Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Social Perception

1. Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Social Perception

2. Michael Evans

3. Eyewitness Testimony • Mistaken identification • Largest single cause of false conviction • Accounts for more criminal convictions of innocent people than all other causes combined • In lineups, witnesses pick “filler” suspects approximately 33% of the time • Of 235 cases exonerated by DNA, 77% were convicted, in part, on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony • Average time between arrest and exoneration = 12 years

4. Race Affects Recognition Accuracy • Cross Race Recognition Deficit or Own-Race Effect • 1.56 times more likely mistaken ID • 1.4 times more likely correct ID for same race • Kindergarteners • 3rd graders • Adults • Cross-culturally • Of the cases of the exonerated involving eyewitness testimony, 40% involved cross-race recognition

5. Cross-Race Recognition Deficit • Contact/Familiarity • Lack of expertise as to the features that actually distinguish outgroup members from one another • But, contact accounts for only about 2% of the variance in the CRRD • Feature coding asymmetry for outgroups • Based on motivation to individuate ingroup but not outgroup members • Code race-specifying features at expense of individuating features

6. Motivation and Cross-Race Recognition Pauker et al., 2009

7. Racial Stereotypes and Social Cognition • Stereotype: A cognitive schema that contains a person’s knowledge, beliefs, and expectancies about a human group • Allow you to anticipate the behavior of others • Allow you to understand and interpret behavior • Especially if it is ambiguous • Fill in the blanks • Allow you to organize and structure your social experiences • They serve these functions even if they are objectively inaccurate

8. Stereotypes and Memory • Outgroup recognition is particularly poor when targets are paired with stereotypic behaviors • For example, Black targets are particularly likely to be misidentified as the authors of hostile or criminal behavior versus kind or pro-social behavior • People use the stereotype to reconstruct who must have engaged in the behavior Sherman et al., 1998, 2000

9. Stereotyping and Attention • Black faces draw and hold attention of White observers • Particularly to the extent that perceivers associate Blacks with danger • Just like spiders, snakes, angry faces • Even when faces are presented too quickly to be noticed Donders et al., 2008

10. Stereotyping and Attention • Surreptitiously activating thoughts of crime enhances this effect • Study conducted with police officers • However, greater attention was associated with false recognition of faces that were more stereotypically “Black” than the ones that actually appeared • Thoughts of crime drew attention to Black faces, but distorted the memories of those faces to be stereotypical • More attention does not necessarily mean better memory if the attention is biased by stereotypic expectancies • May contribute to cross-race errors in eyewitness identification Eberhardt et al., 2005

11. Stereotypes and Construal • Stereotypes affect basic aspects of face perception • Black men seem to anger more quickly and smile more slowly than white men • May influence encoding and subsequent memory of potential defendants Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003

12. Stereotypes and Construal “Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina”

13. Stereotypes and Construal “Looters hit a drug store in the French Quarter district of New Orleans”

14. Gun Tool

15. FASTER, MORE ACCURATE SLOWER, LESS ACCURATE Payne, 2001

16. Stereotypes and Construal Eberhardt et al., 2005

17. Potential influence on misidentification and worse Amadou Diallo

22. Correll et al., 2002 • Subjects paid for accurate performance False Kills per 20 Targets

23. Stereotypes and Sentencing • Longer sentences given for stereotypic crimes • Assault: Latino > Caucasian • Embezzlement: Caucasian > Latino • Attributions • Stereotypical = intentional, likely to be repeated • Counter-stereotypical = special situation, not likely to be repeated Bodenhausen & Wyer, 1985

24. Stereotypes and the Death Penalty • More stereotypically “Black” convicts are more likely to receive the death penalty • But only for killing White people, not Black people Eberhardt et al., 2006

25. Prejudice Enhances all of these Effects • Prejudice = negative evaluations of social groups • Not necessarily endorsed prejudice • Most people won’t openly admit to prejudice • Sometimes we are unaware of our own subtle biases • Implicit measures of prejudice prevent intentional misrepresentation and reveal biases of which we may be unaware

26. IAT Demo

27. BlackWhite Jamal Andrew Luther Richard Jeffrey Tyrone Antoine Chris Tayshaun Steven David Jaron

28. BadGood Rainbow Love Death Happiness Disease Decay Hate Puppy Kill Flower Pain Peace

29. Left RightBlack/Bad White/Good Rainbow Hate Jaron Jamal David Andrew Love Puppy Death Antoine Tyrone Kill Happiness Richard Steven Flower Disease Jeffrey Luther Pain Tayshaun Peace Decay Chris

30. GoodBad Rainbow Love Death Happiness Disease Decay Hate Puppy Kill Flower Pain Peace

31. Left RightBlack/Good White/Bad Rainbow Hate Jaron Jamal David Andrew Love Puppy Death Antoine Tyrone Kill Happiness Richard Steven Flower Disease Jeffrey Luther Pain Tayshaun Peace Decay Chris

32. Implicit Prejudice • Some facts: • A large majority (85%) of non-Black Americans show a pro-White bias • About 1/3 Black Americans show pro-White, 1/3 show no bias, and 1/3 show pro-Black bias • Scores on the IAT and other implicit measures do not correlate with scores on explicit measures (e.g., rating scale, questionnaires) • Solution to “unwilling & unable” problems • Predict perceptual and behavioral biases better than prejudice measured with scales/questionnaires