Chapter 13 PREJUDICE AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS Discrimination Behavior Stereotype behaviors directed toward people on the basis of their group membership a generalized belief about members of a group Cognition Stereotypes can be positive or negative e g old people are wise Kenyans are fast runners People will sometimes use positive stereotypes when talking to people However many people in America don t like it when stereotypes are used toward them They think that they are complimenting them and using this to get people to like them This is because it causes people to feel lumped together with their social group People who are from individualistic cultures in particular have stereotypes of any kind applied to them Stereotypes as Heuristics mental shortcuts easier to pre judge people than to think about each person as an Law of Least Effort individual therefore stereotypes conserve energy and effort Based on information from others rather than direct experience Availability Heuristic Subtyping creating a subcategory to maintain your original stereotype e g you think that all people from big cities are not friendly so when you meet an extremely friendly person from NYC you attribute it to her being weird to maintain the stereotype This makes it difficult to change your stereotype a generalized negative attitude toward members of a group based on their group Prejudice membership Attitude Many prejudices arise from external characteristics Racial prejudice Racism Gender prejudices Sexism Prejudice and discrimination against Arabs increased since 9 11 Most people claim not to be prejudices Behavior may differ from expressed attitudes therefore public attitudes may differ from private ones Modern v Traditional Prejudices Aversive Racism simultaneously holding egalitarian values and negative feelings toward minorities in other words they believe in racial equality and equal opportunity but feel uncomfortable around minorities and try to avoid them whenever possible Frey and Gaertner 1986 Examined willingness to help a partner working on scrabble task White participants were paired up with either a white of black participant that was either deserving or undeserving of help Examiners then observed the of participants who gave help When their partner was deserving of help there was not much difference in whether the participant helped regardless of if their partner was white or black When their partner was undeserving of help people were twice as likely to help their partner if their partner was white It is possible that some prejudices may not be conscious researchers actually argue that many prejudices are non conscious Race IAT a controversial test that shows that most participants mentally associate African Americans with unpleasant words It is not clear whether these associations are conscious or unconscious Embodied Social Cognition Kawakami et al 2007 Pull the joystick toward you if the person is black and push the joystick away if the person is white or vice versa depending on their condition There was also a control condition where you moved the joystick left for black and right Participants had a much easier time pulling toward them for white and pushing away for for white black than the opposite condition Implicit and explicit prejudice can affect each other but do not have to affect each other all the time Primes that change associations automatically activated affecting implicit prejudice later change out explicit prejudice Stimulus changes how we consciously feel about a group and motivates up to create or alter our implicit associations preferential treatment or favorable attitudes toward one s own group ingroup favoritism occurs even when grouping is random Stage 1 Twenty two 11 year old boys were recruited for a summer camp and split into two different groups All participants were white and traveled were housed ate did activities etc with only their group Rattlers or Eagles Stage 2 Competition They were told they would be competing in a baseball game against the opposite team and the winner would get a trophy money and pocket knives They were now put together while eating and doing activities After one week groups were very hostile and even went so far as to burn each other s tea flags Stage 3 Cooperation Experimenters began to say nice things about the opposite group but this did not work They then tried having the opposite teams work together in non competitive tasks like watching movies eating etc but that didn t work either and a food fight even broke out they were told to figure out the solution to a problem running out of Superordinate Goals water with their own group first then with the other group as well When put in a competitive situation outgroup stereotypes are at an extremely high percentage and can drop below 10 when put in a cooperation situation Why Prejudice Exists Ingroup Favoritism members Minimal Group Effect Robbers Cave Study Realistic Conflict Theory People can attain their goals only if others do not Competition over scarce resources leads to hostility and conflict between groups Competition Cooperation Cooperation can reduce prejudice between groups and competition can increase frustration which then increases conflict and prejudice between groups blocked goal People must work together to achieve shared goals Intergroup Competition Peaceful economically undeveloped groups A few societies have little no competition Competition has costs and benefits May produce prejudice hostility aggression May also produce progress Ex Technology Perceived Similarity and Differences tendency to perceive more similarity among members of groups Outgroup Homogeneity Effect we don t belong to than among members of our own group They all look the same In a study where white and black participants were asked to look at a slideshow of photographs of white and black people and then were asked to identify from a lineup photos that they had seen in the slideshow White subjects more accurately recognize the faces of whites than blacks Black subjects more accurately recognized the faces of blacks than whites groups don t get much contact with each other which results in ignorance Contact Hypothesis and reliance on stereotypes but under certain conditions regular interaction can reduce prejudice If the initial contact is not pleasant it will increase dislike Positive contact does not have to be direct vicarious contact through media and even imagining interaction with outgroup
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