Module 2: Introducing the Concepts of Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
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35 Terms
Race is primarily socially constructed; racial categories do not have fixed, universally agreed-upon biological boundaries (including skin color, facial features, dialect, genes)
Narrowed in the 1700s when Europeans were colonizing Africa, Asia, and the Americas (Native inhabitants had different skin color, so it was used to distinguish colonizers from those already colonized)
A shared system of meanings, beliefs, values, norms, and information passed across generations.
It allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life
Stereotype = belief (IU students are unintelligent)
Prejudice = attitude/feeling (Disliking people who do telemarketing)
Discrimination = behavior (Denying someone a job because of their race)
A belief about what members of a group supposedly are like.
Ex: Women are more anxious; Men are more extroverted
A belief about how members of a group supposedly should behave.
Ex: Women should not be dominant; Men should not be weak
As largely erroneous or inaccurate beliefs.
While he believed that the mental process of categorizing people is normal and natural, he explicitly maintained that the content of stereotypes is highly faulty
Some stereotypes may reflect small average group differences, but they still cannot accurately describe every individual.
research shows that many everyday stereotypes possess a "kernel of truth" that is actually a moderately to highly accurate reflection of statistical reality
They simplify a complex social world and allow quick judgments (heuristics are cognitive shortcuts).
No agreed cutoff: Scientists have no universal mathematical line to decide exactly when a public guess becomes "close enough" to count as accurate or inaccurate
Traits are hard to define: Stereotypes usually involve subjective, abstract qualities (like being "emotional" or "arrogant") rather than hard numbers, making them nearly impossible to measure objectively
Self-reports can be biased: The "reality" data researchers use for comparison often relies on surveys where people lie to look good or misjudge themselves, meaning the scientific baseline itself is flawed
Results depend on the comparison group: Accuracy is relative; a stereotype might look completely true when a demographic is compared to the global population, but entirely false when compared to a specific subgroup.
Groups have lots of within-group variation and overlap, so an individual may not resemble the group average.
High Within-Group Variation: Individual people within any demographic vary wildly from one another; a group average cannot predict the unique traits of any single member
Massive Group Overlap: On a graph, the distributions of traits for different groups usually heavily overlap in the middle, meaning the vast majority of people from both groups share the exact same characteristics
People may wrongly assume a group difference is natural or unchangeable rather than caused by social factors. Assuming a stereotype is accurate often leads toessentialism—the false belief that a group difference is entirely natural, biological, or unchangeable, rather than a product of temporary social, cultural, or economic factors
Ex: Women not biologically suited to have high education jobs like doctors
Interpersonal: This occurs at the individual level when one person treats another unfairly based on their group membership
Ex: A landlord refuses to rent an apartment to a qualified applicant simply because they dislike the applicant's ethnic background
Organizational: This occurs when the formal rules, practices, hiring procedures, or cultural norms of a specific company, university, or institution systematically disadvantage certain groups
Ex: A corporation uses an automated AI hiring tool that scans past resumes to select new candidates. Because the company historically hired mostly men, the algorithm notes this pattern and automatically downgrades resumes that contain words like "women's track team" or women's college names
Institutional: This is a broad, systemic form of discrimination embedded in the legal, political, economic, or educational structures of society
Ex: The legacy of redlining. In the mid-20th century, the U.S. government drew red lines on maps around minority neighborhoods, refusing to back home mortgages there
Cultural: This occurs when the dominant group in a society embeds its own values, language, beauty standards, and history into the cultural fabric, while devaluing, ignoring, or pathologizing the traits of minority groups
Ex: Standard corporate grooming and hair policies that label natural Afro-textured hairstyles (like locs, braids, or twists) as "unprofessional" or "unpolished."
High- and low-prejudice people may both know stereotypes, but high-prejudice people are more likely to personally endorse them.
The difference between high- and low-prejudice people comes down to what happens after a stereotype automatically pops into their mind
High-Prejudice People (Endorsement & Agreement): They personally agree with and accept the stereotype. When the shortcut pops up, they embrace it as a true reflection of reality and use it to judge people without trying to stop it
Low-Prejudice People (Inhibition & Correction): They personally reject and disagree with the stereotype. Because it clashes with their values, they use conscious mental energy to suppress the stereotype and actively replace it with a fair, individualized judgment
Scientific racism (pre 1920s) → Psychodynamic (1920s-1950s) → Sociocultural (1960s) → Intergroup relations (1970s) → Cognitive/evolutionary (1980s)