Social Psychology: Chapter 5- Stereotyping

What is group perception?

How we think about, feel toward, and behave toward people based on their group membership.

What do the ABCs of group perception stand for?

Affect, behavior, and cognition.

Which ABC component corresponds to prejudice?

Affect: feelings and evaluations toward a group or its members.

Which ABC component corresponds to discrimination?

Behavior: actions or treatment based on group membership.

Which ABC component corresponds to stereotyping?

Cognition: beliefs and associations about group characteristics.

What is prejudice?

Feelings or attitudes toward people because of their group membership, including negative and positive evaluations.

What is discrimination?

Behavior directed at people because of their group membership, including unequal treatment or opportunities.

What is a stereotype?

A belief or association linking a whole group with particular traits or characteristics.

How can you remember stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination?

Think, feel, and do: stereotype = belief; prejudice = feeling; discrimination = action.

Must stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination always occur together?

No. A person can know a stereotype without accepting it and can choose fair behavior despite a biased reaction.

Can an apparently positive stereotype still be problematic?

Yes. It generalizes across individuals, can obscure their actual abilities, and may create pressure to meet an expectation.

Assuming older people cannot use technology belongs to which ABC category?

Cognition: stereotyping. It is a belief about a group.

Disliking people with Southern accents belongs to which ABC category?

Affect: a prejudiced evaluation based on a group cue.

Not hiring someone because of their age belongs to which ABC category?

Behavior: a negative action directed toward a specific group.

What is a group?

People who interact over time and share a fate, goals, or identity.

What does shared fate mean?

A common event or outcome affects people together.

What does the Miracle on the Hudson example illustrate?

A shared emergency can create group identity. Surviving passengers continued meeting at reunions.

What is a schema?

A mental framework that organizations information and expectations.

Why is a stereotype a person schema?

It organizes expectations about people based on their group membership.

What is semantic memory?

Memory for general knowledge, meanings, and concepts.

Where do we place stereotype schemas?

In semantic memory.

What is spreading activation?

Activating one idea makes related ideas more accessible in memory.

How does table setting illustrate spreading activation?

Thinking about a table setting makes related concepts such as fork, knife, cup, and plate easier to access.

How can a group cue affect judgment through spreading activation?

The cue activates linked traits, making those traits easier to use when interpreting a person.

Does an accessible group association prove an individual has that trait?

No. Accessibility reflects a learned link in memory, not evidence about the individual.

What is social categorization?

Sorting people intro groups such as age groups, race, occupations, nationalities, or schools.

Why can social categorization be useful?

It organizes a complex social world and lets past experience guide new interactions.

Why can social categorization be misleading?

People vary within groups, so group assumptions can replace attention to individual evidence.

What does the shape-sorting image illustrate?

Our tendency to organize stimuli into categories based on perceived similarities and differences.

What is an ingroup?

A group a person believes they belong to.

What is an outgroup?

A group a person believes they do not belong to.

Can ingroup and outgroup boundaries change across situations?

Yes. Someone from another university may be an outgroup member academically but an ingroup member because of a shared hometown.

What is ingroup bias?

Favoring or liking members of your own group more than outsiders.

Does ingroup bias necessarily mean outgroup hatred?

No. Favoring insiders does not require disliking outsiders.

You like a stranger more after learning they attend your university? What concept fits?

Ingroup bias: recognizing shared membership increases favorability.

What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?

Seeing outgroup members as more similar to one another than ingroup members.

What phrase captures outgroup homogeneity?

We are all different, but they are all alike.

How do ingroup bias and outgroup homogeneity differ?

Ingroup bias concerns preference; outgroup homogeneity concerns perceived similarity.

How can outgroup homogeneity support stereotypes?

If a group seems uniform, a trait associated with one member is more easily generalized to everyone.

What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

An expectation changes treatment of a person, prompting a response that appears to confirm the expectation.

What is the sequence of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Expectation —> Treatment of the target —> Target’s response —> Apparent confirmation

Who is the perceiver in a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The person holding the expectation and acting toward the target.

