Stereotypes,

Prejudice, and
Discrimination
 Explain how aspects of
stereotyping, prejudice,
and discrimination have
changed dramatically in
recent years, as well as
how persistent they can
be.
 • In general, stereotyping,
prejudice, and
Persistence discrimination are less
and Change acceptable than ever
before.
• But exceptions do exist.
 • Racism: Prejudice and discrimination
based on a person’s background
• Sexism: Prejudice and discrimination
based on a person’s gender

Defining • Stereotypes: Beliefs that associate a

whole group of people with certain traits.
Important
• Prejudice: Negative feelings about others
Terms because of their connection to a social
group.
• Discrimination: Negative behaviors
directed against persons because of their
membership in a particular group.
 • Modern, Aversive, and Implicit Racism
- modern racism, a form of prejudice that tends to
surface when it is safe, socially acceptable, or easy to
rationalize.

Racism: - Samuel Gaertner and John Dovidio’s concept of aversive

racism, this concerns the ambivalence between individuals’
Current sincerely fair-minded attitudes and beliefs, and yet has
Forms and largely unconscious and unrecognized prejudicial feelings and
beliefs.
Challenges
- Implicit racism is the form of racism that operates
unconsciously and unintentionally. Because of its implicit
nature, it can’t be assessed by simply asking people to answer
some questions about their attitudes
Sexism: Ambivalence, Objectification, and Double Standards

• Ambivalent Sexism
Consists of two elements:
1) Hostile sexism, characterized by negative, resentful feelings
about women’s abilities, value, and challenge to men’s power (e.g.,
“Women seek special favors under the guise of equality”),
2) Benevolent sexism, characterized by affectionate, chivalrous
feelings founded on the potentially patronizing belief that women
need and deserve protection (e.g., “Women should be cherished and
protected by men”).
 • Objectification
- Women are all too often treated in objectifying
ways. They are viewed or treated more as mere
Sexism: bodies or objects and less as fully functioning human
beings.
Ambivalence,
Objectification, • Sex Discrimination: Double Standards and
Pervasive Stereotypes
and Double
Standards - Studies showed that people often devalue the
performance of women who take on tasks usually
reserved for men and attribute women’s
achievements to luck rather than ability.
 • Ageism—prejudice and discrimination targeting the
elderly
Beyond racism
and Sexism:
• Targeting people’s physical disabilities or
disfigurements, mental health, political ideology,
Age, Weight, economic class, being unmarried, or religion (or the
Sexuality, and lack of religious beliefs)
Other Targets • Some forms of these biases appear to be considered
more acceptable by many people: prejudice based on
weight and based on sexuality

Being Stigmatized - —individuals who are targets of

negative stereotypes, perceived as deviant, and
devalued in society because they are members of a
particular social group or because they have a particular
characteristic
 • Stereotype threat is the fear that one will be
reduced to a stereotype in the eyes of others.
- the experience of concern about being
evaluated based on negative stereotypes
Stereotype about one’s group.
Threat: A
Threat in the Social identity threats. These are more
generally threats that are not necessarily tied
Air to specific stereotypes but instead reflect a
more general devaluing of a person’s social
group
 Causes of Stereotype Threat effects

Trigger Drain Cause Impair Activate Elicit

Trigger drain cause a loss impair activate elicit neural
of focus to negative activity
physiolog cognitive working thoughts,
the task at biased
ical resources hand memory; worry, toward
arousal feelings of
because of dejection, negative,
and attempts to and concerns stereotype-
stress; suppress about trying confirming
thoughts to avoid feedback.
about the failure rather
relevant than trying
stereotype; to achieve
success;
How Stereotypes Form: Social Categorization

Serious drawback: By
categorizing people, we often:
The classification of persons into
groups on the basis of common - Overestimate the differences
attributes. between groups
- Helps us form impressions - Underestimate the differences
quickly and use past experiences within groups
to guide new interactions.
 • Strong tendency to divide people
 How into ingroups and outgroups.
Stereotypes
Form:
• Consequences
Ingroups vs. - Exaggerate differences between
Outgroups ingroups and other outgroups
- Outgroup homogeneity effect
 How Stereotypes Form

• Dehumanizing Outgroups - Perceivers may not only

process outgroup faces more superficially but also
sometimes process them more like objects and lower-order
animals than like fellow humans.
• Fundamental Motives Between groups - A fundamental
motive to protect one’s ingroup and be suspicious of
outgroups is therefore likely to have evolved.
• - Social Dominance Orientation. A desire to see
their ingroups as dominant over other groups and
tend to support cultural values that contribute to the
oppression of other groups.
Motives
• - System Justification Theory. Proposes that
people are motivated (at least in part) to defend and Concerning
justify the existing social, political, and economic
conditions. intergroup
• - Stereotype Content Model states that many Dominance
group stereotypes vary along two dimensions:
warmth and competence. and Status
• - Realistic conflict theory views that direct
competition for valuable but limited resources
breeds hostility between groups.
 Social identity
Theory

•People all over the world

believe that their own
nation, culture, language,
and religion are better and
more deserving than others.
•Ingroup Favoritism. The
tendency to discriminate in
favor of ingroups over
outgroups.
 • Culture and Social identity
- Individuals’ social identities are clearly important to people across
cultures. Collectivists are more likely than individualists to value their
connectedness and interdependence with the people and groups around
them.
• Culture and Socialization
- Socialization refers to the processes by which people learn the norms,
rules, and information of a culture or group.

