Welcome to lesson eleven. In this lesson we’re going to
discuss prejudice.
Let’s begin by moving to slide two. We’ve discussed in previous chapters
the A, B, C’s of attitude. When we apply these to prejudice, I want you
to think about it like this. The a is affect. This is the prejudice
component; how you emotionally feel, an evaluative component. B is the
behavioral component, this is discrimination. When you actually turn
that affect into some sort of behavior and discriminate against people
of some group. And finally cognition. This is a stereotype. We all have
the cognition. By simply being in the society, you’re aware of what the
stereotypes are. Even if you’re a member of that group, you know what
others think about you, so everyone has the C component. What we can
change is whether or not people attach an affect component, what that
affect component is, and subsequent behavior.
Let’s move on to slide three. We know that we tend to have prejudice
about social groups. We tend to engage in social categorization. It’s
often very helpful, it allows us to free up cognitive space to think
about other things, like work and driving and getting the laundry and
going to the store and so on. However, we know that whether or not we
use social categorization largely depend on cognitive load. When we’re
under a lot of cognitive load, that is, have a lot of things to think
about, we’re more likely to use social category. If we’re not motivated
to understand people very well, we’ll also have a lot of social
categorization going on. And then you have to have the cognitive
ability, simply the skills, the ability to engage in social
categorization or to not engage in social categorization. The default is
that you use your category but you do not have the ability to do
otherwise. Finally we know that social groups are one way of thinking
about things, but people tend to belong to multiple groups or engage in
cross-categorization. So women and men can be primary social categories
and we engage in that. However, if someone is a Black woman, the salient
group membership may be that they’re Black, even though they should be
cross-categorized as Black woman. Typically people will respond to them
more as being Black than as being a woman, that is, we respond to the
salient group membership.
Let’s move on to slide four. When we discuss social groups and prejudice
in particular, we’re often talking about an in group versus an out
group. The in group is your group, the out group is the other group. We
can engage in group versus out group situations, we have minimal group
paradigm. All I have to do is divide you randomly into groups and tell
you that you’ve been placed based on some personality variables or based
on the color of shirt you’re wearing and immediately you will begin to
engage in in group favoritism. That is you’ll like the people in your
group than you’ll like the other people. This makes sense in terms of
what we discussed in chapter nine. People that you’re near are the
people that you like. When we have in group favoritism, we tend to
engage in BIRGing and CORFing. BIRGing is basking in reflective glory
and CORFing is cutting off reflective failure. Cialdini at Arizona State
did a study in which he monitored what people were wearing the day after
any ASU team
lost a game or the day after any ASU team won a game. What he found is
BIRGing and CORFing, that is, when ASU won, people were more likely to
BIRG; bask in their reflective glory; wear their ASU sweatshirts and
t-shirts and hats and other ASU paraphernalia. However, if they had
lost, people were less likely. They were trying to distance themselves
from the group or cut off reflective failure and were less likely to
wear ASU paraphernalia. In addition to in group favoritism, we also have
out group homogeneity. This is the idea that while people in our group
are very different and likable, people in the out group are all the
same. Often we hear stereotypes and prejudices discussed specifically
when politicians make statements about you people or those people are
all the same, you all look alike, you all think alike. Women are all the
same, men are all the same, and then provide some sort of label to that.
Let’s move on to slide five. So we have these stereotypes. What about
accuracy. Some people would make the argument that even though we have
stereotypes, they’re accurate in some cases. Well part of the reason we
may perceive that in some cases stereotypes seem to be accurate, is
based on a kernel of truth. Stereotypes had to start somewhere. That is,
we didn’t just generate them randomly, therefore at some point in
history, there’s some sort of historical truth to the fact that women
were nurturing. This is a stereotype. There’s no evidence that women
actually are more nurturing. However, what happens is people who care
for children tend to be more nurturing and due to social role theory,
people tend to be females who do most of the child care in this society,
therefore even though it has a kernel of truth, if you try to apply it
to all women, it will be inaccurate. In addition, we may have the sense
that our stereotypes are accurate due to self-sorting. We tend to be in
groups based on our attitudes and interest, therefore if somebody calls
you a jock because you like to play sports and there stereotype of a
jock includes that you care more about sports perhaps than other things,
then that may be true because you hang out in a group that’s based on
attitudes and interests, makes you a jock and therefore people on
average tend to be more interested in sports rather than other things.
