Lecture 20
Stereotyping & Prejudice
Group-Based Bias
•Affect Prejudice
•Behaviour Discrimination
•Cognition Stereotyping | Outgroup Homogeneity
Cognitive Component: Stereotypes
•Beliefs about the typical characteristics (usually traits) of group members
•Schemes used to categorize complex social groups
Affective Component: Prejudice
•A hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group of people, based only on their
membership in that group (not because you don’t like something they did)
Behavioural Component: Discrimination
•Unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group, simply because of his or her
membership in that group
•Biased only based on them belong to group
Stereotyping
•Stereotype across time:
oExisted since the existence of society (earliest humans); works as mental shortcuts
oNot new; but the content of those stereotypes are relevant to current situation
oKatz & Braly (1933):
Phase 1 of “Princeton Trilogy”: in many cases, a high degree of consensus
(agreement)
Gave impetus to investigate the nature and content of stereotypes
First time stereotype was study and gave basis to it
oGilbert (1951)
Transition after WWII
oKarlins et al. (1969)
Transition during Cold War
oConclusion: Stereotypes are generally stable over time
Stereotypes are also contextually bound
•Mechanisms:
oUsually broad and generalized
Trait based stereotype (internal disposition is the most common type)
Can also be dependent on context (If ____, Then _____ ) [The context makes a
different from what you expect of a person)
•Who Stereotypes?
oMost people have knowledge of cultural stereotypes
oFactors affecting stereotype use:
Egalitarian ideologies (humans are equal and should be treated equally)
•Automatic aspect of stereotyping:
oAutomatically activated since we all know what stereotypes are
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•Controlled aspect of stereotyping:
oIf the person is egalitarian, the controlled process of the
stereotype is activated
The person will preconsciously reject stereotypical
judgments requires resources
Cognitive load
•Greater use of cognitive resources
•Greater load = more reliance on stereotypes (due to less resources
available)
•Mendoza-Denton et al. (1999):
oMethod: Participants all high in egalitarian ideology
oExperimental condition: cognitive load or not
oRate the aggressiveness of “African Americans” and “Caucasian
Americans”
oResults: When low cognitive load, ratings of aggressiveness was
equal between whites and blacks. When high cognitive load, fell
under stereotypes and said black people were more aggressive
•Meta-Stereotypes: Stereotypes about how outgroup members stereotype the ingroup
oThis drives a lot of the interesting behaviours that occur in intergroup interactions
•Consequences of stereotyping:
oOutcomes for the perceiver (the person who is stereotyping)
Good:
•Move quickly through social world
•Conserve cognitive resources
Bad:
•Selective encoding
•Make more judgement errors
Selective Encoding by Stereotypes; Macrae, et al. (1994):
•Method: Participants come to lab for person perception experiment
•Read a list of personality traits of 3 targets
•Stereotype conditions:
oStereotype Present: Group associated with each target
oStereotype Absent: No groups associated with the targets
•Ask participants to recall as many traits as they can remember about each
target
•Results: Neutral traits: The ratio of neutral to stereotypical traits was not
significantly different (stereotype slightly higher). In the Stereotypical
traits the ratio was MUCH higher for stereotypical traits.
oThey recalled all the stereotype relevant traits
oOutcomes for the target (the person being stereotyped)
Individual level:
•Health outcomes
•Higher mortality rates, heart attacks, diastolic BP
Social level:
•Stereotype threat
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