With so many well-known stereotypes and prejudices (Athletes are dumb, math majors
are geeks, Americans are loud, Italians are emotional, Californians are laid back, etc.),
many of which are shared around the world, we are somehow taught these stereotypes
from our culture (Kassin, Fein and Markus, 2017).
 • Gender Stereotypes: Blue for Boys, Pink for girls
Traditionally, when a baby is born, the first words uttered are: “It’s a boy!” or
“It’s a girl!” In many hospitals, the newborn boy is immediately given a blue hat
and the newborn girl a pink hat. The infant receives a gender-appropriate name
and is showered with gender appropriate gifts (boy: toy trucks, toy guns, and
etc. ; girl: dolls, kitchen and tea sets, and etc.). However, the traditional pinks and
blues are not as distinct today as they used to be.

social role theory

- states that although the perception of sex differences may be based on
some real differences, it is magnified by the unequal social roles men and
women occupy
How Stereotypes Distort Perceptions and Resist Change
Confirmation Biases and Self-Fulfilling Attributions and Subtyping
Prophecies
- Confirmation bias involves people’s tendencies to - Perceivers make attributions, or explanations,
interpret, seek, and create information that seems about the causes of other people’s behaviors.
to confirm their expectations. However, these attributions can sometimes be
- Illusory correlation, a tendency for people to flawed.
overestimate the link between variables that  Ex. People fails to recognize how a poor
are only slightly or not at all correlated. performance by a member of a stereotyped
group may be due to the effects of these
 This occurs when people overestimate the stereotypes rather than a lack of actual ability.
association between variables that are  
relatively rare  - When people see others acting in ways that
- Stereotypes can create self-fulfilling prophecies. seem to contradict a stereotype, they may be more
Self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a perceiver’s likely to think about situational factors in order to
false expectations about a person (stereotyped explain the surprising behavior.
group member) cause the person to behave in
ways that confirm those expectations.
 • Automatic Stereotype Activation
To some extent, by simply being aware of the stereotypes, without
knowing, they bias our perception and responses.
Subliminal Presentation. A method of presenting stimuli so faintly or rapidly
that people do not have any conscious awareness of having been exposed to
them

The Shooter Bias

The following are research studies that try to answer the more general
question of whether an unarmed man is more likely to be misperceived as
holding a gun if he is black than if he is white.
 Reducing the Problem: Social Psychological Solutions
• Intergroup Contact
Four conditions for contact to
succeed:
Contact Hypothesis
According to Gordon
Allport’s contact hypothesis
states that under certain
conditions, direct contact
between members of rival
groups will reduce intergroup
prejudice.
• Intergroup Friendships and Extended Contact - Building relationships across different
groups is one of the best ways to experience many of the optimal conditions for contact.

Extended Contact Effect or Indirect Contact Effect. Knowing that an

ingroup friend has a good and close relationship with a member of an
outgroup can produce positive intergroup benefits in ways similar to
direct contact

The Jigsaw Classroom - cooperative learning method

- Each student was responsible for learning one piece of the puzzle, after
which all members took turns teaching their material to one another. In this
system, everyone—regardless of race, ability, or self-confidence—needs
everyone else if the group as a whole is to succeed.
• Shared identities
-The Common Ingroup Identity Model developed by Samuel Gaertner and John Dovidio
proposes that if members of different groups recategorize themselves as members of a
more inclusive superordinate group, intergroup attitudes and relations can improve.

Trust, Belonging, and reducing

Stereotype Threat
• Exerting Self-Control
Can we learn to control and rise above these impulses?
- Trying to suppress stereotyping or to control prejudiced actions can take mental
effort, and people often don’t have the time, energy, or awareness to dedicate
to this effort
Two kinds of motivation to control prejudiced responses and behaviors :
Externally driven—not wanting to appear to others to be prejudiced
Internally driven—not wanting to be prejudiced, regardless of whether or not
others would find out.
As proposed by Margo Monteith and others (2002; Monteith &
Mark, 2009), the self-regulation of prejudiced responses model
shows that internally motivated individuals in particular may learn
to control their prejudices more effectively over time
 • Trying not to think about
stereotypes or act in a
Changing prejudiced way is so
Cognitions, challenging. There are several
Cultures, and ways of thinking or social–
Motivations cognitive factors that can
reduce stereotyping and
prejudice
THANK YOU