However, any stereotype will be inaccurate if you try to apply it to
everyone.
Let’s move on to slide six. So where do we learn our stereotype.
Socialization is one source, that is our parents, our friends, our
peers, our siblings have told us what we can expect from certain number
of society. Also our experience with certain members of society. For
example, growing up my sister was exposed to female cats and boy dogs
and believed that all cats had feminine qualities and all dogs had
masculine qualities. This is based solely on her experience; we
certainly never had told her that. In addition we learn stereotypes from
salient behaviors or people, so any time a minority person does
something, that’s gonna be more salient than if a white person did this
or someone who’s in a mainstream position. The salient behaviors being
criminal activity, things that you don’t see everyday. The unfortunate
thing is often salient behaviors and people, when they do coincide, get
more media attention and then inform our stereotypes. This is based
largely on the Illusory correlation. This is when you perceive an
association between two unrelated things, two relatively infrequent or
salient people events or things get presumed to go together because they
occurred together perhaps once.
Let’s move on to slide seven. Social role theory. This is the idea that
people are what they do. Social roles are created and then assigned to
groups, so men do one sort of social role, women do another in our
society. Women care for children, men are bread winners. In group
members are then presumed to perform these role behaviors. Women care
for children, take care of homes, where men do work things, compete, are
aggressive and so on. This leads to correspondence bias or stereotype of
groups. That is, assuming that all people who do that thing have all the
characteristics of what the role implies they should.
Let’s move on to slide eight. Levy & Langer in 1994 tried to determine
if the stereotype that as you age you become less mentally aware and
often have memory loss, but the stereotype or physical reality.
Participants were American Caucasians and American Chinese elderly
folks. They were recruited at nursing homes, in communities and other
places. This study has been replicated time and again since 1994. What
they then did to the young people, these were people both college
students and adults that were not considered elderly versus elderly
people. They were then given a memory task. What we found is that if you
were Chinese where the stereotype is not that you lose your memory as
you age, but rather that you become wise, we saw no difference in recall
between old and young Chinese folks. However, for Americans, our elderly
Americans did much worse on the memory task than young Americans. Very
interesting the stereotype isn’t just something we think in this case,
but something we endorse via performance.
Let’s move on to slide nine. What role does emotion play? So this is the
prejudice component. What we know happens is that when you encounter
somebody you don’t know, or a group member, a person who’s a member of a
group that you don’t have much information about, then you have anxiety.
The more anxiety you feel, the more negative you’re going to feel. If
you then misattribute that arousal instead of saying I’m really scared because I don’t know anything about this
situation or this person, what typically happens is you think that you
feel bad because of that person. This leads to self-fulfilling prophecy.
You’re anxious and nervous, having these negative thoughts and likely
the interaction will not go well. In addition because it’s about what
you know, self-segregation eliminates that we know more. That is, even
after we have integrated schools, people still self-segregate. If you
look at cafeterias and lunchrooms, even on college campuses, typically
people hang out with others who are very much like them, and don’t do a
lot of learning more about new cultures, new people, or new groups. What
are the solutions? Well you can’t very well learn anything without
asking some questions, but if you ask certain questions, you may be
viewed as prejudiced, being unknowledgeable, being ignorant. This becomes
very problematic and they haven’t come up with good solutions or ways
that people can deal with learning more about a new group that is
accurate without risking embarrassment.
