Perceiving Group Members

1. Tom Farsides: 08/10/03 Perceiving Group Members

2. Lecture contents • Stereotypes: acquisition, use, maintenance, confirmation • Prejudice: In-group and intergroup evaluations • Discrimination: Perceptual, evaluative, behavioural

3. Discriminating terms (as used here) • Stereotype: A belief about individuals based on their membership in a social group. • Prejudice • Negative feelings about others because of their membership in a social group. • (Using stereotypes? Believing stereotypes?) • Discrimination: Behaviour directed against persons because of their membership in a social group. • Racism/Sexism: Prejudice or discrimination directed against persons because of their ‘race’/’sex’.

4. Stereotypes • Interpersonal stereotyping occurs when a target is ‘inappropriately’ considered in terms of perceived category membership • Because treatment in terms of category membership is inappropriate (e.g., incorrect, ‘excessively’ deindividuating) • Because category-informed inferences are inappropriate (e.g., wrong, unjustified) • Psychologically, the interest is in stereotype acquisition and use by individuals.

5. How do people acquire stereotypes? • Social categorisation • Classification of persons into groups, often on the basis of common attributes. • Facilitates (conscious and unconscious) heuristics. • Ingroup - outgroup categorisation • Non-unitary social categorisation, plus self-categorisation • Cognitive and motivational biases in category use.

6. Stereotype use: Perceptual distortion, assimilation • An assimilation effectoccurs when one thing is perceived as more similar to another than is the case. • Sagar & Schofield (1980) • People tend to be seen to fit their stereotypes more than they do, especially when the stimulus is ambiguous. • Allport & Postman (1947) • People tend to perceive and communicate stereotypical information better than counter-stereotypical behaviour.

7. Stereotype use: Perceptual distortion, contrast • An contrast effectoccurs when one thing is perceived as more different to another than is the case. • Jussim et al. (1987) • Contrast effects occur when characteristics are so expectation-discrepant that stereotype assimilation becomes difficult. • Hilton & Hippel (1996) • Contrast effect inhibited by (i) limited cognitive resources, (ii) high need for closure, (iii) high stereotypical expectations.

8. Stereotype protection: Subtyping • Allport (1954) • Excluding counter-stereotypical individuals to maintain the original stereotype. • Stereotype-revision rather than subtyping is most likely when: • Disconfirmers are otherwise representative of group. • Disconfirmers are not too disconfirming. • Disconfirmers are ‘dispersed’.

9. Stereotype maintenance: Attributions • The ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979). • Situational ‘explaining away’ of counter-stereotypical behaviour. • such behavior results in surprise and elicits memories of stereotypical behaviors -- strengthening the stereotype.

10. Stereotype maintenance: confirmation biases • Confirmatory hypothesis testing. • See last lecture. • We seek stereotype-confirming information. • The self-fulfilling prophesy. • See last lecture. • Works for expectations based on stereotypes. • Stereotypes lead us to act in ways that cause those we stereotype to behave as we expect.

11. Stereotype activation • Priming. • Dispositional factors. • E.g., Gender schematics vs. gender aschematics (Bem, 1981). • Motivational functionality.

12. Primes and ‘prejudice’ (?) • Devine (1989) • Automatic stereotype activation whenever group is primed. • Stereotype suppression by low-prejudiced people. • Banaji et al. (1993) • Automatic general stereotype activation whenever any aspect of the content of the stereotype is primed. • Lepore & Brown (1997) • Automatic general stereotype activation whenever any aspect of the group is salient - but only for people high in prejudice.

13. Rebound effects • Wegner (1997) • Ironic mental control processes. • Attempted suppression of an active thought may make it more active and subsequently more influential (rebound). • McCrae et al. (1994) • Works for stereotypes, too.

