Attitudes, Stereotypes and Prejudice

Stereotypes
1. Widely held beliefs about an individuals characteristics because of their membership to a particular group.
2. We tend to place people into categories and the cognitive processes that follow yield to those assumptions.
3. Stereotyping exaggerates differences between groups whilst minimising differences within groups.
4. This brings about an ignorance to diversity and fosters inaccurate perceptions.
5. Form the basis for prejudice and discrimination.
6. Common: Gender, race, age, colourism, sexual orientation, medical illness, weight stigma and many more.
7. Stereotypes feed into social role assignments and expectations.
8. E.g. Awarding the responsibility of leading a community meeting to the man because we assume that they would be able to command attention.
Effects of Stereotyping
1. Negative stereotypes
  1. Creation of in groups and out groups
  2. Dehumanisation
  3. Prejudice
2. Behavioural assimilation
  1. Taking on the characteristics of a social group after exposure to stereotypes about them
3. Stereotype threat
  1. Not fulfilling potential due to meta-stereotypes (individual’s predictions about how their group is viewed)
Important Distinctions
1. Stereotypes
  1. beliefs about attributes that are thought to be characteristic of members of particular groups
2. Prejudice
  1. a negative attitude or affective response toward a certain group and its individual members
3. Discrimination
  1. unfair treatment of members of a particular group based on their membership in that group
Prejudice
1. Definition: Is an attitude toward a group that leads people to evaluate members of that group negatively
2. On a cognitive level prejudice is linked to expectations that members of the target group will behave in a particular (negative) way.
3. On a emotional level prejudice is associated with negative feelings such as fear, dislike, or hatred.
4. On a behavioural level, prejudice it is connected to avoidance, aggression, and discrimination.
Classic Case
1. South Africa: Xenophobic attacks.
  1. Beliefs
    1. Foreigners supply cheap labour which threatens our job security.
    2. They bring drugs and participate in all sorts of crime.
    3. They leave their countries to burden us and tap into our resources.
    4. They have businesses everywhere but do not contribute back into the economy of the country.
  2. Element of Class Clashes and Tensions
Sources of Prejudice
1. Unequal Status
  1. Realistic conflict theory - direct competition between groups over valued resources (jobs, schools)
2. Social Identity
  1. Social categorization- divide the world into in-group (“us”) and out-group (“them”)
3. Cognitive Sources
  1. Prejudice is by-product of our thinking processes.
4. Stereotypes
  1. Sweeping generalizations of social groups Perceived Similarities and Differences
5. Illusory Correlation
  1. Use of tacit inferences to make inconsistent information appear consistent
Attitudes
1. A set of beliefs and feelings that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, other people, and events.
2. If we believe a person is mean, we may feel dislike for the person and act in an unfriendly manner.
3. Social learning theory
  1. learning in the social context (experience or directive)
4. Social cognitive theory
  1. learning through observation and interaction with others
Types of Attitudes
1. How are implicit attitudes measured? A number of techniques have been developed, but the most widely used is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This computer-administered test measures how quickly people associate carefully chosen pairs of concepts.
2. Implicit attitudes
  1. covert (hidden) attitudes that are expressed in subtle automatic responses that people have little conscious control over.
3. Explicit attitudes
  1. attitudes that we hold consciously and can readily describe.
Persuasion
1. Serves the function of altering pre-existing attitudes to bring about change.
2. There are four (4) elements to this
  1. The source
    1. person who sends a communication.
  2. The receiver
    1. person to whom the message is sent.
  3. The message
    1. information transmitted by the source.
  4. The channel
    1. medium through which the message is sent.
Theories of Attitude Formation & Change
1. Learning Theory
  1. Attitudes are learnt from parents, peers, media, cultural traditions, social influences etc.
  2. Transfer of emotion
  3. Occurs outside of awareness
  4. E.g. advertising
  5. Observational learning is another way (e.g. parents and children may have similar attitudes)
  6. Operant conditioning
    1. where agreement from others will reinforce the behaviour or disagreement will serve as punishment and weaken your commitment.
2. Dissonance Theory
  1. Leon Festinger’s Dissonance theory assumes that inconsistency among attitudes fosters attitude change. According to this theory, when related cognitions contradict each other they create cognitive dissonance, which is accompanied by an unpleasant state of tension. This tension motivates people to reduce their dissonance, usually by changing their cognitions.
  2. An example of cognitive dissonance would be the belief that you are hard working, and the knowledge that you had procrastinated an assignment until the last minute. To alleviate the dissonance, you could change your belief that you are hard-working, or justify the procrastination in a way that’s consistent with being hard-working.
  3. Contradictory cognitions
    1. Cognitive dissonance, tension
      1. Attitude change
3. Elaboration Likelihood model
  1. Central route
    1. when you take logic into account and carefully think about the content of persuasive messages
  2. Peripheral route
    1. based on non-message factors (e.g. attractiveness, credibility, emotions) that lead to minimal processing of information.

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	Created by Kim Coetzee almost 9 years ago