultural values. Therefore, TMT explains that intergroup conflict and prejudice are a result of the outgroup threatening the ingroup's worldview.

Who developed social identity theory?

Tajfel & Turner, 1979

Implicit Associations Test

The IAT is an extremely well-known and well-used measure of implicit (automatic processes outside the conscious awareness of the individual) associations. It is meant to measure implicit attitudes, with the belief that stereotype-congruent pairs that are well-associated (e.g. White-good) are easier (i.e., faster and more accurate) to match than stereotype-incongruent pairs. The IAT has received heavy criticism for its (lack of) psychometric properties and the tendency for people to overreach its conclusions - treating the IAT as a measure of implicit prejudice, rather than implicit (culturally held, but potentially not personally endorsed) associations.

Sociocultural Perspective

look at larger social context, norms, group phenomena, collective identity, often tied with evolutionary (things adaptive usually tied up in culture)

Evolutionary Perspective

newest perspective, behavior determined by genetics (adaptation as means of survival), looking at function it serves

Social-Cognitive Perspective

one of the most dominant approaches, the way we process information, the way that process is influenced by other people, interpretation, judgement (how you evaluate), memory (storage and retrieval)

Illusory correlation effect

stereotypes can also form via the illusory correlation effect. This effect refers to the erroneous pairing of certain minority groups with particular deviant behavior. The illusory correlation effect is said to arise in a primarily cognitive manner (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976).

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent

Ingroup Projection Model

Bianchi, Mummendey, Steffens, & Yzerbyt, 2010). The ingroup projection model argues that while a common ingroup may be attained (i.e., the superordinate category of American), subgroups may sometimes believe that their particular subgroup is more representative of the superordinate group that the other subgroups. This occurs because members of a subgroup may project their subgroup's qualities onto the larger subgroup.

Who developed Developmental Intergroup Theory?

Bigler & Liben, 2006

Who developed the rejection identification model?

Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999

Who developed Socio-functional Threat theory?

Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005

Attributional Ambiguity

Crocker & Major

Developmental Intergroup Theory

DIT pulls heavily from social learning theory, and proposes that children acquire different stereotypes based on the social environments in which they grow up and with which they interact. Group categorizations and stereotypes particularly form around attributes that are perceptually and/or psychologically salient in the child's culture. Finally, stereotypes and prejudice will be linked to those perceptually salient attributes/categories that are used functionally (by adults).

Compunction

Devine & Monteith

Unified-Instrumental Model of Group Conflict

Esse & Jackson

Who developed cognitive dissonance theory?

Festinger

Who developed the Stereotype Content Model?

Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002

Who developed balance theory?

Fritz Heider

Common Ingroup Identity Model

Gaertner & Dovidio

Who developed aversive racism theory?

Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986

Ambivalent Sexism

Glick & Fisk

Who developed Terror Management Theory?

Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986

Who developed Implicit Association Tests?

Greenwald, McGhee, Schwartz, Jordan, 1998

Sexual Prejudice

Herek

Intergroup Emotions Theory

IET is a recent theory that focuses on "hot" (i.e., emotion-based) processes as an explanation for intergroup interactions. When a person is identified with their group, they also take on the group's emotions, in particular toward other groups. These group emotion profiles can change based on the situation, they are separate from personal emotions, and they are the most proximal driver of intergroup behavior according to IET.

System Justification

John Jost & Banaji

Racial Ambilvalence

Katz & Hass

Who developed infrahumanization theory?

Leyens, Demoulin, Vaes, Gaunt, & Paladino, 2007

Who developed Intergroup Emotions Theory?

Mackie, Smith, & Rae, 2008

Metastereotypes

Metastereotypes are one's (predominantly negative) beliefs about the stereotypes held about the ingroup by the outgroup. These metastereotypes may inform intergroup interactions in a self-fulfilling way, such that one's belief about what another group believes will inform one's actions in the interaction, and thus cause the other group to act in a way that prompts one to confirm the metastereotype. Metastereotypes may be more difficult to change than regular stereotypes, because they are not typically discussed with the outgroup.

Rejection Identification Model

RIM challenged the belief that negative outcomes (particularly around self-esteem) were the only result of discrimination. Instead, it proposed that perceptions of discrimination could lead to increased ingroup identification, which in turn could act as a buffer for lowered self-esteem. The increased identification becomes a coping strategy, and identification mediates the negative relationship between discrimination and psychological well-being; discrimination leads to greater identification which leads to more psychological well-being (an inconsistent mediation).

Stereotype Content Model

SCM proposes that stereotypes are not static; instead, they can change over time and vary between cultures, and they also rely on two basic dimensions: warmth (based on group interdependence) and competence (based on group status). These two dimensions combine to form four different types of categorizations: admiration, paternalistic, envious, and contemptuous. Importantly, because two of the types (paternalistic and envious) are ambiguous (have both a positive and a negative side), they build in a justification for prejudice (e.g. old and incompetent but nice).

