Discussion
Raciel1990
Ch13PrejudiceandIntergroupRelationspart2.pptxChapter 13
Prejudice & Intergroup Relations
Part 2
Introduction to Prejudice
Warnings:
Some of the material regarding the description of hate crimes may be disturbing
During this lecture we’ll look into explicit bias, stereotypes, the causes of prejudice and ways to overcome it.
Explicit Bias
So far we have discussed implicit bias…
But what about when people just outright say, “We don’t like group ____.”
That’s referred to as explicit bias.
Common targets of explicit bias include:
Arab or Muslim people
Gay people
Jewish people
Over-weight people
Mexican people
Explicit Bias
Lost Letter paradigm:
White participants were asked to rate their agreement with questions like “I can hardly imagine myself voting for an Arab-American running for an important political office.”
Then they were sorted based on their responses as either prejudiced or not prejudiced
A few weeks after completing those questionnaires, the 2nd part of the study began
Participants were sent an email that was supposed to reach someone else
Explicit Bias
Lost Letter paradigm continued:
Participants read that the person the letter was addressed to had received a scholarship (or in other conditions, did not receive a scholarship).
And that the email must be responded to within 48 hours
In some conditions, the emails were addressed to an Arab name (Mohammed/Fatima Hameed) or European name (Peter/Julianne Brice)
The result is probably worse than you’re expecting…
Explicit Bias
Lost Letter paradigm continued:
Results:
White participants who were prejudiced against Arab people were about 15% less likely to forward the email to the scholarship recipient if the recipient had an Arab name. They didn’t want to help.
Astoundingly, when the Arab person did not receive a scholarship, the prejudiced white participants were about 18% more likely to forward it to him/her. They were eager to give the Arab person bad news….
Explicit Bias
Lost Letter paradigm continued:
Results:
Those white participants who did not express prejudice in the first phase of the study were much more egalitarian in their forwarding of the good news.
And when it came to the bad news, no scholarship, they were actually less likely to tell the Arab individual, as if they didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news.
Explicit Bias
Explicit bias toward gay people:
Some consider homosexuality unnatural, yet nature seems to disagree, as gay pair-bonding has been documented in many species of animals & in cultures around the world
In 1998, one of the most famous hate crimes against an LGBTQ person took place
Matthew Shepard was at a gay bar, two straight men entered the bar, they enticed him into leaving with them, took him to a field where they pistol whipped him, burned him, tied him to the fence, and left him in near freezing temperatures
He was found about a day later but subsequently died in the hospital
Adding insult to injury for his family, his funeral was protested by the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, with signs that read “NO TEARS FOR QUEERS.”
Explicit Bias
Explicit bias toward gay people:
Much improvement has been made in the U.S. regarding changing attitudes toward gay people, civil rights, and hate crime laws.
But gay people still remain a targeted group, as can be seen with the recent horrific Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Orlando; 49 deaths.
Police investigators said the constant ringing of the phones of the 49 people who had died inside was extremely disturbing
Similarly, there was the recent Synagogue massacre that resulted in 11 deaths. There has been an resurgence of antisemitism and Neo-Nazis.
Explicit Bias
Explicit bias toward overweight and obese people:
Obese women earn 6% less on average
Besides health risks, people who are overweight face a great deal of stigma
Rated as less: intelligent, trustworthy, & emotionally stable
Health concerns that are unrelated to weight may not be taken seriously
Nurses and doctors are quick to focus completely on weight issues
College students stated they would rather marry a cocaine user, shoplifter, embezzler, or blind person, than an obese person
Explicit Bias
Explicit bias toward overweight and obese people:
Stigma often occurs because obesity is seen as self-inflicted
In some ways, people do have Control over their calories consumed And exercise. But they don’t have control over their metabolism.
E.g. I’ve been skinny my whole life, but not cause of diet/exercise. I really don’t deserve much credit. If that end of the spectrum can happen with me, so can the opposite with someone who has a slow metabolism.
Explicit Bias
What might be some reasons for when explicit bias becomes an action, such as discrimination or an attack on a certain group?
Self-Serving Bias is one reason
People want to take credit for their accomplishment, but to shift blame for their failures
Shifting blame to an out-group, also called Scapegoating, is a convenient way to feel better
E.g. The U.S.’s unemployment problems being blamed on people who move to our country
Scapegoating
Another famous example of scapegoating is the holocaust. Jewish Germans were largely blamed for the loss of World War 1, which in turn resulted in animosity towards Jewish people.
