PSYC 221 stereotype formation and race prejudice PDF

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Summary

lectures on stereotype formation (1 and 2) and race prejudice (3)...

Description

Beginning of second area of PSYC221  Stereotype formation 

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Mutually reinforcing

Stereotype content: What a group looks like, what a group is made of Can be very accurate or inaccurate Misperceiving differences: What people think it means - only the strongest of women are like the weakest of men Most sex differences that are reported are usually around a cohen's d of 0.2-0.5 One of the strongest sex differences is that men are taller than women (cohen's d =0.8)

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Biology vs. socialisation Sex = biological Gender = social (has nothing to do with biology) People treat gender differences as if they were biologically based Natural kinds vs artefacts: Artefacts: if you break a chair down it's no longer a chair Natural kinds: if you turn gold into a neckless it is still gold Why do we do it? (stereotype) Categorisation: it gives a sense of prediction and control; it simplifies the social world

Stereotype Formation Personal experience: even if we have direct experience with members of other groups does not mean that we can't be biased. There are cognitive processes that create bias representations 1. Salient members 2. Distinctive information 

1. Rothbart et. al Information about 2 groups of individuals Group 1 - neutral behaviours; vaguely positive/negative. Some of them would have had criminal behaviours (minor things) Group 2 - neutral behaviours but criminal behaviour was much more serious (e.g. murder) Participants were asked to estimate how many people in the groups had criminal behaviour. Group 2 had a much higher estimation because the crimes were much more salient. For group 1 people were pretty accurate 2. Hamilton & Gifford (1976) - illusory correlation Group A - 16 positive and 8 negative behaviour Group B - 8 positive and 4 negative behaviour Participants vastly overestimated Group B's negative cell. They also liked group B better They come to mind quickly --> conclusion: "there must have been a lot of them"

Although the great majority of Arabs do not engage in any terrorist activity, that negative behaviour is more salient which contributes to stereotypes Interaction & Emotion Incidental: If you are in a good mood before you meet someone then that is the affect you bring in with you. A lot of research has indicated is that when people are in a happy mood or angry mood they tend to be more stereotypical in their judgments People who are sad are less likely to judge someone stereotypically (its more about the arousal rather than the emotion

We don’t like uncertainty (inability to predict/control) Personal Experience Social roles are not considered When no longer an enemy the same behaviour takes different meaning 

Bin Laden - when he was killing soviets he was freedom fighter. Once he kills Americans he's a terrorist  Social roles & the "Kernel of Truth" view E.g. money-lending (and charging interest) in the middle ages (something the catholic church was against) Most money-lenders were Jewish (they were already a minority in Europe and they are doing something that we wouldn’t do)

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Hoffman & Hurst (1990) Had people read about: Fictional "alien" species Orinthians = typical role: child rare (required affectiveness etc) Ackmians = typical role: worker (required competence etc) Question was: how are they perceived? Once out of their role, they are no longer perceived as their role but they are not perceived as the opposite either Social learning We learn about groups from family, friends, groups

Minorities are underrepresent in the media Because it comes to mind quickly, it becomes overestimated

Poor people are poor because they are "lazy" and do not want to work E.g. AIDS was viewed as caused by or was a punishment for homosexuality

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Summary: Stereotypes are formed through both normal cognitive and social processes They often exist in complete absence of first-hand information. But even first-hand experience can be biased…

If you recognize that there are inequalities, and if you are benefiting from those inequalities then there is motivation:  System justification theory  Every individual has 3 justifications: 1. Ego justification: (self-justification) 2. Group justification: justifying the things that we do as a group 3. System justification: the need to justify the status quo (the way things are is valid and just). Everybody has at least some motivation towards system justification. Some level (implicit level) everyone has this motivation Research: Correll et al (2002): shoot/no-shoot game Little demo in class It takes longer to make a decision when they are armed if the person is white. However it takes longer to make a decision if a black person is NOT armed

People are equally sensitive to presence or absence of a gun. The difference emerges because the criterion for shooting shifts downward when person is black Stereotypes & Snap Judgments Stereotypes can be automatically activated, outside of awareness, and influence all kinds of judgments, feelings & behaviours  Belief? E.g. police officers that are quite racists. There are others who are not but the societal associations are there and we all know them. If those are activated in a high arousal/snap judgments situations then they can have the same impact as the actual belief that a person is a criminal  Extra-personal associations? 

