Chapter 10 Social Psychology: Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice

Unfavorable attitude toward a social group and its members

Dehumanization

Stripping people of their dignity and humaanity

Genocide

The ultimate expression of prejudice by exterminating an entire social group

Three-component Attitude Model

An attitude consists of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. This threefold dimension has an ancient heritage, stressing thought, feeling, and action as basic to human experience

Sexism

Prejudice and discrimination against people based on their gender

Stereotype

Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members

S3x Role

Behavior deemed s3x-stereotypically appropriate

Role congruity theory

Mainly applied to the gender gap in leadership - because social stereotypes of women are inconsistent with people’s schemas of effective leadership, women are evaluated as poor leaders

Gender

S3x-stereotypical attributes of a person

Glass Ceiling

An invisible barrier that prevents women and minorities from attaining top leadership positions

Glass Cliff

A tendency for women rather than men to be appointed to precarious leadership positions associated with a high probability of failure and criticism

Face-ism

Media depiction that gives more prominence to the head and less prominence to the body for men, but vice versa for women

Attribution

The process of assigning a cause to our own behavior, and that of others

Racism

Prejudice and discrimination of people based on their ethnicity or race

Implicit Association Test

Reaction-time test to measure attitudes, particularly unpopular attitudes that people might conceal

Ageism

Prejudice and discrimination against people based on their age

Tokenism

The practice of publicly making small concessions to a minority group to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination

Reverse Discrimination

The practice of publicly being prejudiced in favor of a minority group to deflect accusations of prejudice and discrimination against that group

Stigma

Group attributes that mediate a negative social evaluation of people belonging to the group

Self-esteem

Feelings about and evaluations of oneself

Stereotype Threat

Feeling that we will be judged and treated in terms of negative stereotypes of our group, and that we will inadvertently confirm these stereotypes through our behavior

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Expectations and assumptions about a person that influence our interaction with that person and eventually change their behavior in line with our expec

Essentialism

Pervasive tendency to consider behavior to reflect underlying, often innate, properties of people or the groups they belong to

Mere Exposure Effect

Repeated exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object

Frustration-aggression Hypothesis

Theory that all frustration leads to aggression, and all aggression comes from frustration. Used to explain prejudice and intergroup aggression

Scapegoat

Individual or group that becomes the target for anger and frustration caused by a different individual or group or some other set of circumstances

Displacement

Psychodynamic concept referring to the transfer of negative feelings onto an individual or group other than that which originally caused the negative feelings

Collective Behavior

The behavior of people en masse, such as in a crowd, protest, or riot

Relative Deprivation

A sense of having less than we feel entitled to

Authoritarian Personality

Personality syndrome originating in childhood that predisposes individuals to be prejudiced

Ethnocentrism

Evaluative preference for all aspects of our own group relative to other groups

Acquiescent Response Set

Tendency to agree with items in an attitude questionnaire. This leads to an ambiguity in interpretation if a high score on an attitude questionnaire can only be obtained by agreeing with all or most items

Dogmatism

Cognitive style that is rigid and intolerant, and predisposes people to be prejudiced

Social Dominance Theory

Theory that attributes prejudice to an individual’s acceptance of an ideology that legitimizes ingroup-serving hierarchy and domination, and rejects egalitarian ideologies

System Justification Theory

Theory that attributes social stasis to people’s adherence to an ideology that justifies and protects the status quo

Belief Congruence Theory

The theory that similar beliefs promote liking and social harmony among people, while dissimilar beliefs produce dislike and prejudice

Minimal Group Paradigm

Experimental methodology to investigate the effect of social categorization alone on behavior

Discrimination

The behavioral expression of prejudice