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What is prejudice?
attitudes – positive and negative – about people that belong to a certain group; they usually come from stereotypes
Negative prejudice: A negative predisposition or feeling towards someone based on their group membership.
Positive prejudice: A positive predisposition towards someone based on their group membership (usually an in-group).
What is discrimination?
behaviours – positive and negative – that are influenced by prejudice towards people from a certain group.
Negative discrimination: A behavior that negatively affects a person due to their group membership, such as withholding opportunities.
Positive discrimination: Privileging or protecting certain people based on their group membership.
What is a stereotype?
beliefs – true and false - about typical and distinctive behaviours and characteristics of a group of people.
How are prejudice and discrimination related?
Prejudice (attitudes) often leads to discrimination (behaviors).
What is a generalization?
An inference that something shares characteristics with its broader category.
E.g., “all ravens are black”, “everyone has a mother and a father”
How do stereotypes relate to generalization?
Stereotypes are generalizations specifically about social groups.
Human minds are programmed to think in generalizations, with stereotypes being extensions of generalizations
Why are stereotypes useful?
They save time and attention, save us from having to learn things multiple things by allowing us categorize things, and help us quickly identify which things to approach/avoid (E.g., “bears with cubs are very dangerous”)
Why are stereotypes problematic?
They are often based on bad data and lead to inaccurate beliefs.
What are some ways stereotypes are formed inaccurately?
Small sample size – Generalizing from too few experiences. → you don’t interact much with people in outgroup
Biased sampling – Only paying attention to extreme (very good or very bad) cases, even if it is quite rare for the group.
Focusing on distinct features – Magnifying small differences.
Confusing correlation with causation – Assuming behaviors are caused by group traits/features rather than considering other factors.
What are some negative consequences of stereotypes?
Are often inaccurate
Outgroup homogeneity – Assuming all outgroup members are the same.
Self-perpetuation – Hard to change once established.
Leading to prejudice and discrimination.
What is confirmation bias?
The tendency to seek and believe information that confirms existing beliefs. → critical towards info from others that contradict your beliefs
What is positive hypothesis testing?
Actively searching for evidence that supports one's belief instead of evidence that falsifies it.
(E.g., searching “shark attack” on Google instead of “shark safety”)
What is distrust of alternatives?
Critically evaluating or rejecting evidence that contradicts one's beliefs.
(E.g., media sources tend to do this for better engagement)
What is implicit prejudice?
Unconscious bias that influences behavior without awareness.
Even people who deny having prejudice will be affected by it
What is the Implicit Association Test (IAT)?
A test measuring unconscious biases by evaluating reaction times to word associations.
Participants are shown names typically associated with a group (e.g., Meredith vs. Tameka) and either pleasant or unpleasant word (“poison” vs. “blanket”). → they must quickly push one button to categorize the word
How does the IAT work?
Faster responses in the "match condition" and slower responses in the “mismatch condition” indicate a reliance on stereotypes and prejudice
This is because the match rules make sense to you together while the mismatch needs to be remembered
What does the IAT show?
Explicit Discrimination: people with more overt racist attitudes also score higher.
Implicit Discrimination: even people without overt racist attitudes show moderate scores for most common stereotypes.
Self-Stereotyping: if they belong to a minority group, people within the group tend to show moderate scores even for their ingroup
What evidence supports implicit prejudice?
Resume/CV study – Identical resumes with Black names were rated lower by university professors
Ratemyprofessor.com study – Male professors received more positive adjectives such as “genius” and “funny” while female professors were more likely to be labeled with negative descriptions
Online course experiment – Professors identified as female received lower ratings even when content was identical
What is stereotype threat?
Reminding people of their group membership and relevant stereotype can change their performance on a subsequent task.
What are examples of stereotype threat?
Women perform worse on math tests when told men do better.
Asian-American women do better in math when reminded of their Asian identity but worse when reminded of their gender.
Older adults perform worse when a test is framed as a memory test but better when framed as a wisdom test.
What is implicit bias training?
Training designed to help individuals counteract implicit prejudice through self-monitoring and policy changes.
Does implicit bias training work?
It reduces IAT scores but has little evidence of changing actual behaviors. → is it teaching you how to do well on the IAT test rather than changing behaviour?
What is the contact hypothesis?
The idea that interacting with out-group members reduces prejudice. → promote/incentivize spending more time with out-group
How does contact reduce prejudice?
Empathy – Understanding others' experiences.
Education – Learning about actual causes of behavior.
Reducing outgroup homogeneity – Realizing the out-group is diverse.
Crossed categorization – Recognizing overlapping group identities.
Confirmation bias affects our:
a) Beliefs
b) Attitudes
c) Behaviours
d) All of the above
d) is correct → reinforces beliefs, changing our attitudes (not trusting sources of disconfirmatory information), changing behaviour (seeking out information that is confirmatory)
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