Psych 3CD3 Thursday, February 27, 2014
Intergroup Relations
Summary So Far
• Positive moods are associated with the use of cognitive shortcuts in various
types of information processing
o Outgroup homogeneity
o Stereotype use when making social judgements
• Possible mechanism is reduced motivation to engage in systematic processing
of any information
o Effort conservation hypothesis
o Avoid “buzz kill”
What about Negative Moods?
• Depends on the emotion being studied
o Fear, anger, anxiety
Relies on heuristics rather than deeply thinking through a situation
o Sadness
One of the only emotions not associated with an increase in arousal
Appears to be associated with a stronger tendency to engage in
central processing
People who are sad tend to ruminate more
• Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer (1994)
o Same methodology as in happiness Expt 1
o Anger, sadness, or neutral mood induced
Anger condition recall an episode that made you feel angry and
describe the event in detail
Same description to recall for sad and neutral events
• Results: Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer (1994)
o Neutral mood did not alter their rating
o Angry people produce data that are exactly the same as happy people
o Sad people are not different they do not appear to use the stereotype in
making their judgement
o Different negative mood states result in different patterns of behaviour
o Important to know what the negative mood is
• Mechanism?
o Fearful, angry, anxious people have heightened arousal
o Could affect the extent to which they process information
o Mind is racing, very low motivation to be fair
o Interesting implications because going into an intergroup situation does
not usually make us feel sad o Being around an outgroup member to which you have negative feelings
will cause more negative feelings
Summary
• Extent to which we engage in systematic processing is associated with extent
of stereotype use
o Happy, angry, fearful, anxious= less systematic
o Sad= more systematic
• Intergroup contact is often associated with fear, anger, and anxiety
• In good news: motivation can override affectrelated tendency to use
heuristics
Cognitive Control of Stereotype Use
Overview
• Spreading activation networks
• Devine’s (1989) Dissociation Model
o We can suppress our use of stereotypes, but it’s hard
• Restructuring spreading activation networks
o We may be able to interfere with automatic activation of stereotypes
• Rebound effect
o Ironic consequences of stereotype suppression
Therefore…
• SANs contain linked concepts in LTM
o Discrimination= target + activation of stereotypic information and/or
emotional content
• More “practiced” links
o Faster activation
o Stronger activation
• What types of links are most likely to be practiced?
o Anything your culture has as a stereotype
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