Social Perception Prejudice

1. Social Perception Prejudice

2. Three Minute Review SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT • Attachment • Harlow’s monkeys • Strange Situation Test • Secure Attachment • Insecure Attachment • Avoidant • Anxious Resistant • Sex and Gender • case of Bruce/Brenda/David • sex ≠ gender • both biological and socialization effects • gender socialization • behavior toward infants • gender-specific toys

3. Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development • Trust vs. Mistrust • Autonomy vs. Self-Doubt • Initiative vs. Guilt • Industry vs. Inferiority • Identity vs. Role Confusion • Intimacy vs. Isolation • Generativity vs. Stagnation • Ego Integrity vs. Despair • culture and society-specific?

4. SOCIAL PERCEPTION • Self perception • Mirror test of self awareness • Roles determine self-perception • people with self complexity are more resilient to successes and failures • Reference groups • better-than-average effect • incompetent people usually don’t know they’re incompetent • see ourselves more positively than others do • see ourselves more positively now than before • Self-fulfilling prophecy (Pygmalion effect) • if others expect you to do well, you will

5. Perception of others • Attribution • Why did person X behave in manner Y in situation Z? • situation • person • Fundamental Attribution Error (person bias) • people overemphasize the person over the situation • Actor-observer bias • the person bias is much stronger for others’ behavior than for your own • available information • point of view • Prior information • priming leads people to confirm their expectations (like the confirmation bias but for attributions) • Attractiveness bias

6. Attitudes • “beliefs tinged with emotion” • cognitive dissonance • behavior ≠ attitude  discomfort • change behavior or change attitude so they are consistent • insufficient justification • “The reward wasn’t enough; I must’ve done it because I wanted to.” • belief in a just world • “What did I do to deserve this?” • blaming the victim

7. Test Yourself Seven-year-old Seth is attempting to master the knowledge and intellectual skills required of him in his culture at school, in household chores, and in activities with friends. Erik Erikson would say that Seth is in the ______ stage of social development. • initiative vs. guilt • generativity vs. stagnation • autonomy vs. shame & doubt • industry vs. inferiority • integrity vs. despair

8. Prejudice

9. History Repeats Itself Who is more likely to get harassed at the airport security check?

10. Discrimination vs. Prejudice • Discrimination • unfair treatment of a group • Prejudice • negative attitudes toward or beliefs (stereotypes) about members of a group

11. Origins of Prejudice • Social Categorization • “us vs. them” • In-group • one’s own group (e.g., UWO students) • Out-group • group outside one’s own group (e.g., Fanshawe students) • In-group bias • evaluation of one’s own group as better than others • can lead to racism, sexism, prejudice, discrimination • Out-group homogeneity bias • members of out-groups are viewed as more similar to one another than are members of in-group • “We are diverse; They are all alike.” • white Americans see Hispanics as all alike; Mexican Americans see themselves as different from the other types of Hispanics who they see as all alike (Cuban-Americans, Puerto-Rican Americans) • stereotypes

12. Other Factors • prejudice can be learned very early (~age 3) • competition for resources enhances prejudice • ongoing prejudice against immigrants • in-group bias can occur even when group assignment is arbitrary • blue-eyed vs. brown-eyed video • in-group bias can lead to attribution errors • black man shoves white man • perceived as violent by 73% of observers • white man shoves black man • perceived as violent by 13% of observers • exceptions • counter-examples to stereotypes may be seen as exceptions or subcategories • e.g., someone who sees women as passive may label an assertive woman as a “feminist”

13. An Evolutionary Interpretation • in-group more likely to share genes • is prejudice the negative side of altruism? • stigmatized people are often defined by their flaws (disabled, disease victims, obese, drug addict), especially if their flaws are seen as controllable (e.g., obesity)

14. Stereotypes • exaggerated overgeneralizations about members of a particular group • same characteristics are assigned to all members of a group • behavioral confirmation • remember the confirmation bias? • people tend to absorb information consistent with their biases more easily than inconsistent information

16. Three Levels of Stereotypes • public • what we say to others about a group • private • what we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to others • implicit • unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and actions without our conscious awareness Public stereotypes have decreased in North America recently (“political correctness”). Does this mean people no longer carry stereotypes?

17. Implicit Stereotypes Anthony Greenwald • Do our true views always agree with our stated views? • How can we measure implicit stereotypes? • Implicit Association Test (IAT) • Are certain concepts more easily paired with one another concepts?

18. Implicit Association Test

28. Web test results • Race • 75% of White participants showed pro-White/anti-Black preference • 42% of Black participants showed pro-White/anti-Black preference • Age • preference for young over old, held by old and young, the strongest effect yet observed. • Gender+Career and Gender+Science • Males and females equally linked women to ‘home’ and ‘Liberal Arts’ and men to ‘career’ and ‘Science.’

29. Implicit Stereotypes Mahzarin Banaji "I was taken aback by my inability to make the intended association, the difficulty in making the counter-stereotypical association between, say, female and career, or male and home." “If we are aware of our biases, we can correct for them—as when driving a car that drifts to the right, we steer left to go where we intend." -- Mahzarin Banaji

30. How Prejudice Confirms Itself • Discriminatory behavior can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy confirming the initial stereotype • Experiment (Wood, 1974) • White male University students interviewed white and black male high school students seeking admission to a group • White interviewers of black applicants (relative to white interviewers of white applicants) • sat further away • conducted shorter interviews • made more speech errors • Follow-up Experiment • While males were applicants • treated either like white or black applicants in first experiment (e.g., interviewer sat close or far) • those treated like the black applicants performed worse during the interview

31. Stereotype Threat • black students perform worse on a verbal test when it’s described as an “intelligence test” a (race prime) than when it’s described as a “laboratory test” (no race prime) • Asian American women did better on a math test when primed by “Asians are good at math” and worse when primed by “Women are bad at math.” Claude Steele

32. How can we reduce prejudice? • be mindful of your biases • children who were shown pictures of handicapped individuals and asked to think carefully about them (e.g., to think how they would drive a car) were more willing to play with disabled children than those who did only a superficial task (Langer et al., 1985)

33. How can we reduce prejudice? Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif et al., 1961) • 22 5th grade boys in summer camp in 1954 • grouped into two groups, “Eagles” and “Rattlers” • boys only interacted with their own group for one week • groups began to interact in competitive situations (e.g., football, tug-of-war) • rivalry became violetnt • group flags burned, cabins ransacked, food fights

34. How can we reduce prejudice? • Propaganda: No • positive propaganda about one group directed to the other by the experimenters did not help • Contact: No • doing non-competitive activities together (e.g., watching movies) did not help • Cooperative action: Yes • experimenters arranged for camp truck to break down • both groups needed to pull it uphill • intergroup friendships began to develop • cooperative approached is being used in US classrooms • give assignment where students from different racial groups can only succeed by working together in a “jigsaw” approach

35. It’s hard to hate your friends • friendships with outgroup members (as friends, neighbors, co-workers) leads to reliably lower levels of prejudice