Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination

Stereotype

The belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group

Prejudice

an emotion-based (negative or positive) attitude toward a group and its members

Discrimination

favorable or unfavorable actions directed toward members of a group.

Modern Racism

prejudice directed at racial groups that exists alongside the rejection of explicitly racist beliefs

people can come up with a justification or “disguise” for their discriminatory actions.

What is benevolent Prejudice?

Some stereotypes include favorable assessments of abilities or positive attitudes toward group members. (Being viewed as athletic, smart)

Benvolent Racism/Sexism

Race and gender stereotypes often contain a mix of positive and negative sentiments. As long as the people stay in the gender/race roles, they are viewed upon favorably. Hinders equality and progress

Can surveys be trusted?

Not always. People don’t feel like they express their true opinion because they don’t want to appear prejudiced

Implicit Association Test

a technique for revealing nonconscious attitudes toward different stimuli, including particular groups

Priming

The presentation of information designed to activate a concept (such as a stereotype) and hence make it accessible; a prime is the stimulus presented to activate the concept in question.

Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP)

A priming procedure designed to assess people’s implicit associations to different stimuli, including their associations to various ethnic, racial, gender and occupational groups

What are the 3 perspectives of the cause of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination?

1. Economic Perspective

2. Motivational Perspective

3. Cognitive Perspective

Economic Perspective

Argues that prejudice results from different social groups competing over scarce resources

Realistic Group Conflict Theory

A theory that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources. Resources can be physical, economic, or conceptual

Ethnocentrism

Glorifying one’s own group while vilifying other groups

Robbers Cave Experiment

Two groups of boys were invited to a summer camp. Durring the first week they were isolated from one another. In the second phase, the two groups competed against one another. The tournament was designed to encourage the groups to see the others as an obstacle in obtaining the reward. They threw insults, did food fights, and physically fought. The third phase was focused on reducing conflict by giving the boys some challenges that could only be resolved through cooperation.

Superordinate Goal

A goal that transcends the interests of any one group and can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together. A way of reducing conflict in the economic perspective

Lessons of the Cave Robber Experiment?

1. The only thing required for conflict is competition over rewards that only one can obtain

2. Competition against outsiders often increases group cohesion

3. To reduce hostility between groups, policy makers should think of ways to get them to work together to fufill common goals (Superordinate Goals)

The Motivational Perspective

Argues that prejudice results from motivations to view one’s ingroup more favorably than outgroups

Minimal Group Paradigm

An experiment in which people were split into two arbitrary groups. They were then taking to seperate cubicals and asked to assign points which were redemable for money to fellow participants. One amount of money would go to their group and the rest would go to the other.

The Experiment showed that a majority of participants are interested more in maximizing the relative gain for members of their ingroup over the outgroup than they are in maximizing the absolute gain for their ingroup.

Focus on the Us/Them Distinction

Social Identity Theory

The idea 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. To increase our own social status,

• you can boost the status of people in our group

• Give advantages to people in your own group

• React when the group is criticised

• People who are uncertain in their own attitudes and beliefs often use this

Basking in Reflected Glory

Taking pride in the accomplishments of other people in one’s group, such as when sports fans identify with a winning team.

Deintigrating Outgroups to Booster Self-Esteem

Self-esteem can be bolstered by negative evaluation of outgroups.

The Cognitive Perspective

argues that prejudice results from biases in social cognition due to schemas about differences between ingroup and outgroup members. Stereotyping is inevitable

What does the cognitive perspective say about stereotypes?

Since stereotypes are schemas, we should use them when we are tired or mentally taxed. They help us process lots of information quickly. They lead to mistaken impressions and unfair judgements

When are people more likely to use stereotypes?

When they are mentally taxed. One study found that people use them more durring the time of day are low in energy due to their circadian rhythms. People who use stereotypes remember information about a person then performed better on a cognitive task.

Stereotypes lead to the accentuation of ingroup ______ and outgroup ______

1. Similarities

2. Differences

This is because we assume the ingroup to be more similar than it really is and the outgroup to be more different than it really is

Distinctive and Illusionary Correlation?