14. Macrae et al. (1994) Stereotype rebound after imposed suppression

15. Changing automaticity • Monteith et al. (e.g., 1998) • Previous research shows automaticity of stereotypes against scapegoated groups, e.g., skin-heads • Suppression more successful, and rebound less active, when motivated to avoid negative stereotype use • Kawakami et al. (2000) • Just say “NO” to stereotypes • Blair et al. (2001) • Note that the ‘exception’ disproves the ‘rule’ • Galinsky & Moskowitz (2000) • Look at it from their point of view • Moskowitz et al. (e.g., 2001) • Strive to be fair

16. Prejudice • an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole or toward an individual because he is a member of that group. • Allport (1954: 10) • the holding of derogatory attitudes or beliefs, the expression of negative affect, or the display of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership in that group. • Manstead & Hewstone (1996: 450)

17. An everyday tale of privileged American adolescents • Many American kids go to summer camp. • An immigrant named Muzafer Sherif set up some famous camps. • They were very exclusive. Boys were only allowed to come after extensive interviewing with their parents and schools showed them to be physically and mentally healthy, middle-class, 11 year old W.A.S.P. boys. • Camp life was nothing out of the ordinary: living in shared cabins, lots of team sports and out-door activities. • The ‘Grand Tourney’ between two groups who had named themselves ‘The Rattlers’ and ‘The Eagles’ is particularly interesting. • The social psychologist Roger Brown takes over the story...

18. Sherif’s summer camp studies • Three naturalistic field experiments that, in total, incorporated 4 phases: • Interpersonal friendship formation. • Two groups created. • Intergroup conflict created. • Intergroup conflict resolved. • Interdependence as key. • If positive, positive social relations. • If negative, hostile social relations. • ‘Realistic conflict theory’: Hostility between groups is caused by direct competition for valued scarce resources.

19. The minimal group paradigm (MGP) • Rabbie & Horowitz (1969) • The control group showing evidence of in-group favouritism raised the possibility that ‘social categorisation’ may be sufficient to promote intergroup prejudice. • Tajfel et al. (1971) • The first of many studies demonstrating that ingroup-outgroup categorisation often results in two forms of in-group favouritism: • Showing allocation and evaluation preference in favour of ingroup members. • Showing a preference for achieving ingroup superiority rather than obtaining the maximum possible material ingroup rewards.

20. Tajfel & Turner’s (1979) social identity theory (SIT) • The SIT explanation for the MGP findings is that: • MGP participants were striving to achieve ‘positive ingroup distinctiveness’. • They did this so that the ingroup would be evaluated positively as a result of downward social comparison. • Positive (negative) evaluation of the ingroup contributes to positive (negative) self-esteem for all group members. • Mere social categorisation is sufficient to promote self-categorisation as a group member. • Thus, social categorisation is sufficient to promote in-group preference and thereby intergroup prejudice. • The need for positive social identity can sometimes lead to outgroup derogation and intergroup discrimination.

21. The contact hypothesis • Prejudice may be reduced by equal status contact...in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports…and… is of the sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups. • Allport (1954, p. 281, emphasis added)

22. The contact hypothesis in the ‘jigsaw’ classroom • Each person in racially, academically mixed groups is responsible for learning and teaching the rest of the group part of a lesson. • Students liked others and school more, had higher self-esteem and less prejudice, and academic scores improved for minorities.

23. The decline of racism? • Expressions of overt white-black racism is on the decline in Western countries: • e.g., less public endorsement of negative (any?) racial stereotypes. • e.g., more reported willingness to enter close interracial relationships. • e.g., more reported tolerance of interracial romantic relationships. • Theories of ‘modern racism’ suggest that the above reflect changes in expression, not prejudice.

24. Modern racism • Involves the expression of ‘hidden’ racial prejudice only under conditions in which accusations of racism may be avoided, i.e., when it is safe, socially acceptable, or easy to rationalize. • Various versions, but most suggest racial ambivalence, cognitively controlled non-prejudice accompanied by underlying negative affect, i.e. prejudice.

25. Evidence for modern racism • Sigall & Page (1971) • More expression of white-black prejudice under bogus pipeline. • Dovidio et al. (1997) • Whites had quicker reaction times when pairing positive terms to ‘whites’ than to ‘blacks’. • Frey & Gaertner (1986) • In a helping study, whites helped a poorly performing black co-worker except when they believed they were not trying and they were not asked to help by a third party.

26. The subtlety of modern racism • Sigall & Page (1971) • Public expressions of overt racism on decline but increase under bogus pipeline conditions (both as already noted). • Dovidio et al. (1997) • Standard self-report measures of overt racism predict overt but not covert (e.g., reaction time) expressions of racism. • The ‘overcompensation’ of low-prejudice whites reveals their concession of having racist tendencies. • Word et al. (1974) • Without awareness, white interviewers distanced themselves further from and held shorter interviews with black candidates, as well as making more speech errors during the interviews.

27. Recognising commonality and difference