Prejudice & Stereotyping

this module is terrible bro what are these notes

Intro

• Knowing the factors that are associated with prejudice would enable us to work out a way to reduce prejudice in our society

• Perry and colleagues’ 2012 research shows (Perry, Pullen & Oser, 2012), people living with chronic stress from their experience of sexism and racism have been found to be more at risk of taking their own lives.

Part A — Three Components of Prejudice

Cognitive component

• Beliefs, often about a group, and most commonly represented in the form of a stereotype

• Stereotype = simplified idea of what a group of people are like, often a gross exaggeration of something

• Hard to avoid stereotyping

• In the context of grouping things into schemas to process information, our ability to stereotype people, based on the typical characteristics that are associated with different groups of people, can be very helpful when it comes to getting through our day

• However, stereotyping becomes dysfunctional when our initial judgement about a group is negative––when our initial judgement about a group is based on something other than what is actually true in reality.

Affective component

• Negative feelings about another group, whether dislike, resentment, or disgust

Behavioural component

• Discrimination; people who are the target of prejudice are being denied opportunities

Kernel of Truth Argument

• LeVine & Campbell (1972)

• Suggests that at their heart, the stereotypes are somewhat true and based on reality

• Theres a seed of truth, but the stereotype is a great exaggeration of that seed

• Usually must be evidence based however

Behavioural Interpretation and Sub-typing

• I’m sure you can think of somebody who you think is arrogant. If you decide that this person thinks they’re better than you, no matter what the actual behaviour of that person, you are likely to still perceive this person as arrogant. You start to see evidence for your assumption.

• Sometimes people violate the stereotype, but that doesn’t remove them from the stereotype—they instead go into a subtype of it

Media

• Obviously, media influence can be explicit, but sometimes it influences stereotypes in subtle ways too.

• The explicit ways media can influence stereotypes is how they choose to frame ambiguous behaviour.

• Sometimes the media portrays stereotyping in really subtle ways. This is called “face-ism.”

• Face-ism refers to the difference in the way men and women are portrayed in photographs.

• In the media, photographs of women tend to focus on their body, whereas photographs of men tend to focus on their face (Archer, Iritani, Kimes, Barrios, 1983).

• Photographs of men tend to be closely cropped to head and shoulder, signalling ambition, intelligence, and social prominence. Showing more of a woman’s body subtly indicates they’re valued more for the way they look than for their intelligence.

Racial Stereotyping

• Gaertner & Dovidio in 1986, argued in their theory of aversive racism that most people are motivated to maintain a non-prejudiced self-image––they find racial prejudice aversive, and endorse fair treatment of all groups, and fear appearing prejudiced.

• However, many of these people do subconsciously harbour negative feelings toward those from minority groups. And discrimination leaks out in situations where behaviour can be justified as non-prejudiced

• One prevailing stereotype of the Black communities in Australia, the USA and Europe is that they are relatively aggressive and inclined to criminal behaviour. When people view others through the lens of the stereotype, neutral and unthreatening behaviour can be re-interpreted as sinister and aggressive.

Fear of Reporting Discrimination

• One of the stereotypes of minorities is that they like to speak up about experiencing discrimination. The stereotype is that minorities who attribute failures due to discrimination are less likeable than those who “take it on the chin”.

Stereotype Threat

• Stereotype threat is when people feel that they are at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group.

• If those belonging to negatively stereotyped groups are confronted with stereotypes associated with their group, it’s likely that they will become anxious about what they’re doing, which then may affect their ability to perform well in a task.

• So, depending on what people think the outcome is going to be, they create a reality through their performance.

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

• Self-fulfilling prophecies refer to times when our expectations of a person changes the way we interact with them, which then changes their behaviour in line with our expectations.