Stereotyping

Definition: A stereotype is a social perception of an individual in terms of group membership or physical attributes.

Stereotyping is a form of social categorization that affects the behaviour of those who hold the stereotype and can affect those who are labelled by a stereotype.

One way that they are formed is through social identity theory:
Social categorization - we identify in which group we belong and which we do not, creating in and out-groups.
Social identification - takes place after we decide which group we belong to, and we adopt the norms and characteristics of our groups
Social comparison - Justifying our group membership and positively comparing our in-group to an out-group
Positive distinctiveness -Favour traits of our in-group even if we did not choose to be a part of the group ourselves

Two ways a person may be affected by stereotypes would be through stereotype threat or memory distortion.

Stereotype threat - Happens when someone is in a situation where there is a threat of being judged or treated stereotypically or a fear of doing something that would inadvertenly confirm that stereotype. So when a person sees the negative traits of a certain stereotype within themselves that identity becomes more salient and causes them to perform worse than they usually would.
Memory distortion - Links to schema and is the second effect of stereotyping. For example in 1947 a study was carried out by Allport and Postman to see if stereotyping would have an effect on recall. The researchers showed the participant an image of a white man holding a razor and threatening a black man on the subway. Then the participant was asked to describe what they had seen in the picture to a different participant. The process was repeated up to 7 participants and researchers found that in over half of the experiments, the story was retold that the black man was threatening the white man. Showing that stereotyping had an effect on the retelling of the story.

Hilliard and Liben (2010) - formation of stereotyping
aim → determine how social category salience may play a role in the development of stereotypes and inter-group behaviour in children

research method → experimental - field experiment - high ecological low internal validity (environment cannot be controlled)

sample →57 US children - 3 -5 years old. Roughly equal number of males and females.

Conditions:

  • High Salience → aware of their gender by lining them up by sex, posting separate boys’ and girls’ bulletin boards - teachers use gender-specific language

  • Low salience → no instructions about changing behaviour - control group

Procedure → pre-test/ post-test design

  • Each child completed a gender attitude test - to measure gender flexibility

  • They were shown pictures of activities and were asked for each if boys, girls, or both should perform it

    • Included 22 culturally masculine, 20 culturally feminine, 34 neutral.

  • The test calculated the number of “both” answers.

    • Lower number of both responses → high number of gender stereotypes

  • The study lasted for 2 weeks.

Results → Children in high salience showed increased gender stereotypes and decreased play with other-sex peers.

Evaluation →

  • Sampling bias - private school

  • Cause-and-effect → not possible to measure the level of salience

  • Ethical concern

Spencer et al (1999) - Stereotype threat
aim → To investigate if stereotype threat will cause women not to be able to perform to their best ability when answering maths questions when stereotype threat is present

research method → experimental methodology

sample → 28 men and 28 women were selected from the introductory psychology pool at the University of Michigan. All participants were required to have completed at least one semester of calculus and to have received a grade of ‘‘B’’ or better. They also were required to have scored above the 85th percentile in Maths for their year group (i.e. they were all of equal ability in Maths).

Procedure → Participants went to a laboratory and were put in mixed groups from 3-6 participants. And were told “We are developing some new tests that we are evaluating across a large group of University of Michigan students. Today you will be taking a math test”

There were 2 conditions:
relevance condition - Participants were told that the test had shown gender differences in the past (to promote feelings of stereotype threat in the female participants as Maths is thought to be something that women underperform in compared to men)
Non-relevance condition - stereotype was to be irrelevant, participants were told that the test had never shown gender differences in the past


Results → In the relevance condition, women significantly underperformed in relation to equally qualified men. In the irrelevant condition, the performance in the Maths test was about equal.

Evaluation → low in ecological validity, a cause and effect relationship can be established it can be said to have high internal validity, ethical concerns with stereotype threat research (don’t know long-term effect of creating the stereotype threat) & Sample is not representative as It was psychology students (cannot be generalised to wider population or other cultures)

Martin & Halvorsen - memory distortion

aim → investigated the role of gender schema on a child's ability to recall information that was not consistent with their gender schema.

research method → cross-sectional

sample → Made up of 48 children (24 male, 24 female). The kids were given a test (SERLI) to see their level of gender stereotyping.

Procedure → The kids were shown 16 pictures of male and female kids doing activities that were either in line with gender role schemas or inconsistent with gender role schemas. The kids were asked to identify the sex of the person in the picture and were not told to remember things.
A week later the kids were asked to remember what they had seen in the pictures. They were asked about 24 pictures the 16 they had seen and 8 that they had not. The 8 "unseen images” The kids were asked "Do you remember seeing a picture of something doing (activity) in the pictures I showed you last week?" And then they were asked if the person they remember seeing was a girl, a boy, a man, a woman, or "don't remember." and then asked to rate their level of confidence on a four-point scale.

Results → For pictures with female actors, those activities consistent with gender stereotypes were more often remembered than inconsistent activities, whereas for pictures with male actors, those activities inconsistent with the stereotype were remembered better. Regardless of their level of stereotyping, children had distorted memories of pictures that were not consistent with gender role schemas. This supports the theory that stereotypes affect both the encoding and retrieval of information. When they were asked to identify the sex of the person in the picture in the first phase of the study, children sometimes made errors that made the sex consistent with gender stereotypes. This is evidence of distortion on encoding. They also made errors in the recall or retrieval of the information.

Evaluation → highly standardized, can be replicated, The study controlled for response bias, low ecological validity as the task is very artificial and the study is highly controlled,