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Stereotypes

Stereotypes. Hilton & von Hippel Annual Review of Psychology 1996. Key Question: Is Prejudice …. Inevitable by-product of miserly cognitive style vs. Product of deep-seated personality & motivational factors. Answer:.

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Stereotypes

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  1. Stereotypes Hilton & von Hippel Annual Review of Psychology 1996

  2. Key Question: Is Prejudice… • Inevitable by-product of miserly cognitive style vs. • Product of deep-seated personality & motivational factors

  3. Answer: • Affect and motivation often increases reliance on cognitive stereotyping processes • Also may inhibit or decrease stereotyping processes

  4. Heuristics • Humans can’t process all info available, in thoroughly scientific, unbiased manner • Brain/Mind has evolved info-processing rules, algorithms, short-cuts • Select a little info & evaluate it quickly  “cognitive miser”

  5. Definitions “Beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors or members of certain groups.”  Sometimes accurate representations of reality  Sometimes formed independent of real differences

  6. Focus of Review • Stereotypes arising from “miserly” cognitive style • But: maintained when no evidence of corresponding group characteristics

  7. Organization of Review • How are stereotypes represented in mind/brain • How formed? • How maintained? • How applied? • How changed?

  8. Representation of Stereotpyes • Prototype: group’s typical features • Exemplar: prototype is specific individual • Associative network: linked attributes • Schemas: general, abstract beliefs • Base rates: average expectable behavior

  9. Queston: What of the exaggerated caricatures of we saw in Ethnic Notions? • Flawed information processing? or • Evidence of emotion & motivation?

  10. Formation • Self-fulfilling prophecies(C. Word) • Non-conscious detection of covariation (a few stereotype-congruent examples  self-perpetuating) • Illusory correlation (more processing devoted to negative info about minorities; same correlation not noted or not remembered among in-group members)

  11. Formation (con’t) • Out-group homogenaiety heuristic of info-processing: see out-group members as similar H. Tajfel’s “minimal group” experiments

  12. Maintenance Info-processing heuristics: • Priming • Assimilation • Attribution processes • Memory processes

  13. Maintenance • Priming effects • Making category or trait salient, so people perceive & think in terms of it • Usually outside of conscious awareness

  14. Maintenance • Assimilation • Individual automatically perceived as resembling group stereotype

  15. Maintenance • Attributional processes  Fundamental attribution error (overestimate others’ personal dispositions)  Ultimate attribution error (dispositional attributions for positive in- group and negative out-group actions)

  16. Maintenance Memory Processes: • Better memory for stereotype-incongruent information  works against stereotyping • But: incongruent info  dissonance  diss.-reducing defense of stereotype • Also: high demand  better memory for stereotype-congruent info.

  17. Application • Automaticity: stereotype activation becomes automatic at young age • Suppression takes effort • Threats to self-esteem activate • Ambiguity: ambiguous situations  greater reliance on stereotypes (Gaertner & Dovidio)

  18. Prejudice as “application of stereotypes” • Aversive racism: egalitarian values but negative affect • “Modern” / “symbolic” / “subtle” racism: negative affect rationalized by non-racist issues • Ambivalent racism: egalitarian & Protestant ethic values  quick to praise & to condemn

  19. Prejudice Style of information processing that uses stereotypes for repre-senting out-groups

  20. Stereotype Change • Bookkeeping model: incremental updates • Conversion model: dramatic change • Subtyping model: inconsistent info given new sub-category • Exemplar model: change prototype

  21. Inhibition of Stereotypes • Suppression likely to prime stereotypic perception and processing • Personal commitment to not stereotype makes suppression more successful

  22. Conclusions • Know more about development of stereotypes than how to reduce their use • Don’t understand non-conscious aspects of stereotyping

  23. Questions • What is the causal role played by cognitive heuristics – by “natural” biases in information-processing? • How do we integrate cognitive factors with emotional, motivational, and societal to explain prejudice? • Do cognitive heuristics doom us to prejudice?

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