In the 1940’s, researchers named Hovland & Sears found cotton prices in the south were correlated with the lynching of African Americans
As cotton prices fell and white land-owning families lost money, they blamed African Americans
How bias becomes action
Beyond self-serving bias and scapegoating,
any conflict or stressful situation can result in
prejudiced actions
Students judge female professors are less competent than male instructors IF the students received a bad grade, but not if they received a good grade
How bias becomes action: stress/conflict
Lexical Decision Task studies:
White participants given a legal case and asked to decide a verdict
Then they watched a video of either a white or a black person who either agreed or disagreed with the participant’s verdict
Participants had to sort real words and fake words (e.g. rjsa) into their proper category. Some of the words were neutral (jeans, soap, etc.) and some were words related to black stereotypes (athletic, rap, crime, poor, etc.)
Participants sorted the stereotype words faster when the black juror disagreed with them, meaning those words were more active/salient in their mind. They did not sort the stereotype words faster when the white juror disagreed or when the black juror agreed
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
Momentarily, when we get to stereotypes, we will discuss how prejudice and stereotypes can function as a means of quick/lazy decision-making
But understanding the development of prejudice/stereotypes comes down to the CORE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY:
Us vs Them
Ingroup vs Outgroup
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
The importance of ingroup/outgroup psychology cannot be overstated
It permeates every aspect of our lives
Family, student or teacher, black, white, atheist, nerd, jock, gay, rich, poor, blond haired, fan of sports team___, democrat, republican, etc.
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
In the 1970’s, a researcher named Tajfel tried to set out to understand ingroups vs outgroups
His plan was “to start out with groups that were so meaningless that people would not show any ingroup favoritism; and then gradually add in other variables to see when favoritism began.”
The plan failed
They literally could not form a group in which there was no ingroup favoritism
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
This became known as the Minimal Group Effect
An automatic preference for your group
Even when the group is COMPLETE NONSENSE
E.g. you walk in a room and the researcher flips a coin in front of you that decides whether you sit at table x or table y, or red team or blue team, etc.
In this sense, then, prejudice/stereotypes about people from other groups are an obvious occurrence
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
Let this topic sit with you for a bit.
Think about it, we all arbitrarily divide ourselves into a million different groups
But ultimately, it’s all an illusion, studies have shown there’s more variability within any given group than between groups
Even though people believe the opposite, they inaccurately think that people in outgroups are all the same “outgroup homogeneity bias”
Thus our ingroup/outgroups are likely just an unfortunate side-effect of how the human brain developed, possibly from our evolutionary past where people needed to be very wary of outsiders
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
Any time you hear, rhetoric, particularly from politicians, about ‘us and them’…be very aware of someone trying to manipulate your emotions
It’s easy at first to go along with that, because as we can see, it’s hard-wired into our brains
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
Another explanation of how prejudice develops is called ‘Realistic Conflict Theory’
This states that if there are scare resources that people want, this will lead to competition and subsequently relying on ingroup vs outgroup thinking and blaming.
Realistic Conflict Theory has been used to explain the results of Sherif’s famous Robber’s Cave study
This was more of a case study than a scientific experiment by today’s standards, but it worth looking at
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
Phase 1: boys attend a summer camp and are divided up into two teams, Rattlers and Eagles. At first, they rarely meet.
Phase 2: They are pitted against each other in sports competitions for valuable prizes (money, pocket knives, trophies, etc.)
Aggressive behavior began and slowly escalated, from name-calling, to burning the other teams flag, to invading their cabins, etc.
Why does Prejudice Exist? And how does it develop?
Phase 3: Camp counselors bring the groups together to get them to work on a mutual goal, aka a Superordinate Goal
This is viewed as one way to overcome ingroup/outgroup prejudice, to become more like one group that is working together toward a common purpose
Stereotypes
Returning to the ABC’s of intergroup relations
So far we have focused on Affective (Prejudice) and how underlying emotions influence our perception
And we have also seen how Behavior (Discrimination) can occur, both in small ways, such as when white people were less likely to return the Lost Letter to an Arab individual, and in large ways, such as targeted massacres and hate crimes.
But we have yet to discuss the Cognitive component (Stereotypes)
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are extremely tricky…
They can be simultaneously right/wrong, dangerous/helpful, positive/negative
Accuracy of Stereotypes
Research on both gender stereotypes (Swim 1994) and racial stereotypes (Jussim) have found a large degree of accuracy
Similarly, when estimating degrees of difference, people were accurate. E.g. estimating how much taller on average men are than women
Most people have a negative perception of the word stereotype, so a stereotype for stereotypes
At some point there was a backlash against stereotypes, which may have lead to modern stereotypes being surprisingly accurate
Stereotypes Continued
One reason stereotypes persist is that are sometimes helpful and that they are a form of a ‘heuristic’
A heuristic is a mental short-cut, or a quickly made decision
Heuristics have helped us to survive, evolutionarily
Thankfully, some research has shown when judging any one individual, people don’t rely much on stereotypes
There can also be good stereotypes, not just bad ones, for example, the idea that gay men are well-dressed or that African Americans are good at dancing or have strong musical abilities
Stereotypes Continued
But, even so called ‘positive stereotypes’ can have a consequences
When men have views such as “women should be put on a pedestal and adored” or “that women are purer of heart than men”, this is called benevolent sexism.
