4/9-4/11: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Stereotype -- Cognitive Representation
Prejudice -- Attitude (affective evaluation)
Discrimination-- Action

• Stereotype: cognitive representation that associates a social group with a specific attribute(s) in an oversimplified way
• Don't Agree with Book's definition: Stereotype = belief   
• Prejudice : unjustified negative attitude toward anyone of a particular social group
• Cognitive Sources of Stereotypes
• Social categorization- classifying persons into groups
• Grouping occurs automatically and naturally (heuristic thinking)
• Snap judgments happens inevitably 
• Does harm to social relationships= problem ; Undermine inevitability = solution 
• groups = gender, race, occupation etc.
• In-group/Out-group categorization - Identification, or lack of, with a group 
• In group = group you're in; Out group = group you're not in
• Us vs Them judgment
• Social priming makes one group more usable in particular situations
• Us/Them Biases
• Outgroup homogeneity bias - People of one outgroup are more similar than your ingroup
• "They're all alike" "They all look alike"
• Ingroup-outgroup bias - hold less favorable views of outgroups than ingroups
• Minimal Group Procedure
• Assigned to group on trivial criteria
• blue-eyed people, tails people etc.
• Rate both groups' personality
• Result: Bias toward fellow group members
• Social Identity theory
• All have basic need to maintain/enhance self-esteem (SE)
• Self-esteem influenced by Personal and Social IDs
• Personal - individual accomplishments
• Social -  social group's accomplishments
• Motivated evaluate ingroups more positively than outgroups
• Social Identity research
• Ingroup bias experience----> increased SE
• positive time with ingroup, more SE
• SE threat------> increased ingroup bias
• fail at something, want group to succeed even more to increase SE
• Lower status groups show more ingroup bias
• low SE, more ingroup biasing 
• Birging
• BIRG - Basking In Reflected Glory
• football game study - football game won, much more university colors worn
• Allport and Postman (1947)
• Picture of Black man near White man holding razor shown to white subjects
• Telephone game played; 6th subject desrcibes scene
• Results: Over half the sessions Black man holding the razor
• Racial Bias (Ingroup-outgroup Bias)
• Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1997)
• Scrambled sentence task
• Two conditions: 
• Elderly stereotype - grey, wise, wrinkle, bingo
• Control- thirsty, clean, private
• Timed as walking down hall 
• Elderly stereotype primed = take longer to walk
• Trivial Stereotype findings
• NBA fouls - more called against black players
• Baseball - mixed race pitcher/umpire more likely to call ball
• Stereotype threat - self-confirming fear of validating stereotype
• How it works
• Stereotyped group knows stereotype
• In potential confirming situation, members become anxious
• Anxiety interferes with optimal functioning ends up confirming stereotype
• Stereotype + Anxiety = Stereotyped Behavior
• Like Self-fulfilling prophecy
• Spencer and Steele (1997)
• Woman/men (equal math ability) told given math test
• 2 conditions
• Stereotype threat - noted woman usually underperform
• Control -  noted both groups similar 
• Results:
• Stereotype condition: M = 27  W = 7
• Control condition: M = 18   W= 17
• Steele and Aronson (1995)
• Whites/Blacks told take SAT-like test
• 2 Conditions:
• Stereotype threat - report race 
• Control - no race report
• Results out of 20
• Stereotype Condition: Black = 7.3 White = 9.8
• Control: Black = 9.1 White = 7.3
• Princeton Trilogy [Optimistic position: Stereotypes Changing] (African American traits)
• Superstitious: from 84% to 13%
• Lazy : from 75% to 26%
• Ignorant: from 38% to 11%
• Duncan, 1976 [Pessimistic position: Stereotypes Same]
• Two men conversing, mild spat, one lightly pushes the other
• Conditions: White pushing Black ; Black pushing White
• Question: Is the push playful or violent
• Results(% thought Violent): White = 13% Black = 73%
• Take home message: Duncan thought that people are subconsciously prejudiced as shown in responses
• Devine's  (1989) Dissociation Model
• Stereotypes and Beliefs = different cognitive structures
• Stereotypes = well-known associations that you may/may not believe
• Beliefs = endorsements which you strongly support
• Black stereotype can be Automatically activated
• Stereotype Socialized frequently, becomes part of natural cognitive process
• Behavior for low and high prejudice based on this unless checked (for low prejudice)
• Aware of process -----> Behavior Consistent with Prejudice
• Time and Motivation needed for Awareness and Change
• High prejudice = Stereotypes and Beliefs Overlap
• Prejudice reduction = Long, difficult process
• Adopting Non-prejudice belief
• Aware of Stereotype Activation
• Guilt of prejudice-behavior drives you to not let this happen
• Devine and Elliot, 1995
• Check adjectives (princeton trilogy) representing Black stereotype
• Check adjectives you believe
• Prejudice level measured
• Results:
• Low Prejudice- Stereotypes = prejudiced; Beliefs = Non-prejudiced 
• High Prejudice- Stereotypes = prejudiced; Beliefs = prejudiced
• Message: Stereotype Discrepant from Belief
• Devine (1989)
• Prejudice level measured
• Shown brief flashes- 2 conditions
• Stereotype activation flash
• Control flash
• Rate ambiguous person's hostility
• Results (0-10):
• Stereotype activated = 7.52
• Control = 6.87
• No difference for high/low prejudice = Both affected by Stereotype Activation
• Beliefs don't matter; Activate stereotype, behavior will be accordingly
• Chen and Bargh (1997 [Actual Behavior]
• Brief flashes, asked left/right
• 2 Conditions
• Black face subliminally shown
• White face subliminally shown
• Played verbal game against same-race person; hostility coded
• Results (1-7 scale):
• Black face- 3.1
• White face- 2.7
• Self-Perpetuating Nature of Stereotypes
• Subtyping- reacting to people who deviate from a stereotype via creating a sub-stereotype group that's an exception to the stereotype
• keeps stereotype intact
• make a group exceptional to stereotype
• "I'm not prejudiced; Some of my best friends are black"
• Illusory Correlations- overestimating strength of relationship of two unusual events
• Majority groups Few Interactions w/ Minority groups (distinctive event)
• Distinctive Events = Negative events
• Overestimate Co-occurrence of Distinctive Events
• Ultimate Attribution Error- tendency to attribute Behavior of Minority member     Negative = Disposition; Positive  = Situation 
• Stereotype Suppression Effects- Stop Suppression--->Stereotype Rebounds
• intentional avoidance of topic---->stop avoidance------> think about topic
• Macrae study (1994)
• Photo of skinhead shown; write paragraph about day in person's life
• 2 Conditions
• Suppression - told don't use stereotypes
• Control - no instructions
• Meet skinhead; Sit near skinhead; Measure distance
• Results 1-9 writing task; 1-7 distance
• writing task
• suppression = 5.58
• control = 6.83
• distance
• suppression = 5.25
• control = 4.41