Week 12 - Prejudice

Prejudice

Prejudice

a negative prejudgement of a group and its individual members

Stereotype

a belief about the personal attributes of a group of people

Discrimination

unjustifiable negative behaviour toward a group or its members
- ex: racism, sexism, etc.

Explicit vs Implicit Prejudice

- observed explicitly vs implicitly
- Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Racial Prejudice

- subtle prejudice
- modern racism, cultural racism, etc.
- implicit bias, microaggressions

Automatic Racial Prejudice

- automatic prejudice derived from unconscious associations
- ex: race influenced perceptions and reactions when participants had to react quickly to individuals either holding a gun or harmless object

Gender-Based Prejudice: Stereotypes

- gender stereotypes
- beliefs regarding how men/women behave
- different from gender norms which are about how people SHOULD behave

Gender-Based Prejudice: Sexism

- benevolent: sexism with positive attitudes
- hostile: sexism with negative attitudes
- both harmful

Sources of Prejudice

social sources
- social inequalities, socialization

motivational sources
- frustration and aggression, social identity

cognitive sources
- categorization, distinctiveness

Social Sources: Social Inequalities

- justifying "status quo"
- unequal status breeds prejudice
- social dominance orientation: motivation to have one's social group be dominant over others

Social Sources: Socialization

- authoritarian personality: disposed to favour obedience
- ethnocentrism
- religion
- conformity
- institutional supports

Motivational Sources: Frustration and Aggression

- prejudice towards others due to displaced aggression
- realistic group conflict theory: prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources

Motivational Sources: Social Identity Theory

- social identity: the "we" aspect of our self-concept
- we categorize, we identify, we compare with ingroups and outgroups
- ingroup bias
- ingroup liking and outgroup disliking can be independent of each other
- infrahumanization: denying human attributes to outgroup members

Motivational Sources: Motivation to Avoid Prejudice

- difficulty of overcoming "prejudice habit"
- internal vs external (altruism)
- motivated people can modify thoughts and actions to reduce prejudice

Cognitive Sources: Categorization

- spontaneous categorization (age, gender, sex, race)
- most reliant on stereotypes when: no time, preoccupied, tired, emotionally aroused

Cognitive Sources: Perceived Similarities and Differences

- outgroup homogeneity effect
- own race bias

Cognitive Sources: Distinctiveness

- distinctive people: certain things that make people stand out more
- distinctiveness feeds self-consciousness
- vivid cases (representativeness heuristic)
- distinctive events and illusory correlations

Cognitive Sources: Distinctiveness Study, Kleck and Strenta (1980)

- women were brought in, told they were testing new makeup
- put theatre makeup like scar on face
- then wiped scar without telling women
- women then interacted with people
- perceived as self-conscious

Attributions: Group-serving Bias

- dismissing outgroup members' positive behaviour
- attributing negative behaviours to dispositions, while excusing such behaviour by own ingroup
- fundamental attribution error

Attributions: Just World Phenomenon

- tendency of people to believe the world is just
- people get what they deserve and deserve what they get

Consequences of Prejudice

- self-perpetuating prejudgements
- stereotype threat
- biasing judgements of individuals

Consequences of Prejudice: Self-Perpetuating Prejudgements

- prejudgements guide our attention and memories
- prejudice involves preconceived judgments
- prejudgements are inevitable
- subtyping: putting people who deviate from stereotype into a different class of people
- helps maintain stereotypes
- high vs low prejudice individuals
- high: subtype positive outgroup members
- low: subtype negative outgroup members

Consequences of Prejudice: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

- lingering effects of discrimination and victimization
- two basic types: blaming oneself, blaming external causes

Consequences of Prejudice: Stereotype Threat

- disruptive concern when facing negative stereotype that one will be evaluated based on it
- stereotype gets internalized and thus reinforced
- gender difference in math study
- cognitive load

Effects of Stereotype Threat

- Stress
- Self-monitoring
- Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions

Biasing Judgements

- strong stereotypes affect our judgement of individuals
- stereotypes bias out interpretations of events
- when stereotypes are violated, we evaluate others more extremely