Stereotypes

A type of role schema that is relatively ridged.
Once a person being perceived has a stereotype applied to them, then, however accurate of inaccurate it may be, our perception is likely to be significantly affected by the content of that stereotype
Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members
The positive or negative beliefs that people hold about the characteristics of social groups (e.g. Italians/French are romantic, College professors are nerds)

Stereotype content

The Princeton Studies

- Katz and Braly (1933); Gilbert (1951); Karlins, Coffman, and Walters (1969)

- All measured ethnic and national stereotypes of Princeton students

- Required students to select 5 of 84 adjectives that best describe 10 different ethnic groups

- Common stereotypes were Japanese being intelligent, industrious; Jews were described as Shrewd, mercenary, intelligent

-Findings about stereotype content was revealed

Fiske et al. (2002) Stereotype model

- Cognition = stereotypes

- Affect = prejudice

- behaviour = discrimination

Prejudice

Any instance in which judgements about another are made in advance of adequate scrutiny of the relevant facts. While many researchers would see stereotypes as being the cause of prejudice, the term "prejudice" does not make a presumption about the importance of various types of cognitive activity
Unfavorable attitude towards a social group and its members
The holding of derogatory social attitudes or cognitive beliefs, the expression of negative affect, or the display of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership of that grou

Realistic Conflict Theory

Campbell (1967); Sherif et al. (1953, 1955, 1961, 1966)

- Intergroup relations refer to relations between two or more groups and their respective members. Whenever individuals belonging to one group interact, collectively or individually, with another group or its members in terms of their group identification we have an instance of intergroup behaviour (Sherif, 1962)

- Stereotypes applied to outgroups: content dependso n actual or perceived relations between the groups, usually negative especially when there is competition

- Prejudice stems from direct competition over resources - ingroup losses lead to increasingly negative labels

- Competition for resources = Intergroup conflict

- Shared goal = Intergroup cooperation

Tajfel on minimal group research

Is there an ingroup bias? YES

Is that bias present even in ‘meaningless’ or minimal groups? YES

Would group members be prepared to sacrifice their own gain to maintain intergroup differentiation? YES – even in real life intergroup decisions (Brown, 1978)

Critical race theory

- The identification and examination of racist practice and ideology as a systematic force within societies, not only in isolated cases of bigotry, but also as embedded in institutions, academic disciplines (such as psychology), professional practice and everyday life.

- 4 types of threat that may play a role in causing prejudice (Oskamp, 2000):

realistic threats - perceived threat to a group's wellbeing, existence
symbolic threats - perceived threats to morals, values, attitudes of group
intergroup anxiety - feeling personally threatened in intergroup interactions because of concern about negative outcomes for the self, such as being embarrassed, rejected, or ridiculed.
negative stereotypes - negative stereotypes create the fear of negative consequences.
CROUCHER, NGUYEN & RAHMANI (2020) - Men score higher on intergroup anxiety and women higher on symbolic and realistic threat.

Integrated threat theory

- predicts that negative pre-set judgments about another group can lead to prejudice.

Schema

A cognitive structure that represents knowledge (information or misinformation) about a concept or type of stimulus, including attributes and the relations among those attributes.

Types of schemas

Person schemas are focused on specific individuals. For example, your schema for your friend might include information about her appearance, her behaviors, her personality, and her preferences.
Social schemas include general knowledge about how people behave in certain social situations.
Self-schemas are focused on your knowledge about yourself. This can include both what you know about your current self as well as ideas about your idealized or future self.
Event schemas are focused on patterns of behavior that should be followed for certain events. This acts much like a script informing you of what you should do, how you should act, and what you should say in a particular situation.

How schemas change

Assimilation - new information is incorporated into pre-existing schemas
Accomodation - existing schemas might be altered or new schemas might be formed as a person learns new information and has new experiences

Categorization and Prototypes

Social categorisation entails the allocation of people to different categories based on - for example - ethnicity, sex, occupation, etc.
Categories are collections of instances that have a family resemblance (defining property of category membership). They are cognitive representations of the classes or groups of events, things, or people that help us structure our knowledge, fuzzy sets organised around prototypes.
Prototypes are cognitive representations of the category - a standard of comparison against which family resemblance is assessed. In other words, they are the cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category
Categorisation creates stereotypes as they produce perceptual distortions via the accentuation principle

Perceptual accentuation

- the process by which your cognitive biases affect how you perceive events, and in turn maintains those biases.

Social encoding

Salience

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Stereotypes and Prejudice

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