Stereotypes and Prejudice
What are stereotypes?
- Pictures in our heads (Lippmann, 1922)
- Cognitive representations of a category of people
- The elderly, bikers, professors
- Consists of knowledge/assumptions about
- Central tendency in traits
- Professor: unorganized, intelligent
- Variation on these traits
- Female, young, or not-as-confused, other roles
- In addition to traits, steroetypes also include
- Expemplars (Einstein)
- Behaviour (teaching)
- Steroetypes contain both positive and negative traits
- Professors are intelligent, but absent-minded
- African Americans are lazy, but musical
- Also, stereotype about in-group
- Stereotypes about myself being a woman
How do stereotypes develop?
- Categorisation
- Social categorisation
- Dividing the world into groups of people
- Provides us with certainty, not necessarily a bad thing
- Categorisation is natural and functional
- However, it lays the foundation for stereotyping
- Social categorisation is to a large extent automatic
- ‘Who said what?’ paradigm
- Participants watch a discussion
- See example sheet 11
- Task: who made which statement?
- The mistake people make say something about
categorisation
- For example, it’s easier to confuse discussants
within a gender than between genders
- Intra-categorical error
- Gender is often used to categorise
- But also age, ethnicity, etc.
- Consequences of categorisation
- Intraclass/interclass effect
- Overestimate differences between categories
- Underestimate differences within categories
- Outgroup homogenity effect
- Outgroup is generally seen as more
homogenous than ingroup
- Social categorisation always implies ‘the self’
- Social identity
- Identity based on membership of groups
- People strive towards a positive social identity
- Minimal group Paradigm:
- Minimal group Paradigm:
- Social categorisation on the basis of trivial criterion
, - e.g. ‘underestimators’ vs. ‘overestimators’
- No contact within/between groups
- Group membership is ‘minimal’
- Distribute money or points between ingroup and outgroup
- Participants still favour the ingroup
- How does the content of stereotypes develop?
- Form personal experience
- From hearsay
- Illusory correlation
- Hamilton & Gifford, zie sheet 18
- Influence of the media
- Scenes with interracial interaction
- Pilot study: nonverbal behaviour of white actors in scenes
involving white or black co-stars
- For insance, eye contact, smiling, displays of
‘closeness’
- White co-stars received more positive nonverbal
behaviour
- Despite ‘scriptedness’ of the
scene
- Experiment: white test subjects watch scenes involving
- Pro-white nonverbal behaviour
- Pro-black nonverbal behaviour
- After watching the scenes: IAT
- When they saw pro-black clips, they made less
errors
The consequences of stereotyping
- Dissociation model
- Distinction between:
- Knowledge of the stereotype
- Often present in both low- and
high prejudice people (for instance through the media)
- Whether the person agrees with it (prejudice)
- Activation of stereotypes
- Automatic (for high- and low-
prejudice people)
- Stereotype application
- Not necessarily automatic
- Low-prejudice people < high-
prejudice people
- Given sufficient
cognitive capacity
- Primary response: automatic
- Limited cognitive resources
- Secondary response: controlled
- When enough cognitive capacity
- When motivation high enough
- Consequences of stereotyping
- Judgements (job interviews, lawsuits)
- In particular when dealing with
complex, ambiguous information
- When reduced cognitive capacity
What are stereotypes?
- Pictures in our heads (Lippmann, 1922)
- Cognitive representations of a category of people
- The elderly, bikers, professors
- Consists of knowledge/assumptions about
- Central tendency in traits
- Professor: unorganized, intelligent
- Variation on these traits
- Female, young, or not-as-confused, other roles
- In addition to traits, steroetypes also include
- Expemplars (Einstein)
- Behaviour (teaching)
- Steroetypes contain both positive and negative traits
- Professors are intelligent, but absent-minded
- African Americans are lazy, but musical
- Also, stereotype about in-group
- Stereotypes about myself being a woman
How do stereotypes develop?
- Categorisation
- Social categorisation
- Dividing the world into groups of people
- Provides us with certainty, not necessarily a bad thing
- Categorisation is natural and functional
- However, it lays the foundation for stereotyping
- Social categorisation is to a large extent automatic
- ‘Who said what?’ paradigm
- Participants watch a discussion
- See example sheet 11
- Task: who made which statement?
- The mistake people make say something about
categorisation
- For example, it’s easier to confuse discussants
within a gender than between genders
- Intra-categorical error
- Gender is often used to categorise
- But also age, ethnicity, etc.
- Consequences of categorisation
- Intraclass/interclass effect
- Overestimate differences between categories
- Underestimate differences within categories
- Outgroup homogenity effect
- Outgroup is generally seen as more
homogenous than ingroup
- Social categorisation always implies ‘the self’
- Social identity
- Identity based on membership of groups
- People strive towards a positive social identity
- Minimal group Paradigm:
- Minimal group Paradigm:
- Social categorisation on the basis of trivial criterion
, - e.g. ‘underestimators’ vs. ‘overestimators’
- No contact within/between groups
- Group membership is ‘minimal’
- Distribute money or points between ingroup and outgroup
- Participants still favour the ingroup
- How does the content of stereotypes develop?
- Form personal experience
- From hearsay
- Illusory correlation
- Hamilton & Gifford, zie sheet 18
- Influence of the media
- Scenes with interracial interaction
- Pilot study: nonverbal behaviour of white actors in scenes
involving white or black co-stars
- For insance, eye contact, smiling, displays of
‘closeness’
- White co-stars received more positive nonverbal
behaviour
- Despite ‘scriptedness’ of the
scene
- Experiment: white test subjects watch scenes involving
- Pro-white nonverbal behaviour
- Pro-black nonverbal behaviour
- After watching the scenes: IAT
- When they saw pro-black clips, they made less
errors
The consequences of stereotyping
- Dissociation model
- Distinction between:
- Knowledge of the stereotype
- Often present in both low- and
high prejudice people (for instance through the media)
- Whether the person agrees with it (prejudice)
- Activation of stereotypes
- Automatic (for high- and low-
prejudice people)
- Stereotype application
- Not necessarily automatic
- Low-prejudice people < high-
prejudice people
- Given sufficient
cognitive capacity
- Primary response: automatic
- Limited cognitive resources
- Secondary response: controlled
- When enough cognitive capacity
- When motivation high enough
- Consequences of stereotyping
- Judgements (job interviews, lawsuits)
- In particular when dealing with
complex, ambiguous information
- When reduced cognitive capacity