Who is the target in a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The person whose response is affected by the perceiver’s treatment.

What did Word, Zanna, and Cooper study in 1974?

How interviewer treatment could contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy in job interviews.

Who conducted interviews in Word, Zanna, and Cooper’s Study 1?

White participants.

How were Black candidates treated in Word, Zanna, and Cooper’s Study 1?

Interviewers sat farther away, made more speech errors, and held shorter interviews.

What was the result of Word, Zanna, and Cooper’s Study 2?

White candidates receiving the treatment previously given to Black candidates performed worse.

What is the main conclusion of the Word, Zanna, and Cooper studies?

Biased treatment can help create the poor performance that appears to justify a stereotype.

What three information processes can stereotypes influence?

Attention, interpretation, and memory.

How can stereotypes direct attention?

They can make stereotype-consistent behavior stand out more than contradictory behavior.

How can stereotypes distort attention?

Ambiguous behavior may be given a meaning that fits the activated stereotype.

How can stereotypes affect memory?

They can influence which details are remembered and how events are reconstructed.

What is confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias?

Seeking, noticing, or interpreting information to support an existing belief while discounting contradictory information.

How does confirmation bias maintain a stereotype?

Supporting evidence gets more attention or weight, while counterexamples are ignored or explained away.

How does confirmation bias and a self-fulfilling prophecy differ?

Confirmation bias shapes processing of evidence; a self-fulfilling prophecy helps produce confirming behavior through treatment.

What is counter-stereotypic information?

Information that contradicts a stereotype.

What is subtyping?

Placing people who contradict a stereotype in a separate subgroup, preserving the broader stereotype.

How do subtyping and confirmation bias differ?

Subtyping separates contradicting people into exceptions; confirmation bias favors evidence or interpretations that support the belief.

What is priming?

Prior exposure makes related ideas more accessible and influence later thinking.

How do priming and spreading activation differ?

Priming describes the effect of prior exposure; spreading activation describes how related concepts become accessible.

What are three features of automatic processing?

Unconscious, unintentional, and effortless.

Does automatic stereotype activation equal conscious endorsement?

No. An association can become active without being deliberately accepted as true.

What did Devine examine in 1989?

Whether activating a racial stereotype would influence interpretation of ambiguous behavior.

Who were the participants in the Devine study?

White participants.

What was Devine’s independent variable?

The type of prime: stereotype-related words versus neutral words.

What stereotype-related words appear in the Devine slides?

Africa, ghetto, welfare, and basketball. These are research cues, not accurate descriptions of African Americans.

What neutral words appear in the Devine slides?

Number and however.

Who was Donald in the Devine study?

The person described in a passage containing ambiguously hostile behavior.

What behaviors did Donald display in the Devine example?

Arguing with a landlord and demanding money back from a store clerk.

Was Donald’s race stated in the Devine study?

No.

Was hostility directly primed in the Devine study?

No. It was a related trait whose activation was being examined.

What was Devine’s dependent variable?

Participants’ ratings of Donald’s hostility.

What was the main result of Devine’s study?

Stereotype-primed participants rated Donald as more hostile than neutral-primed participants.

Did Devine’s effect appear only among high-prejudice participants?

No. It appeared among both high and low-prejudice participants.

Why does Devine’s result support spreading activation?

The primes activated a linked trait, hostility, even though that trait was not directly primed.

What is egalitarian motivation?

A commitment to equality and fair treatment that encourages checking bias responses.

What is an implementation intention?

A specific if-then plank linking a situation with a planned action.

Give an implementation intention for reducing stereotyping.

If I notice a group-based assumption, then I will think of counter-stereotypic examples and seek individual information.

What is perspective talking?

Considering the situation from the other person’s point of view.

What is individuating information?

Information about a specific person’s abilities, experiences, goals, or behavior rather than group assumptions.

What are four stereotype-reduction approaches?

Egalitarian motivation, implementation intentions, perspective taking, and focusing on individuating information instead of group membership.