False beliefs about groups may be maintained because we easily remember the pairing of two distinct events.

Negative behavior is remembered more easily than positive behavior. And members of the minority group and remembered more easily than members of the majority group.

This means that it is easier to remember the minority group doing negative behaviors.

Paired Distinctiveness

The pairing of two distinctive events that stand out because they occur together

What do people generalize?

People are more likely to generalize behaviors and traits that they already suspect may be typical of the group’s members. Actions that are in line with a previous stereotype are remembered, actions that are not in line with the stereotype are dismissed

Self-Fufilling Prophecy

People act toward members of certain groups in ways that encourage the very behavior they expect.

Example: By treating black applicants differently and putting them at a disadvantage, white interviewers confirm their negative stereotypes of them

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 “exceptions to prove the rule”.

Shows how people treat evidence that supports a stereotype differently than evidence that disproves it

Concrete vs Abstract Construct

We differentially process supportive and contradictory information by varying how concretely or abstractly we encode the actions of people from different groups.

When a member of your group does something negative, you talk about it on a more concrete level in order to implicate the person less in the action (dropped a piece of paper vs littering)

Outgroup Homeogenity Effect

the tendency for people to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups

Own Race Identification Bias

the tendency for people to be better able to recognize and distinguish faces from their own race than from other races

What are the two ways social information is processed?

Automatic and controlled. Studies have shown that our reactions to different groups of people are guided automatic processes that we can override

Automatic Processing

automatic, involuntary, and unconscious, often based on emotional responses

Controlled Processing

Conscious, systematic, and deliberate, controlled processing can override automatic responses

The activation of stereotypes is a _____ process

automatic, stereotypes can be triggered even if we don’t want them to be. People who are prejudice will verbalize their prejudice more than those who are less

Object Recognition in automatic Processisng?

White participants were quicker to recognize guns after seeing a Black face and more likely to mistake a tool as a gun after seeing a Black face. This is because guns are associated with black men and criminal activity

Shooter Bias

Participants were presented images of Black and White people who were either armed with a gun or not. As in a video game, participants were instructed to “shoot” the armed targets and not shoot the unarmed targets.

Both White and Black participants were more likely to accidentally shoot the unarmed Black targets than the unarmed White targets

What are some ways to reduce stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination?

specific legal interventions and broad economic developments. Daily interactions with people in different groups

Individual Approaches to prejudice reduction?

The Use of media/school to promote acceptance of the outgroup.

School reading programs that discuss friendship and acceptance.

Social media can be used, but only if the message is said by a high-status member of the ingroup.

Cognitive/emotional training help to practice certain ways of thinking/regulating emotions (perspective training, meditation)

Contact Hypothesis

The idea that prejudice can be reduced by putting members of different groups in frequent contact with one another

It is not a “magic fix all” for prejudice. Certain conditions must be met:

1. Groups must feel equal in status

2. Groups need to have a shared goal

3. A community’s broader social norms must support intergroup contact.

4. Interactions need to be based at an individual level

What happens when different groups have one on one conflict?

1. people begin to see members of the outgroup as individuals rather than as stereotyped,

2. this kind of one-on-one contact, a person’s positive feelings for particular outgroup members may generalize to the outgroup as a whole.

3. positive intergroup sentiments are solidified when members of both groups come to think of themselves as sharing a common identity

Multiculturalism

A diversity ideology that encourages the acknowledgment and appreciation of people’s unique cultural and ethnic identities.

Is benificial in reducing prejudice

Color-Blindness

a diversity ideology that encourages treating others as unique individuals and downplaying or ignoring cultural and ethnic group differences.

This leads to more prejudice and discrimination

What are some shortcommings of multiculturalism?

1. it can create feelings of exclusion among white people

2. increasing race essentialism, or the belief that racial-group differences are biologically based and immutable

3. Can have the counterproducive effect of concealing racial descrimination

Diversity Training

Little evidence of positive benifits of diversity training.

What would help→ highering more people from underrepresented groups