Stereotypes Hilton & von Hippel Annual Review of Psychology 1996
Key Question: Is Prejudice… • Inevitable by-product of miserly cognitive style vs. • Product of deep-seated personality & motivational factors
Answer: • Affect and motivation often increases reliance on cognitive stereotyping processes • Also may inhibit or decrease stereotyping processes
Heuristics • Humans can’t process all info available, in thoroughly scientific, unbiased manner • Brain/Mind has evolved info-processing rules, algorithms, short-cuts • Select a little info & evaluate it quickly “cognitive miser”
Definitions “Beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors or members of certain groups.” Sometimes accurate representations of reality Sometimes formed independent of real differences
Focus of Review • Stereotypes arising from “miserly” cognitive style • But: maintained when no evidence of corresponding group characteristics
Organization of Review • How are stereotypes represented in mind/brain • How formed? • How maintained? • How applied? • How changed?
Representation of Stereotpyes • Prototype: group’s typical features • Exemplar: prototype is specific individual • Associative network: linked attributes • Schemas: general, abstract beliefs • Base rates: average expectable behavior
Queston: What of the exaggerated caricatures of we saw in Ethnic Notions? • Flawed information processing? or • Evidence of emotion & motivation?
Formation • Self-fulfilling prophecies(C. Word) • Non-conscious detection of covariation (a few stereotype-congruent examples self-perpetuating) • Illusory correlation (more processing devoted to negative info about minorities; same correlation not noted or not remembered among in-group members)
Formation (con’t) • Out-group homogenaiety heuristic of info-processing: see out-group members as similar H. Tajfel’s “minimal group” experiments
Maintenance Info-processing heuristics: • Priming • Assimilation • Attribution processes • Memory processes
Maintenance • Priming effects • Making category or trait salient, so people perceive & think in terms of it • Usually outside of conscious awareness
Maintenance • Assimilation • Individual automatically perceived as resembling group stereotype
Maintenance • Attributional processes Fundamental attribution error (overestimate others’ personal dispositions) Ultimate attribution error (dispositional attributions for positive in- group and negative out-group actions)
Maintenance Memory Processes: • Better memory for stereotype-incongruent information works against stereotyping • But: incongruent info dissonance diss.-reducing defense of stereotype • Also: high demand better memory for stereotype-congruent info.
Application • Automaticity: stereotype activation becomes automatic at young age • Suppression takes effort • Threats to self-esteem activate • Ambiguity: ambiguous situations greater reliance on stereotypes (Gaertner & Dovidio)
Prejudice as “application of stereotypes” • Aversive racism: egalitarian values but negative affect • “Modern” / “symbolic” / “subtle” racism: negative affect rationalized by non-racist issues • Ambivalent racism: egalitarian & Protestant ethic values quick to praise & to condemn
Prejudice Style of information processing that uses stereotypes for repre-senting out-groups
Stereotype Change • Bookkeeping model: incremental updates • Conversion model: dramatic change • Subtyping model: inconsistent info given new sub-category • Exemplar model: change prototype
Inhibition of Stereotypes • Suppression likely to prime stereotypic perception and processing • Personal commitment to not stereotype makes suppression more successful
Conclusions • Know more about development of stereotypes than how to reduce their use • Don’t understand non-conscious aspects of stereotyping
Questions • What is the causal role played by cognitive heuristics – by “natural” biases in information-processing? • How do we integrate cognitive factors with emotional, motivational, and societal to explain prejudice? • Do cognitive heuristics doom us to prejudice?
