Chapter 5 Stereotypes Prejudice and Discrimination Confirmation Biases The effect of stereotypes on perceptions is a type of confirmation bias which involves the tendency to interpret seek and create info that seems to confirm expectations Stereotypes are not held by individuals but by many people within a culture and they are often perpetuated through repeated communication Stereotypes can create self fulfilling prophecies when a perceiver s false expectations about a person cause the person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations Stereotypes and prejudices of a parent can affect stereotypes and prejudices of a child often in implicit ways Stereotypes endure through illusory correlation the tendency to overestimate the association between variables that are only slightly or not at all correlated ex Women are bad drivers People tend to overestimate the association between variables that are distinctive variables that capture attention simply because they are novel or deviant People tend to overestimate the association between variables they already expect to go together People make attributions about the causes of other s behaviors and how these attributions can sometimes be flawed perpetuating stereotypes When people see others contradicting a stereotype they rely on situational factors to explain the surprising behavior ex Female beat male in athletic match so it must be luck ulterior motive Subtyping those who contradict a stereotype are placed in a subtype keeping the existing stereotype intact ex Female who is not warm and nurturing is simply a career woman Stereotypes can bias our perceptions even if we don t personally agree with them Stereotypes can be activated without our awareness People automatically activate stereotypes whenever they are exposed to members of groups for which popular stereotypes exist we are often unaware that a stereotype has been activated Patricia Devine showed subliminal presentations a method of presenting stimuli so faintly or rapidly that people do not have any conscious awareness of having been exposed to them Internally motivated individuals those not wanting to be prejudiced are likely to be more successful at controlling stereotypes and prejudice but they are vulnerable to automatic stereotyping and implicit biases When self esteem is threatened people may become motivated to stereotype others so that they will feel better about themselves making them more likely to stereotype automatically 41 Shots Tragic Shooting of Amadou Diallo Focus was on the issue of automatic activation of stereotypes Amadou Diallo was a West African immigrant from NYC matched the description of a suspected rapist was shot by four white police officers in his apartment building All four officers were found not guilty leading to protests and rallies Keith Payne did a study following the incident showing participants more likely to mistake a harmless object for a weapon if it was preceded by a black face than a white face Ma and Correll found that racial bias in decision to shoot were significantly stronger if the targets looked more stereotypic of their respective races than if they did not Subsequent studies have shown that exposing them to repeated trials in which race was unrelated to criminality eliminated racial biases Magnitude of racial bias found to not be related to level of racial prejudice African Americans participants produced same results as white participants Trayvon Martin Likely that many factors social categorization distrust of outgroups stereotypes in culture confirmation biases illusory correlations could have played a role Likely to ignite new social psych research to examine related questions Social Categorization classification of persons into groups on the basis of common attributes Leads us to overestimate differences between groups and underestimate differences within groups People tend to learn features about majorities earlier than features about minorities Allows us to form impressions very quickly and use past experiences to guide new intentions stereotyping groups of people We exaggerate the differences between our ingroup and other outgroups Outgroup homogeneity effect tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of different outgroups than among members of ingroups We do not notice subtle differences among outgroups because we have little personal contact with them People often do not encounter a representative sample of outgroup members Perceivers are less likely to see members of stereotyped groups as more similar to the stereotype than they really are When a target of a stereotype behaves in an ambiguous way we interpret the behavior as consistent with the stereotype Often times we remember stereotype consistent info about others better than stereotype inconsistent info Contrast Effect when a stimulus varies from expectations the perceived difference is magnified affect social perceptions Muzafer Sherif s Robbers Cave Study reflection on how situational factors breed prejudices Study of competition and cooperation 2 separate groups of 11 year old middle class white boys with no behavioral problems each formed an alliance were told there was another group Began competitions with them escalated into attacking and viciousness Noncompetitive circumstances did not de escalate the two teams Addition of subordinate goals mutual goals that could be achieved only through cooperating of the two groups finally resolved the conflicts Realistic Conflict Theory view that direct competition for valuable but limited resources breeds hostility between groups Losers feel frustrated and resentful Winners feel threatened and protective Often times competition is perceived and not real People become resentful because of their sense of relative deprivation the belief that they fare poorly compared to others ex Jealous of a higher salary o Egoistic Deprivation concerns for self interests o Fraternal Deprivation concerns for group interests ex Helping out the community even if you are rich Social Identity Theory people favor ingroups over outgroups in order to enhance their self esteem Boys shown dotted slides tried to estimate number of dots Boys separated into two groups over estimators and under estimators actually random Study showed ingroup favoritism or tendency to discriminate in favor of ingroups over outgroups Theory has two components personal identity personal achievements AND social identity based on ingroup