Term
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Definition
Generalizations about the characteristics of members of groups.
- Applied whether accurate or not.
- Any group of people may face perceptions and judgements. |
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Term
| Stereotypes (where they come from) |
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Definition
The mind has a natural tendency to seek simpler explainations, to streamiline thinking and reasoning processes.
- Generalizations and simplifications are handy.
- Also using generalizations heard from others are handy too. |
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Term
| Stereotypes (types of factual problems with stereotypes) |
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Definition
There are at least 2:
(1) They are no based on personal experience, but culturally received information.
(2) Even when based on personal experience, they are over applied (generalizations) |
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Term
| Athletic stereotypes and race |
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Definition
- White basketball players are described by their hard-workingness.
This creates the irony that people used to discriminate against blacks by arguing they were biologically inferior
But now discrimination may be that blacks are biologically superior, but whites work harder to be smart, unselfish, etc.
- Blacks are referred to by gifts or talent.
- Mental vs. physical |
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Term
| Sinclair and Kunda (2000) |
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Definition
Stereotype research study
When stereotypes make you feel better about yourself or the world, you will be more likely to apply them.
Motivated stereotyping of TAs (Sinclair and Kunda 2000)
Hypothesis: people are more likely to apply a negative stereotype to someone who has criticized
Conducted after grades were given
Students were asked for the following info
(All instructors’ names,
Evaluations of each instructor,
Grade received,
Evaluation of fairness of grade)
Findings:
Male and female instructors gave out similar grades
Instructors who gave students higher grades were rated higher by students
But this effect was twice as strong when the instructor was female
The evaluations of female instructors were much more dependent on the grades they gave out than evaluations of male instructors
Title says it all: “She’s fine if she praised me, but incompetent if she criticized me”
Conclusions:
Getting a negative grade activated students’ negative stereotypes of women’s competence
Or, it may be that students were distressed by counter-stereotypical behavior of women (Women are expected to be mothering, supportive) |
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Term
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Definition
The problem: African-Americans seem to be disproportionately victimized by accidental police shootings
Maybe due to explicit racism
But maybe also due to implicit stereotyping of African-Americans as more threatening than whites
Correll et al. designed a video game to study this
In the game, players were cops and had to decide to shoot (as fast as possible)…
African-American vs. white suspects
Who were holding guns or other objects
First study: White participants..
Made correct decisions to shoot faster if the suspect was African-American
Made correct decision to not shoot faster if suspect was white
Second study: sped up the game
Participants more likely to make erroneous shootings of African-American suspects
Third study: same as first study, except they measured perceptions of AA’s as aggressive/threatening and extent of contact with AA’s
Biases from first study greater among those with stronger AA-as-aggressive stereotype
Biases also greater among those with less contact with AA’s
Fourth study:
Found equivalent levels of bias among white and African-American participants
Conclusions
Stereotypes of African-Americans as threatening may help explain police shootings of innocent African-Americans
The effects of this stereotype shared among whites and African-Americans
But extent of contact also seemed to reduce bias
Recently replicated on sample of actual police officers |
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Term
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Definition
People perform worse on tests when negative stereotypes are made active
If African-Americans are made aware of their race prior to taking a test, it leads to worse performance
But not for whites or Asian-Americans
Same for women taking math tests
Perhaps this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, where expectations of low achievement lead to low achievement
Or, perhaps when negative stereotypes become active they reduce working memory capacity
Ability to focus attention on a task while keeping other thoughts to a minimum
Perhaps stereotype activation makes for diverted attention, a part of the mind is busy worrying or thinking about the stereotype and related low expectations
Schmader and Johns (2003) tested this
Methods:
Activated stereotype: test either presented as working memory capacity, or a quantitative test that women have scored poorly on in the past
Studied ability to do a working memory capacity
Results:
Latinos scored worse on the test when it was presented as diagnostic of intelligence and asked to report their ethnicity
Normally Latinos did a little better than whites on the test
Latinos reported more anxiety and perceived the test as harder in the threat condition
In a final study they showed that stereotype threat effects on standardized test performance are mediated by reduced working memory capacity
This is a very subtle activation of stereotypes |
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