PSYC12H3 Chapter 8: Chapter 8
Document Summary
Affective processes: prejudice and discrimination don"t always involve strong feelings and emotions. Individual thinks up some convenient victim and some good reason. Usually a socially defined outgroup or scapegoat: both adorno and allport sought to explain the psychology and behavior of the extreme bigot such as the nazis or the kkk. The 1980s through the present: research began to study the role of emotions in face to face intergroup interactions, emotions such as anxiety, irritation and unease were found to have powerful consequences including the avoidance of outgroup members. Incidental affect: affect moderates cognitive processes: affective states influence cognitive processes, this line of work focuses on the general processing effects of an affective state from which itself may stem from some completely irrelevant source. For example, happy people may reduce to process information in depth because it might bore them and wreck the enjoyable mood. Or sad people might process intensively as a potential distraction from their aversive mood state.
