Group

Antagonism
 Stereotype

Group Prejudice
Antagonism

Discrimination
Stereotype

● First used by Lippman in 1922 in his book ‘public opinion’

● “The attribution of general psychological characters to large
human groups” (Watson,1974,p.80).
● “Fixed ideas about an individual, group, or social status” (Barker,
1991, p.227).
● Beliefs about social groups in terms of the traits or characteristics
that they are believed to share. Stereotypes are cognitive
frameworks that influence the processing of social information.
1. Overgeneralization
2. Mostly focus on very favourable and very unfavourable traits.
3. Ignores the variations within a particular group
Gender Stereotyping
Stereotypes concerning the traits possessed by the females and males
and that distinguish the two gender from each other.
Gender role socialization through picture books

● Title: Male:female=1.8:1
● Main character: Male:female=1.7:1
● Pictures: Male:female=1.5:1

200 Popular Children’s Picture Books:

A Twenty-first Century Update
(Hamilton & colleagues, 2006)
Williams, Vernon, Malecha (1987) found

● Aggressive: Male:female=1:1
● Nurturance: Male:female=1:
3.3
57% of male characters and
43% of female characters were
portrayed outdoors.
Toys
● Kahlenberg & Hein (2009): analysis of toy advertisement at after
school hours at Nickelodeon network.
● Boys played with action figures, construction, transportation and
girls played with dolls and animals.
● Boys were more likely than girls to be shown outdoors and
playing competitively.
● Auster and Mansbach (2012) in disney store website found
● Categorization of sex-typical toys by the age of 3rd year (Freeman,
2007).

● Which is more important? Colour or type of toys?

● Boys and girls, both played more with the gender-atypical toy
when its colour was typical for their sex than hen it was not.
● Endendijk et al (2013) found fathers have stronger explicit
stereotype and mothers have stronger implicit stereotype.
● Jacobs et al (2003) found Parents’ stereotypes about adolescence
significantly predicted their children’s behaviours 3-5 years later.
● How the gender stereotype of parents plays a role in academic
life?
● Behaviour and expectancy of parents are important for
self-perception of children.
Teachers’ stereotyping
● Teachers found best male student more independent in maths
than their favourite female students (Fennema et al,1995)
● Boys more logical in maths and having higher ability in maths
than girls (Tiedeman, 2000)
● The teachers show highest level of stereotype for middle
achieving students.
● Difference in attribution of success and failure
● The teachers' stereotypes significantly affected the students'
stereotypes after the author controlled for achievement, interest,
and self-confidence in mathematics and for school grade and
schooling track (Keller, 2001)
● Bias in teacher perceptions of their students' resources in math is
linked to the teacher's own category - based, gender role
stereotypic beliefs (Tiedemann, 2002)
Teachers may implicitly convey their

● Stereotyping through their classroom instruction (Keller 2001).

● Biased teachers may set a lower bar for the learning of students
from stigmatized groups or fail to encourage them to fulfil their
potential (Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968; Cooper and Good 1983)
Effects of stereotype
1. Looking Glass Self: We are what they think we are
2. Self-stereotyping

Self-stereotyping involves perceiving oneself as a member of a

group and consequently behaving in line with this social identity
Why do groups antagonise?
Psychodynamic approaches:

Authoritarian person refers to one who is rigidly ethnocentric,

anti-democratic, compulsively conventional, punitive and con-
descending toward those regarded as inferiors, and submissive to
authority.
1. Psychic determinism: No behavior is spontaneous, if consciousness cannot
explain it, it is caused by some unconscious desires or processes.

Slip of tongue, and slip of pen have psychological meaning.

