Effects of stereotyping

When writing about the effects of stereotypes, the following concepts could be explained:

Reconstructive memory: The theory that memory is not recalled as "snapshots."  The act of remembering may be influenced by perception, imagination, and beliefs.

Schema: mental representations that are derived from prior experience and knowledge. Schemas help us to predict what to expect based on what has happened before.  They are used to organize our knowledge, assist recall, guide our behaviour, and help us to make sense of current experiences.

Spotlight anxiety: The feeling of anxiety linked to the belief that one is being watched or judged. This is part of the explanation of stereotype threat.

Stereotype: a cognitive generalization about the qualities and characteristics of the members of a group. Stereotypes, like schemas, simplify perceptions and judgments, but they are often exaggerated, negative rather than positive, and resistant to change even when people encounter individuals with qualities that contradict the stereotype

Stereotype threat: When people feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group.  This threat often leads to a decrease in task performance, even if the person does not believe in the stereotype.

Stone et al

Aim: To investigate the effect of schema on information comprehension and memory

Procedure:

  1. Told name and shown face of a basketball player
  2. Listened to an audio recording of a basketball game
  3. Asked to rank each player based on individual performance, athletic ability and contribution to team's performance

or Procdure:

College-aged participants were asked to listen to a basketball game (radio commentary) and make judgements about one of the players in the game. Then they were shown an image of a player there were supposedly listening to. One group was shown a picture of a black player and another group an image of a white player. Then they were asked to make judgements.

Findings:Black: ranked him as "having significantly more athletic ability and having had played a better games" \n White: "exhibited more basketball intelligence and hustle"

Strengths:

  • relatively cheap, quick, and efficient way of gathering information from a large sample of people
  • high ecological validity

Limitations:

  • social desirability --> false responses
  • low reliability (internal validity)
  • no cause and effect relationship

Martin and Halverson

Aim: To investigate the role of gender schema on a child's ability to recall information that was not consistent with their gender schema

Procedure:

  • Children were given a test level of gender stereotyping prior to the experiment.
  • Children were presented with 16 pictures, one at a time.
  • Researchers showed the children pictures of males and females in activities that were either in line with gender role schemas (for example, a girl playing with a doll - or inconsistent with gender role schemas)
  • Children were asked to identify the sex of the person in the picture (man, woman, boy, or girl). They were not told that they would have to remember the images.
  • A week later, the children were asked to remember what they had seen in the pictures.

Findings: Both boys and girls were more likely to misremember the sex of an actor on inconsistent pictures than on consistent pictures. Both boys and girls were more confident in their recollection of the actor's sex on consistent pictures than on inconsistent pictures. 84% of the errors were made on pictures with a sex-inconsistent activity.

Strengths:

  • As both males and females participated, the study is more generalizable despite the relatively small sample ∴ there is no gender bias
  • Highly standardized and can be replicated to determine its level of reliability.

Limitations:

  • Also, not as generalizable as only children participated in this experiment
  • The task has low ecological validity as the task is very artificial and the study is highly controlled. The study may not reflect how children process information about gender in the real world.

When discussing the effects of stereotypes, you may consider the following points:

  • The difficulty of studying human cognition; we cannot observe what we cannot see. As a result, assumptions are made about the process.
  • The constructs of "spotlight anxiety" and "schema" cannot be measured.
  • Much of the research is done under controlled conditions that are highly artificial. This makes it difficult to determine the extent to which this reflects what happens in real life.
  • Research on stereotype threat has not been consistently replicated.  This means that the theory and its research have not been shown to be reliable.
  • The role of stereotypes in memory distortion plays an important role in eyewitness testimony.  The research has been applied to improve the techniques for gathering information from witnesses.