Let’s move on to slide ten. We’ve talked a little bit about
socialization in terms of stereotypes, but socialization also plays a
role in terms of discrimination and prejudice. We often learn
stereotypes and prejudice in particular from parents, peers and even
religious teaching. The media is very pervasive. What we see on the
media shows us that there is discrimination. For example, Band-Aids are
a
discrimination. Does anybody know why; can you think of why Band-Aids
are not suitable for everyone? Band-Aids are in flesh tone, implying
that the only correct color of flesh is Band-Aid colored flesh, that
nude, very white, Caucasian flesh color. Until 1995 that’s the color
Band-Aids often were, they were this flesh tone and that was supposed to
be a step up from this typical white bandages used in more historical
times. In 1995, they then came out with the clear bandage so that now
Band-Aids are more for everyone, they’re transparent and your own skin
color can show through. You should also take the opportunity to watch
White Man’s Burden. It indicates and shows you many instances in which
racism is prevalent in this country. These are things that you may not
even think about. For example, when you turn on the TV, if you’re a
white person, you see yourself reflected back time and time again. White
people are everywhere. If you’re of another ethnicity, you’ll have to do
some looking to find minority shows and even then, shows that show
people of your own ethnicity may in fact have commercials that are
primarily white. We then also, based on socialization, justify inequality, so we assume that nurturing women in a maternal instinct
accounts for why women should do child care. However, there’s very
little evidence that humans still have any maternal instincts left,
especially with the medicalization of pregnancy. In addition we have a
belief in a just world, which we discussed on the discussion board for
some time and we know this also helps to justify an equality. People get
what they deserve, has nothing to do with race, you’re simply not good
enough if you aren’t in some position or able to get a job of your own
accord.
Let’s move on to slide eleven. Stereotype activation so we have these
stereotypes, everyone has them, how do they become activated and then
available for us to use in our behaviors. One is slurs, that is if you
hear a racial slur, it activates your stereotypes about that group. If
you’re a solo, so if you’re the only person in a group where other
people are not like you or if you see someone who’s a solo, this can
also activate your stereotype and finally symbols of group membership,
so if for example you’re at some sort of function for a specific church
and they have a certain amount of church clothes that everyone seems to
be wearing the same sort of thing, a similar tie, a similar type of
dress, and you aren’t wearing that, this can also activate your
stereotype. Confirmation bias is what allows us to maintain our
stereotype. Even when we encounter people who don’t fit, we say they’re
simply good for an x, so you throw pretty good for a girl, you run
pretty good for a girl, you cook pretty good for a guy. These are all
ways of maintaining our stereotypes and acknowledging an exception
without having to change our stereotype substantially and what happens
is when these stereotypes are activated, we then do things to elicit
stereotyped behavior. That is, not only do we have confirmation bias,
where we’re more likely to see behavior that fits our stereotype, but
we’re also more likely to behave in ways that will elicit stereotype
behavior from those individuals.
Let’s move on to slide twelve. So how can we change our stereotype? For
a long time people thought contact would work, we’d assumed that after
schools were integrated, that those contacts would lead to better race
relations. In fact it hasn’t. there’s less contact between minority
groups and the majority group of whites in this country. So when does it
work, often you can see a decrease in discrimination and stereotype
endorsement, if a person who has a close friend of a different group.
But even then you have to be able to talk about race. You have to be
able to talk about what makes you different. If you’re straight, your
friend is gay, you have to be able to talk about what your life
experiences are like that make you different in order to see a decrease
in stereotype activation. What did we do with the inconsistencies. So
when someone doesn’t quite fit what we mean when we use our stereotypes,
we create a sub-type. For example, you think about your stereotype of
women in general and then I have you interact with an athletic female
who perhaps is quite athletic, well built and so on, we’ll create a
sub-type of athletic women and put her in that category and then you
will apply your sub-type stereotype to her. What do we do with
exceptions, well we tend to fence them off. So if I point out that Oprah
is a very successful Black woman who has made it and is nice and she has
a huge popularity, people say well she’s an exception to the rule, but
in general most African American women apply and you apply your
stereotype to that. In addition, you have contrast effect, so if we find
someone who’s an exception, we’re likely to say they’re not a true
member of their group. Barbara Walters made this huge slip in
discussing, when interviewing Mia Angelou, she kept telling her I don’t
think of you as Black and Mia objected that she was, in fact, Black, and
for some reason Barbara Walters saw this as a compliment. I’ll leave you
to draw your own conclusions.
Thank you for listening to lesson eleven.