Socio-functional Threat

SFT focuses on prejudice at a more nuanced level (as opposed to an overall attitude). It proposes that different groups pose different types of threat, which in turn elicit different emotional responses or profiles. Emotion profiles arose as a function of our social, intergroup interactions in order to help us survive and determine the appropriate form of action, particularly in regard to strongly interdependent groups. Each emotion (e.g. fear, anger, disgust, pity, and guilt) that arises from a specific threat will prompt a particular, socially functional response that maintains one's interests.

Social Identity Theory

SIT posits that people are driven to categorize social groups into ingroups (which they identify with) and outgroups. Ingroups are a source of self-esteem, and thus people are motivated to maintain their self-esteem through social comparisons to outgroups (which are made favorable through selective dimension comparisons, changing the attribute's valence/importance, and being selective in choosing the outgroup). Often results in ingroup bias more than outgroup derogation.

SDO

Sidanius & Pratto, 1999

Social Learning Perspective

classical conditioning, attitudes form as result of negative or positive experiences, operant conditioning (pos/neg reinforcement, punishment), social modeling (bobo doll, mimic behavior of others), (often tied with social cognitive)

Aversive Racism

ART arose to explain the more subtle, implicit type of prejudice of contemporary times, particularly the prejudice of liberals: people who are openly egalitarian but may implicitly have negative or aversive feelings toward Blacks. Indeed, this prejudice and subsequent discrimination is more likely to arise when the situation is ambiguous and thus allows for a non-racist explanation for behavior. Aversive racists may try to avoid situations when they must interact with Blacks and if they cannot, may display great discomfort during these interactions.

Infrahumanization Theory

According to infrahumanization theory, prejudice can arise when people believe their ingroup is essentially different from an outgroup, because the ingroup holds more human characteristics than the less human outgroup. It is characterized by a tendency to deny or restrict secondary emotions (e.g., nostalgia, conceit, other socially constructed emotions) to the outgroup, but not primary emotions (e.g., joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust). Interestingly, intergroup conflict is not a necessary condition for infrahumanization and outgroup status and familiarity do not impact the process of infrahumanization either.

Self-Categorization Theory

According to self-categorization theory (Turner, 1987), individuals have personal identities and social identities. Personal identities are ones in which the individual views themselves as a unique person within their ingroup. Social identities are ones in which the individual views themselves as similar to their ingroup members and distinct from outgroup members. It is the activation of social identities that instigates the "us" versus "them" mentality. How an individual behaves depends on which identity is most salient.

Modern/Symbolic Racism (Sears)

Adorno?

Who developed intergroup contact theory?

Allport, 1954

RWA

Altemeyer 1981

Common Ingroup Identity Model

The common ingroup identity model (Gaertner et al., 1993) posits that two different groups can recategorize into one group, typically by making their superordinate group membership salient. Intergroup bias can be reduced if different groups recategorize into shared group. Importantly, this does not require groups to denounce their original categorizations entirely (which can be detrimental and ineffective). It is best to maintain the salience of original intergroup boundaries by acknowledging the diversity between groups, but within the context of a common, overarching group identity (Gaertner et al., 1993). As a consequence, members still perceive that there are two distinct subgroups, but that they are nested within a more inclusive superordinate group. This method allows for the creation of a superordinate group in which both subgroups work separately but have equally important and complementary roles towards a superordinate objective (i.e., Jigsaw Classroom; Aronson et al., 1978). Ingroup identification leads to greater cooperation, reduced prejudice, reduced discrimination, greater protections and privilege for former outgroup members.

Integrated Model of Arab Prejudice

The integrated model of Arab prejudice (Oswald, 2005) combines integrated threat theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000), self-categorization theory (Turner, 1987), and social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) to explain the factors that underly Arab prejudice. Integrated threat theory posits that prejudice can be caused by the perception of realistic and symbolic threats to the ingroup (Stephan & Stephan, 2000). Realistic threats are threats to the economy, politics, and physical harm. Symbolic threats are threats to the ingroup's world view, including culture and morals. After terrorist attacks against the U.S., particularly the September 11th attacks, U.S. residents may have felt that Arab anti-U.S. terrorists threaten the physical safety, culture, and economy of the U.S. These threats may result in a generalized negative attitude towards Arabs.

Intergroup Contact Theory

Under ideal conditions, intergroup contact can reduce prejudice between groups. This proposal has been extensively tested, and it is supported that indeed, under optimal conditions (e.g. non-negative contact, frequent contact, equal status, common goals, etc.) intergroup conflict is reduced. The effects of intergroup contact have been found to generalize to the entire outgroup and outgroups in different situations. Future studies should look at intergroup contact under more "normal", non-optimal conditions that account for complex intergroup history between unequal groups, as well as the effect of intergroup contact on intergroup trust and forgiveness.

Who developed meta-stereotypes?

Vorauer, Main, & O'Connell, 1998

Integrated Threat Theory

Walter Stephan

Balance Theory

a theory holding that people try to maintain balance among their beliefs, cognitions, and sentiments

prejudice

an unjustified or incorrect attitude (usually negative) towards an individual based solely on the individual's membership of a social group. For example, a person may hold prejudiced views towards a certain race or gender etc. (e.g. sexist).

Empathy

empathy is a common variable in prejudice and identity research. Those with higher empathy, by definition, are able to identify with others.