Prejudice and Stereotyping

1. Definitions

• Prejudice: A negative prejudgment of a group and its individual members.

• Discrimination: Unfair treatment of members of a particular group based on their group membership.

• Stereotypes: Beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people.

2. Types of Prejudice

• Based on various group memberships as studied by social psychologists, including:

  • Race

  • Gender

  • Religion

  • Sexual orientation

  • Disability

  • Weight

3. Implicit and Explicit Prejudice

• Explicit Prejudice: Awareness of one's prejudiced views; can articulate these views.

• Implicit Prejudice: Unacknowledged negative associations towards a group.

• The concept illustrates a dual attitude system:

  • Different explicit (conscious) and implicit (automatic) attitudes toward the same target.

  • Implicit attitudes can persist despite changes in explicit views due to education.

4. Racial Prejudice

• Opinions on the disappearance of racial prejudice vary by demographic.

• Implicit attitudes remain potent even as explicit attitudes change.

• Issues include:

  • Employment discrimination (e.g., major platforms like Airbnb, Uber).

  • Racial profiling during traffic stops.

5. Evidence of Racial Discrimination in Hiring

• Study: 5000 identical job applications sent, varying only in perceived applicant race by name.

  • Results: "White-sounding" names received 50% more callbacks.

• Ongoing research indicates stability in discrimination rates against African-Americans,

  • Whites receive significantly more callbacks in hiring studies.

6. Gender Prejudice

• Gender stereotypes impact societal perceptions of behavior,

  • Accepting these stereotypes can perpetuate their validity.

• Benevolent Sexism: Positive attitudes that imply women’s inferiority.

• Hostile Sexism: Openly negative attitudes portraying women negatively.

7. Gender Discrimination

• Gender-based discrimination remains present in various forms, both overt and subtle.

8. LGBTQ+ Prejudice

• Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment persists despite signs of diminishing overall prejudice in Western societies.

  • Challenges include:

    • Job discrimination.

    • Mixed support for marriage equality.

    • Experiences of harassment and familial rejection.

9. Sources of Prejudice

9.1 Social Sources

• Factors include unequal social status, compliance with group norms, and systemic support.

9.2 Motivational Sources

• Realistic Group Conflict Theory: Prejudice arises from competition for scarce resources.

• Ingroup Bias: Favoring one’s own group.

• Social Identity Theory: Part of self-concept derived from group membership leads to favoritism and derogation of outgroups.

10. Cognitive Sources

10.1 Group Categorization

• Categorization of individuals based on perceived attributes helps form impressions but can lead to:

  • Overestimation of differences between groups.

  • Underestimation of differences within groups (outgroup homogeneity effect).

10.2 Confirmation Bias

• Experiment demonstrated biases based on perceived race of a basketball player leading to skewed evaluations of their skills.

11. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

• Studies indicate that interview biases led to worse performance evaluations for Black applicants.

• Follow-up studies showed similar bias could negatively impact the performance of White applicants treated under the same conditions as Black applicants.

12. Consequences of Prejudice

• Measured consequences of both explicit and implicit prejudice include:

  • Differences in verbal and non-verbal behavior during interactions based on racial bias.

  • Self-fulfilling prophecies where biases impact performance and outcomes in social settings.