The unfortunate consequence is that men who score high on benevolent sexism, similarly score high on hostile sexism, such as “women are less intelligent” or “women
are too controlling.”
The issue being, if men perceive women as better on a variety of traits, that implies that men perceive women as fundamentally different, which then easily has negative perceptions associated with that as well.
Stereotypes Continued
The suggestion then, is to use similar criteria for all people. If you would hold the door for a pretty woman, then you should similarly hold the door for an ugly women, or a male
body-builder, or a child, simply
because holding the door is a polite
thing to do for anyone.
Stereotypes
Dealing with stereotypes in the real world can be difficult
When people fear that they will be negatively stereotyped, their performance in a task will likely be worse
This is called Stereotype Threat
For example, if female students taking a math exam read that the exam produces gender differences in terms of results then:
Women do worse because they are afraid they will make other women look bad if they perform poorly
If the women are told the test does not result in gender differences, women perform the same. Anxiety is at the root of
Stereotype threat.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes can become a form of a self-fulfilling prophecy
We sometimes accept the expectations of others and behave accordingly
In a classic study on self-fulfilling prophecies, researchers gave out an IQ test to school children
Then they randomly chose some of the students and told the teachers that “these students will bloom intellectually this year.”
They then administered another IQ test at the end of the year. Those students who were supposed to bloom, did bloom, even though the fact that they were supposed to bloom at all was completely fictitious
How are stereotypes perpetuated?
Confirmation Bias can explain it
Undoubtedly you’ve heard of this. A brief refresher on the original study:
Darley and Gross (1983) had participants watch a video of a girl named Hannah taking a test to assess her potential
Hannah got some easy questions wrong, but some hard questions right
Those who were told before the video Hannah came from a wealthy family valued her getting hard questions right more and evaluated her as having great potential
Those who were told she was from a poor family focused on the wrong answers for easy questions, then decided she had low potential
Thus, prejudice functioned through confirming expectations
How are stereotypes perpetuated?
Confirmation Bias
Imagine how the results of the Hannah study could pan out in the real world
Let’s say you’ve been told that Jewish people are stingy
Now if you ever see someone who is Jewish do something stingy, that will stand out in your mind and you might think “Ah hah, so they are stingy.”
Note that other people you’ve encountered may have been stingy more often than the Jewish person, but in those cases there isn’t an underlying stereotype fueling the expectation/confirmation bias.
Overcoming prejudice and stereotypes
Now that we have gone over all of these interesting and surprising findings, what can we do to improve the situation and reduce our own biases?
Perhaps some people just have less knowledge of stereotypes and so are less prejudiced/bias?
That notion was disproven (Devine, 1989)
Recall that most of us would say “I believe everyone is equal” and yet we may still harbor implicit, non-conscious biases
In that sense, then, it falls to the conscious mind to override the non-conscious mind to be aware of its biases
Overcoming prejudice and stereotypes
But, the ability to consciously override one’s non-conscious mind takes effort and is like a muscle that can get tired or a resource that can be depleted
One researcher found that participants who spoke with a participant of another race performed worse on a standard test of self-regulation, like the Stroop test
The higher the amount of prejudice the participant had, the worse he/she did on the Stroop test.
Those participants were worn-out from interacting with someone of another race and possibly inhibiting themselves from saying/thinking something bad
Participants who spoke with someone of the same race did fine on the Stroop test. Similarly participants low on prejudice mostly performed well too
See next page for the Stroop test
Stroop Test
This is the Stroop test, you are asked to read the color (not the written word) as fast as you can
Try it! Then try it again some night after you’ve been cramming for an exam!
Overcoming prejudice and stereotypes
Contact
A surprising amount of research has shown just contact with members of other groups is enough to reduce conscious and non-conscious bias/prejudice
Education helps as well
So does having super-ordinate goals that must be worked on together, between groups, as we discussed earlier with Sherif’s Robber’s Cave study
Resiliency
If a group endures negative prejudice for long enough, that can sometimes result in extra resilience
For example, African Americans have higher self-esteem on average than European Americans
That’s all for now
I hope you guys enjoyed covering prejudice and intergroup relations!
Never be afraid to confront and question your own biases or those you encounter around you