Stereotype activation

A stereotype = schema (mental representation of a group) It can be activated through:  The presence of a group member  Solo-status ("tokenism" - look this term up) Say you had a study group of 10 people with 9 people and 1 man, that man is the token in this sample. He is more salient Increased salience

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Accessibility of category label Can become automatic Symbols of a group

Conflict Realistic conflict theory: two or more groups in competition with each other. X number of jobs. People are competing for those jobs Relative deprivation theory: Perception of conflict where it might not actually exist example of murder of a Chinese Relative deprivation theory: American because this white American had lost his job to a Japanese person; obviously there was no competition between this American guy and the Chinese person that was murdered by him)

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Once activated, stereotypes affect: How quickly we perceive (stereotypes are easy and therefore we perceive them quickly) What we notice How we interpret what we notice What we remember Stereotypes & Information Search

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Biased hypothesis testing Johnston & Macrae (1994) Findings: people tended to pick categorical information that could only confirm stereotypes Stereotypes and information processing It affects:

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Interpretation: especially of ambiguous behaviour E.g. black kid vs. white kid poking other kid with a pencil

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Shifting standards E.g. a man and woman of the same height can be subjectively very different (e.g. average/short man and tall woman) Biernat & vescio (2002) For high ability there was no difference in the likelihood of men and women being picked But between a medium ability men/women men is more likely to be picked. Its all about subjectivity

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Attributional differences

Group-serving attribution:

Ingroup: whatever group you are a member of And outgroup: whatever group you are NOT a member of Dispositional inferences for in-group (ps: dispositional attribution is when people ignore the situation that someone may be in and therefore judge their behaviour based on what they think their personality might be; situational attribution occurs when there is a tendency to analyse someone's actions according to the situation that they are in) Inference Inconsistent diagnostic. And inconsistencies will have an effect Stereotypes & effects on memory 

Memory We tend to remember things that are consistent with stereotypes because they are processed quickly/easily Macrae et. al. (1994) recall Could be either consistent or inconsistent with the stereotypes that come under their profession

Absent: there is no difference because there is no stereotype Even the people who weren't aware of seeing the labels showed stereotypical effect Sherman et al. (1998): Encoding flexibility model Stereotypes actually allow us the capacity of handling the inconsistent information. Inconsistency resolution requires effort!!! 

Inference

Out-group homogeneity effect: idea that they are all the same Difficulty from people from another group (e.g. black people) in recognising and differentiating members of the other group (e.g. white people) This means that we underestimate variance at the same time that we overestimate similarity Study by Word, Zanna & Cooper (1974) Study 1: had white participants "interview" either white or black candidates They couldn't hear the participant talk. Those people judged how great the candidates were. Black candidates were rated as more nervous and less qualified.

Study 2: They trained confederates to interview people like people interviewed white or black candidates All white participants, that were either treated like the white candidates from the first study or black candidates from the first study. Results: they were rated all the same  

Summary: Stereotypes can affect us in a relatively automatic (thoughtless) manner.. BUT can also affect us when processing information in a more thoughtful/deliberative manner It can affect information processing at every single level

