Diversity in Groups: Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotypes

1. Diversity in Groups: Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotypes

2. Prejudice is an attitude (usually negative) toward members of some group, based solely on their membership in that group.

3. As an attitude, prejudice has affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. The behavioral component is called discrimination.

4. The cognitive component of prejudice--a stereotype--contains beliefs about members of the outgroup that may not be true.

5. A stereotype filters information in a selective way to preserve the beliefs.

7. Have attitudes changed? The results of numerous studies suggest that overt attitudes have changed dramatically over the past 60+ years.

8. Can we trust self-reports? There are strong social norms against expressing prejudice overtly. This may lead to socially desirable responding that underestimates the levels of contemporary prejudice. How would we know?

9. The Persistence of Prejudice Prejudice persists because the attitudes can bolster self-esteem. By putting down another group, prejudiced people can affirm their own self-worth.

12. Stereotypes also persist because they save considerable cognitive effort. By classifying a person into a category, we assume that we know all the important information about that person. Of course, that assumption can be quite wrong.

13. Discrimination • Social norms strongly discourage discrimination, so it now usually takes more subtle and disguised forms: • Tokenism • Reverse discrimination • Reluctance to help • Avoidance • Initial defensiveness • The benefit of the doubt

14. Reverse Discrimination Fajardo (1985) asked White teachers to grade essays supposedly written by White or Black students. The essays varied in quality with the writer’s race assigned randomly.

16. What are the consequences? • Favorable treatment may not provide a firm basis for self-esteem if it can be attributed to race rather than ability. • Crocker et al. (1991) manipulated the feedback that was given by a White evaluator to a Black participant. They also manipulated whether the Black participant believed that the evaluator had seen them through a one-way mirror while they were performing the task.

17. When Black participants thought their race was unknown to the evaluator, their self-esteem was determined by the feedback. When they believed their race was known, they did not suffer following negative feedback but resented positive feedback.

18. Reluctance to help Gaertner and Dovidio (1977) had White female undergraduates overhear a supposed emergency in which several chairs seemed to fall on either a White or a Black female confederate. The participants were either alone or in the presence of two other bystanders.

20. Avoidance

21. Discrimination • Social norms strongly discourage discrimination, so it now usually takes more subtle and disguised forms: • Tokenism • Reverse discrimination • Reluctance to help • Avoidance • Initial defensiveness

22. Initial defensiveness White staff members treated Black mental patients more defensively during the initial 30 days of care . . .

23. The benefit of the doubt Ugwuegbu (1979) presented mock trial evidence to Black and White “jurors” in a rape case in which the victim was either Black or White. The evidence was manipulated to be either strongly favorable to the defendant, strongly unfavorable to the defendant, or ambiguous.

24. When the evidence was clear, all jurors made reasonably unbiased guilt ratings. There was a slight tendency for same-race leniency and greater anger about cross-race rapes when the victim was the same race as the juror. Clear race effects emerged when the evidence was ambiguous.

26. The Origins of Prejudice Realistic conflict theory.

27. Social learning also plays a role in the origins of prejudice. We acquire many of these attitudes through socialization (observational learning) and the media.

28. Social Categorization One of the more insidious origins of prejudice arises from the mere fact that humans readily categorize the social world. Some of the easiest distinctions to make are based on physical features--race, age, sex, weight--and these also represent some of our more strongly held prejudices.

30. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice Stereotypes lead to active manipulation of information about outgroups, taking inconsistent information and making it consistent with the stereotype.

31. Stereotypes create expectations that affect the way we think and behave toward members of an outgroup.

32. The expectations embedded in stereotypes can be a powerful guide to behavior, creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Person A’s Person A’s Person B’sExpectations Behaviors Behavior

33. The targets of prejudice are also quite aware of the stereotypes held by others.

34. The threatening nature of negative expectations can be a powerful source of arousal and affect the performance of the targets of stereotypes--stereotype threat.