User:Atcovi/Spring2024/Social Psychology/Ch. 6

Causes and Cures of Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Discriminatory treatment can be based on...


 * 1) Temporary - Based on 'minimal' criteria
 * 2) Long-term group memberships, ranging from ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.

Certain forms of discrimination are ok, some aren't.

Whites and blacks see the road to equality different, as whites see changes as a potential loss while blacks see steps towards egalitarianism as gains. If one group sees losses more than gains, they will see the road to equality as bigger (since its a threat) than the people who focus on the gains. Due to Obama's presidency, whites see less need for racial progress/social policies to bring about equality.

People are risk averse (reluctant to task risks) with potential losses having greater psychological impact than potential gains.

Some people feel that certain groups of people have some underlying, biologically-based features that distinguish that group from other groups. These supposed distinguishing features are known as essences.

Zero-sum outcomes is basically one item for 2 people: one person is left with nothing (1 black man and 1 white man want 1 house). Superordinate goals are members of a intergroup (between groups) working together for a goal (Jew & Muslim vs. Zionism).

Gender Stuff
Gender stereotypes: Traits possessed by females and males that separate them. Women are lovely, but incompetent. Men are not lovely (low on communal attributes), but mad competent. The glassceiling effect is when qualified women try to get high level positions, but can't due to stereotype difficulty. Women are attacked when men feel threatened by stereotype-inconsistent (dominant) female behavior. Some people even do the glass cliff effect, basically hiring a female for a potentially horrible project just to confirm our view of women being incompetent.

Promoting very few women to high-level positions forces women not promoted to blame themselves (favor individual attempts vs. as a whole) for not getting the promotion.

A subtype is seen when an individual of a stereotyped group does NOT fit the overall stereotype. An example is meeting a dominant and assertive female political figure (Azula).

Tokenism (the performance of relatively trivial positive actions for members of a minority group can be later used as an excuse for later discriminatory treatment) have two effects. An example of tokenism is hiring 2 females in 10 spots to avoid a 'discrimination lawsuit'. Those who cry 'discrimination' risk negative/critical evaluations (bro he's complaining again...).


 * 1) Maintains perceptions that the system is NOT discriminatory (opting for meritocracy) ["Great! The existing system is good!"]
 * 2) Harm how tokens are perceived by others.

Stereotypes can influence behavior even when there is no subjective scale evaluations of men and women. When objective scales are used (where shifting standards cannot be used and a response meaning is constant), women are likely to recieve WORSE outcomes than men.


 * Singlism: Negative stereotyping/discrimination directed toward single people. Both groups of people (single, married) hold this view, maybe because they think it is legit or they don't see their own bias.


 * Stereotypes: Resistant to change, but revised (ex, women seeing female business leaders often).

Prejudice

 * Prejudice: Negative attitude towards members of a social group. May be subtle and comes from fear, anger, or disgust.

Social identity theory: prejudice comes from our tendency to divide the world into "us vs. them" and to see our group as more favorable. Prejudice will ALWAYS take place since it makes us (our group) feel better because of this theory. Threats can increase prejudice.

Social learning view: Learning to commit prejudice against other groups because people you respect/associated with teach and egg you on on these horrible views.

Realistic conflict theory: Prejudice comes from competition over sacred/scarced resources.


 * Terror management theory: Prejudice towards athiests is likely high when mortality is salient.

Discrimination is down, but subtle modern racism still exists. An example is the bona fide pipeline, tests implicit measures to see people's prejudices. People can think that they have no prejudice in their body when looking at EXTREMELY bigoted attitudes (KKK).

Collective guilt ensues when a member of our group acts in a prejudicial fashion that 'confirms' the stereotype. People also seem to forget actions done by their own group onto others vs. remembering what other groups have done onto them.

Moral disengagement is when a person convinces themselves that certain actions are ONLY moral when it is done onto others for certain reasons (it's ok if my son tortures an Afghan terrorist, but its NOT ok if he [my son] gets tortured).

How To Reduce Prejudice?

 * Direct contact with diversity, making friends with opposite group (contact hypothesis). In fact, separation from other groups lead to animosity between one and another (campers example).
 * Common ingroup identity model: Prejudice can be reduced through recategorization (bringing people into the "us" category. For example, seeing the Tutis as humans).
 * Say NO to stereotypes! (stereotype negation training)
 * Make situational attributions for negative behaviors display by other groups.
 * Emotions: collective guilt.
 * Evidence that one's ingroup has less prejudiced views than the target person you're speaking with can reduce prejudice (not ALL Muslims hate Jews!)