1920s and 30s: race prejudice  Inequalities in society are not due to "inferiority" of minorities prejudice: unjustified, irrational, or faulty negative intergroup attitude - "prejudice is rooted in ignorance" 1930's and 40s Freudian psychodynamic theory on prejudice: aggression, originating from chronic social frustrations, displaced onto minorities as scapegoats WW1 example: Germany was in the shit so Hitler created a "scape goat" (jews) 1950's: The Prejudiced Personality Prejudice: the expression of an inner need generated by pathological personality 1960's and 70s: Culture and society culture can produce and help maintain prejudice Summer Camp from Hell: Robber's Cave Sherif (1961) Whats the structure of the group dynamics that produces hate? 1970s: measuring types of racism Modern racism, ambivalent racism 1980s-present: psychological fundamentals  What are the universal cognitive & motivational processes that lead to prejudice? An integration: Duckitt (1992) Tried to provide a model that described all of the factor that account for the generation of prejudice 1. Part of being human - certain universal psychological processes build an inherently human potential or propensity for prejudice 2. Facebook bubbles (only get information that confirms your views) - social & intergroup dynamics describe the conditions of interaction that elaborate this potential into normatively shared patterns of prejudice 3. Mechanisms of transmission explain how inter-group dynamics and shared patterns of prejudice are socially transmitted to individual group members

4. Individual-difference dimensions determine individual susceptibility to prejudice and serve to modulate the impact of social transmission mechanisms 1. Part of being human - certain universal psychological processes build an inherently human potential or propensity for prejudice Explicit vs. Implicit 

Implicit prejudice: easy to pair categories that are consistent with one another Thoughts or feelings about group which arise due to past experiences which one is either unaware of or which one cannot attribute to an identified previous experience Gawronski et al 2006 - three types of awareness:  Source awareness: what has activated that  Content awareness: whether you are conscious of the content of that association  Impact awareness: most important - are you aware of the impact of your judgment or behaviour? There are therefore 3 ways we could be unaware of our implicit bias Implicit: associative evaluations (activations have become activated outside their awareness) Explicit: propositional evaluations Dovidio, Kawakami & Gaertner (2002) From graph we can infer that: Implicit prejudice best predicts non-verbal behaviour, Explicit prejudice predicts verbal behaviour 2. Facebook bubbles (only get information that confirms your views) - social & intergroup dynamics describe the conditions of interaction that elaborate this potential into normatively shared patterns of prejudice  

Reducing Prejudice Intergroup contact "contact hypothesis" (Allport) If you want to decrease prejudice you need to increase contact with people from other groups Contact by itself is not enough (mere contact doesn't work)" Models of stereotype change

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Bookkeeping model: change is gradual as disconfirming instances accumulate It changes gradually, as you learn positive things from those groups + you start making friends from that group

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Explaining away inconsistencies: "special circumstances" - we explain away inconsistencies so it can't have an impact on stereotype; don't get incorporated E.g. Deaux & Emswiller

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Conversion model: sudden, often dramatic, change with critical disconfirmation (e.g. a black president)

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Exceptions to the rule: Very inconsistent members have no impact on perceptions of "typical" members

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Subtyping model: Initial beliefs are applied less generally as subtypes accumulate Creating special narrower groups within the later category Overcoming resistance

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Repeated inconsistency: if the same inconsistencies happen over and over again then it becomes really hard to explain that away Widespread inconsistency Being typical as well as inconsistent So when is contact enough? Contact has to be supported by authority: Equal status of groups Cooperative tasks

4. Individual-difference dimensions determine individual susceptibility to prejudice and serve to modulate the impact of social transmission mechanisms

Prejudice with or without compunction 

Devine et al. (1991)

High prejudiced people were angry because "you shouldn't tell me how I should act" Motivations to avoid prejudice Dunton & Fazio (1997)  Concern with acting prejudiced - some people are concerned with not wanting people to think they are prejudiced or not being prejudiced at all  Restraint to avoid disputed High motivation --> seek to control their respondance

How about suppression? Macrae et al (1996) - big name in the literature of stereotype literature Some people were told to supress the stereotype

The point is that things change, but they change very slowly. It is often a matter of generations (e.g. comparing our generation to our grandparent's generation)...