2. Freud’s account of the two classes of instincts, Eros (sexuality and

self-preservation) and death (aggression), allowed him to preserve a dualistic
classification of the instincts.
3. Most of our behaviours are determined by unconscious drives.
Little bit about Psychodynamic Theory

Id
Operates on Ego Superego
pleasure Functions on Follows morality
principle reality principle principle
● The ego masters external stimuli by becoming “aware,” by storing up
memories, by avoidance through flight, and by active adaptation.
● Regarding internal drive stimuli, it attempts to control the demands
of the instincts by judiciously deciding the mode of satisfaction, or if
satisfaction is to be had at all. Indeed, the ego attempts to harness
instinctual libidinal drives so that they submit to the reality
principle.
● If the id is a cauldron of passions, the ego is the agent of reason,
commonsense, and defense.
● Yet the ego is never sharply differentiated from the id. Freud argues that
the “lower portion” of the ego extends throughout the id, and it is by
means of the id that repressed material communicates with (presses
“up” against the resistances of) the ego.
Defense Mechanisms: Freud believed that feelings of anxiety result
from the ego’s inability to mediate the conflict between the id and
superego. When this happens, Freud believed that the ego seeks to
restore balance through various protective measures known as
defense mechanisms.
● Displaced Aggression as a mechanism of group antagonism.
Intergroup Competition

1. Realistic Group Conflict Theory: Group antagonism is inevitable

since there is real competition between groups on power and
resources.
● Proposed by Levine and Campbell (1972)
● Real deprivation vs. relative deprivation
2. Sense of group position theory:

● Proposed by Bobo (1999)

● Dominant groups’ sense of group position is derived from
1. A belief in the superiority of the dominant group
2. Perceptions of members of the subordinate group as alien and
different
3. Proprietary claims over superior resources
4. feelings of threat from subordinate groups coveting superior
resources
3. Social Dominance Theory:
● Proposed by Sidanius and Pratto (1999)
● Desire to have one’s in-group in a position of dominance or
superiority to out-groups. High social dominance orientation is
correlated with higher levels of prejudice
● Two mechanisms through which dominant groups maintain their
position
a. Benevolent paternalism: affectionate and benevolent treatment towards
the subordinate group members, demanding deference in return.

"in the manner of a father dealing with his children"

b. Legitimizing myth: an ideology that justifies inequalities in the current

social hierarchy
4. Social Identity Theory

● Tajfel (1982)
● Three assumptions
a. People categorize the entire world into ingroup and outgroup
b. People derive a sense of self-esteem from their social identity of an
ingroup.
c. People’s self-concepts partly depend on how they evaluate their
ingroup as compared to the outgroups.
1. Assumed similarity: perception that members of the in-group
share their attitudes and values.
2. Out-group homogeneity effect: perception that members of the
outgroup are more similar to each other than members of the
in-group to each other.
3. In-group favouritism: the tendency to give more favourable
evaluations and greater rewards to members of one’s in-group as
compared to members of out-groups.
Prejudice
● A biased attitude, positive or negative, based on insufficient
information and directed at a group, which leads to prejudgment
of members of that group.
Changing faces of racism

1. Old-fashioned racism: beliefs in white racial supremacy,

segregation, ad formal discrimination.
2. Symbolic Racism: A contemporary form of antagonism toward a
racial group based on a prejudice and values rather than on
self-interest.
3. Aversive Racism: Attitudes toward a racial group combining
egalitarian social values and negative emotions resulting in
avoidance of that group.
Types of sexism
● Allport wrote, prejudice "is an antipathy based upon a faulty and
inflexible generalization" (1954, p. 9).
● a special case of prejudice marked by a deep ambivalence, rather
than a uniform antipathy,,toward women.
● Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s sex or
gender. It can lead to a wide range of harmful behaviors, from acts
of violence to subtle comments that reinforce stereotypes.
1. Hostile Sexism:This refers to beliefs and behaviors that are openly
hostile toward a group of people based on their sex or gender.
2. Benevolent sexism: a set of interrelated attitudes toward women
that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in
restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling tone
(for the perceiver) and also tend to elicit behaviors typically
categorized as prosocial (e.g., helping) or intimacy seeking (e.g.,
self-disclosure).
How do we reduce group antagonism?
1. Contact theory: The theory that prejudice against a social group
can be reduced by appropriate contact with individuals from that
group.
a. Contact should be based on co-operative interdependence. It is a
type of relationship where outcomes of two people/groups
depend on each other’s actions.
b. Contact must also occur among individuals with equal status
c. The contacts should be frequent
d. Contacts should be supported by the institutions.
2. Recategorization:

large and inclusive group categories in order to defuse conflict among

smaller groups.

Change the idea of ingroup and outgroup.