W4 L2: Stereotypes II

how are stereotyes maintained?

  • stereotypes are socially shared within communities

  • broken telephone, gossiping - communication is not straight forward, it changes slightly everytime its passed around

STUDY

  • Lyons & Kashima (2001)

  • examined transmission of stereotypes in communication chains

  • described an australian footballer - stereotype consistent (drinks beer, goes to parties and gets angry) and stereotype inconsistent (likes classisc music, flowers)

  • as ppts shared the description, inconsistent info dissapeared but consistent info didnt

  • storied became more stereotypical in content, this is due to:

  1. cognitive processes - we remember and pay more attention to stereotype-consistent info

  2. social processes - we want to establish common ground with others, signal were on the same page

Linguistic Abstraction

STUDY

  • linguistic category model - Sam and Fiedler 1988

  • descriptions can be: Specific → Abstract

  • description verb (DAV) - “Beavis hit Butthead”

  • interpretative action verb (IAV) - “Beavis hurt Butthead”

  • state verb (SV) - “Beavis hates Butthead”

  • adjective (Adj) - “beavis is aggressive”

Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB)

  • examined how language abstraction used to describe ingroup and outgroup members can trans mit and sustain stereotypes

STUDY

  • horse racing competition

  • ppts were supporters of competing teams

  • showed images and asked to describe them

  • desirable vs. undesirable actions

  • ingroup vs. outgroup actors shown

  • looked at how abstract the language was used

  • he found that ppts tend to use more abstract language when we describe positive ingroup and negative outgroup bhv

consequences of LIB

  • Participants read descriptions of behaviours generated in Study 1 (without seeing the cartoons)

  • ppts were asked:

  1. how likely they thought that the action described was to be repeated in the future

  2. what does the informations reveal about the protagonist

  • results:

  • increasing level of abstraction → more informative about the actor and more likely to be repeated

language abstraction propagates stereotypes

  • positive ingroup and negative outgroup bhv is presented as enduring and typical

  • applied to members of a group repeatedly this leads to stereotyping

being stereotyped

  • historically - research focused on documenting/ describing stereotyoes and their use

  • recently effects of stereotyoes have been considered - focus on the stereotyped and how it affects them

stereotype threat

STUDY

  • Steele & Aronson (1995)

  • examined performance on an intellectual ability test among black and white ppts with ethnicity made salient or not

  • ethnicity made salient - asking ppts for demographic info immediataly before taking verbal ability test

  • ethnicity not salient - demographic info not collected

  • Does a reminder about ethnicity affect performance on this task?

  • when salient white ppts did significantly better than black ppts

  • when not salient black ppts did better than white ppts

stereotype threat: women in stem

STUDY

  • Spencer, Steele & Quinn (1999)

  • male and female ppts selected had the same math abilities

  • ppts asked to take a maths test that was either described as being diagnostic of gender differences in math or not

  • when ppts were told it described differences, women had much lower scores when compared to men and when compared with the other condition

  • when test wasnt described both men and women has similar scores

stereotype threat: Process

  • stereotype treath performance decrements can be prevented by:

- reducing perceptions of threat: individuating, making multiple identities salient, perceptions of stereotyped qualities as malleable

- strengthening coping: self-affirmation, mindfulness

- creationg identity safe environments: role models, single-group environments

preventing stereotype threat

STUDY

  • Sherman et al. (2013)

  • to counter the effects of stereotype threat on Latino American middle school students’ performance in academic tests (US)

  • ppts: 6-8 grade students, 103 European American, 81 Latino American

  • method: intervention focused on value affirmation

  • 2 conditions: value affirmation, control

- “What are your personal values?” Write a few sentences describing why these things are important to you

- describe something that’s important to you in your life

  • Writing an essay describing how this value will be important to you in the coming spring

  • Latino American students earned higher grades in the affirmation condition (compared to control) in the end of the year

  • European American students were unaffected

Challenging stereotype threat in university

  • who is most likely to suffer from stereotype threat at uni? what courses?

  • what are some initiatives we as a uni could put in place to tackle ST?