Stereotyping and Prejudice

1. Stereotyping and Prejudice

2. Some initial thoughts • It would be nice if human beings never used stereotypes or prejudice • It would be nice if social psychologists could figure out a way of reducing or even eliminating stereotypic/prejudicial behavior • It would be nice if we could educate the public about the falsehoods and perniciousness of prejudice

3. Why I am a pessimist • People don’t stereotype (only) because they are stupid; they sometimes have much to gain • Power(cf.System legitimization approaches (e.g., Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay (2004). • Stereotypic beliefs often implicit: hard to control, often unconscious (implicit), despite our best intentions • Stereotypes are often (although not always) linked to very salient visual cues that are difficult to overlook • Ironic effects of stereotype suppression attempts • Exceptions are often subcategorized, leaving the original category-based beliefs unchanged. • Evidence for stereotype change in the laboratory may or may not be long-lasting. (rubber band metaphor). • Well-meaning “consciousness raising” programs to curb prejudice are often “preaching to the choir”.

4. Stereotyping:inappropriate bias, or rational thinking? • Are there cases in which that “it’s ok” to use stereotypes?

5. Crandall (1999):Subjective appropriateness of stereotyping Rating scale: 0 = NOT OK to feel negatively toward these people 1 = MAYBE OK to feel…. 2 = OK to feel…..

6. 14. Fat People (.228) 15. Rap music fans (.275) 16.Traveling salesmen (.313) 17. Hare Krishnas (.407) 18. People who like country music (.430) 19. Lawyers (.460) 20. Gay soldiers (.520) 21. People who call the “Psychic Hotline” (.560) 22. Welfare Recipients (.620) 1. Blind people (.047) 2. Deaf people (.053) 3. Mentally retarded people (.053) 4. Members of a bowling league (.113) 5. Black Americans (.12O) 6. Jews (.120) 7. Hispanics (.141) 8. Asian Americans (.147) 9. Canadians (.148) 10. Ugly People (.193) 11. Cat owners (.220) 12. High School cheerleaders (.227) 13. People with AIDS (.227)

7. 23. Feminists (.733) 24. Gamblers (.733) 25. People who go to Kansas State University (.653) 26. People who smell bad (.764) 27. Porn stars (.967) 28. Ex-convicts (.980) 29. People who cut in line (1.14) 30. People who litter (1.18) 31. Female prostitutes (1.24) 32. People who cheat on exams (1.25) 33. People who cheat on their spouses (1.64) 34. Drunk drivers (1.82) 32. Wife beaters (1.93) 33. Rapists (1.97) What’s determining this rank ordering?

8. Big caveat • Just because people say it’s inappropriate to dislike people on the basis of their membership in certain categories, doesn’t mean they’re not actually doing this all of the time. • Important factor: Activation and use of stereotypes/ prejudice is often at the implicit (unaware) level • So in terms of predicting behavior, these explicit appropriateness ratings could have limited validity

9. The “categorization” approach to stereotyping • “least effort principle” • “cognitive miser” view

10. The Nature of Prejudice (Allport, 1954)“The human mind must think with the aid of categories….once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends on it.”

11. This perspective suggests that stereotyping may be… • “natural” (or at least not completely unnatural) • not necessarily dysfunctional or even immoral • But validity is the bottom line

12. “hits” and misses

13. expectations “Not dangerous” “dangerous” Incorrect (“miss”) “dangerous” correct reality Incorrect (false alarm) “not dangerous” correct • Amidou Diallo

14. More on Allport’s “least effort principle”

15. Derivation from Allport’s perspective: The “cognitive effort” hypothesis • Cognitive load studies • “Circadian Rhythm” study (Bodenhausen, 1990) Morning People Afternoon People   Morning Afternoon Morning Afternoon (alert) (tired) (tired) (alert) Target race White Hispanic + + + + + - - +

16. Strengths • Parsimonious; easily tested, supported • Weaknesses • 1.    individual differences? • 2.    “kind” of categories? 3. Motivation? 4. Can’t explain everything.

17. The “unconscious” becomes respectable again

18. Abstracts

19. Similarities/differences compared to Freudian unconscious

20. Extremely important study: Devine (1989)

21. “Jewish people” “Jewish people” S (-) P (+) S (-) P (+) “Replacement” view “Fading” view Dual representation view “Jewish people” S (-) P (+)

22. Reaction to Devine (1989) • Some qualifications • Larger implications

23. On the explosion of interest in implicit tests • Relies heavily on the priming literature • Facilitation vs. inhibition • The Stroop (1935) effect

24. The Stroop (1935) Effect

26. Some modern implicit tests, especially the IAT (Greenwald et al. 1995) rely heavily on the logic of the Stroop task.

27. Extension to stereotyping and prejudice hostile hostile hostile

28. pleasant words e.g., birthday unpleasant words e.g., hatred “White names” e.g. Kristina “Black names” e.g. Latonya • Pleasant (l) vs. unpleasant (r) • White (l) vs. Black (r) • PleasantorWhite (l) vs. UnpleasantorBlack (r) • Unpleasant (l) vs. pleasant (r) • Unpleasantor White (l) vs. pleasantor Black (r) C I IAT SCORE = I- C

29. birthday birthday Pleasant or White Unpleasant or Black Pleasant or Black Unpleasant or White CONGRUENT TRIALS INCONGRUENT TRIALS Fast Slow

30. Current issues/controversies • Relationship to explicit measures? • Often low or non-existent • Two views of the IAT • “endorsement” model • environmental association model • Malleability? • Responses by minority participants?

31. Ingroups and outgroups

32. Ingroup favoritism effect:IG > OG • But WHY? • Resource competition? • Historical events? • Rewards for self? • Commonality of effect suggests basic need

33. "Because people typically want to maintain positive self-regard, they are motivated to have favorable evaluations of the groups to which they belong. But there is no objective yardstick for gauging the desirability of any particular social group: such comparisons are inherently subjective. Therefore, people enhance their own group's favorability by psychologically establishing its relative superiority in comparison with some out-group. Thus, people are motivated to accentuate the evaluative difference between the ingroup and outgroup." (Hamilton and Sherman, 1994)

34. Henri Tajfel’s classic insight: mere categorization may be sufficient • Mere, “arbitrary” categorization  • Division into IG and OG • Drive for self-esteem, resulting in… • IGF • Referred to as “minimal group” paradigm

35. “minimal group” paradigm • Similarity to heuristics (cognitive efficiency) view: • commonality of prejudice • “naturalness” • avoids “bad person” perspective • reductionist view • Dissimilarity • more motivational • Emphasizes own membership (ingroup/outgroup) • Reflects “European” perspective • Inter-personal/group dynamics

36. Historical perspective • search for “minimal” conditions needed to produce IGF • "Eye of the storm” • formal evidence? • Social categorization theory (Henri Tajfel)

37. Experimental Evidence • Oakes and Turner (1980) • Minimal group manipulation • Klee vs. Kadinsky • Point allocation (direct self interest held constant) • Control participants: filler task • Results: • IGF • Higher self esteem, but ONLY after “biasing” process of point allocation

38. Howard & Rothbart (1980) • Minimal group manipulation • Under vs. over-estimators • Results: • Phase I: direct trait ratings • Phase II: memory task • Ingroup: superior recall for positive • Outgroup: reverse • Fairly subtle test