Theme 5 (Stereotypes and prejudice)
Racism: prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s racial background, or
institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one racial group
over another.
o It exists at all levels. Culturally or institutionally. (Systemic racism)
Stereotypes: beliefs or associations that link whole groups of people with certain traits
or characteristics.
Prejudice: consists of negative feelings about others because of their connection to a
social group.
Discrimination: concerns behaviors – specifically, negative behaviors directed against
persons because of their membership in a particular group.
Racism: Current Forms and Challenges
There are legitimate reasons both to celebrate racial progress and to acknowledge that racism
remains a fact of life and is by no means limited merely to actions of some fringe individuals
or groups.
Modern racism: a subtle form of prejudice that tends to surface when it is safe, socially
acceptable, or easy to rationalize. Aversive racism, concerns the ambivalence between
individuals sincerely fair minded attitudes and beliefs on the one hand and their largely
unconscious and unrecognized prejudicial feelings and beliefs on the other. Implicit racism,
is racism that operates unconsciously and unintentionally.
Measuring implicit racism
The most well known of these measures is the Implicit Association test (IAT). The IAT
measures the extent to which two concepts are associated. It measures implicit racism toward
African Americans by comparing how quickly participants associate African American cues
with negative or positive concepts compared to how quickly they associate European
American cues with these same concepts. Thus, for example, if someone is consistently
slower identifying something goof after seeing a black face than a white face this would
indicate a degree of implicit racism.
,Interestingly the explicit measures tends to decline with age. However, the implicit measures
tend to remain more stable.
The IAT has one hand reported how implicit racism correlates with a range of attitudes and
behaviors, such as how an interviewer treats job candidates or how citizens vote in an
election. On the other hand, other researchers have concluded that IAT scores are not reliable
predictors of individuals behavior, particularly over time and across situations.
Implicit bias should be thought of as a social phenomenon that passes through individuals
like the wave passes through fans in a stadium. Rather than a property of individuals, it may
more properly be considered a property of social contexts.
Interracial interactions
A person of color may be concerned about the potential racism or insincere motives of the
white person they are interacting with. And the white person may be concerned by about the
potential racism or insincere motives of the white person they are interacting with.
People engaging in intergroup interactions of then activate meta stereotypes, or thought
about the outgroup’s stereotypes about them, and worry about being seen as consistent with
these stereotypes. People engaging in interracial interactions may therefore try to regulate
their behaviors and be on the lookout for signs of distrust or dislike from tehri interactions
partners, and so on. This might become awkward instead of smooth flowing.
This happens because of the way white want to act around black people which is warm and
likeable but this in turn lowers the competence and potential of a black person.
, Another example of well-intentioned behavior that can backfire is when white adults in an
interracial interaction try to adopt a color blind mentality and demeanor, acting or trying to
act, as if race is so unimportant to them that they don’t even notice and certainly do not care
about their interaction partner’s race. But this often backfires and makes members of the
racial minority group more rather than less uncomfortable.
Causes of the problem: intergroup, motivational, cognitive, and cultural factors
Social categorization: the classification of persons into groups on the basis of common
attributes. Categorization saves us time but comes at a cost, because people tend to
underestimate the differences between groups.
Even basic perception is affected by social categorization. Research has demonstrated that
people see racially ambiguous faces as darker and they trigger more negative implicit
associations if the faces are labeled racially black than white.
Ingroup vs outgroup: groups that we identify with – our country, religion, political party,
even our hometown sports team – are called ingroups. Where as groups other than our own
are called outgroup. We see people in fundamentally different ways if we consider them to
be part of our ingroup or as part of an outgroup
One consequence is that we exaggerate the differences between our ingroup and other
outgroups and this exaggeration of differences to form and reinforce stereotypes.
Another consequence is a phenomenon know as the outgroup homogeneity effect
where by perceivers assume that there is a greater similarity among members of
outgroups than among members of one’s own group. this can be because people tend
to have less personal contact and familiarity with individual members of outgroup.
Second, people often do not encounter a representative sample of outgroup members.
Dehumanizing outgroups: people may not only process outgroup faces more superficially
but also sometimes process them more like objects and lower order animals than like fellow
humans.
For example, black athletes being taunted with monkey chants illustrate the continued
presence of blatantly dehumanizing behaviors. Although they can be subtle too
research reveals that these dehumanizing associations can predict outcomes such as
Racism: prejudice and discrimination based on a person’s racial background, or
institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one racial group
over another.
o It exists at all levels. Culturally or institutionally. (Systemic racism)
Stereotypes: beliefs or associations that link whole groups of people with certain traits
or characteristics.
Prejudice: consists of negative feelings about others because of their connection to a
social group.
Discrimination: concerns behaviors – specifically, negative behaviors directed against
persons because of their membership in a particular group.
Racism: Current Forms and Challenges
There are legitimate reasons both to celebrate racial progress and to acknowledge that racism
remains a fact of life and is by no means limited merely to actions of some fringe individuals
or groups.
Modern racism: a subtle form of prejudice that tends to surface when it is safe, socially
acceptable, or easy to rationalize. Aversive racism, concerns the ambivalence between
individuals sincerely fair minded attitudes and beliefs on the one hand and their largely
unconscious and unrecognized prejudicial feelings and beliefs on the other. Implicit racism,
is racism that operates unconsciously and unintentionally.
Measuring implicit racism
The most well known of these measures is the Implicit Association test (IAT). The IAT
measures the extent to which two concepts are associated. It measures implicit racism toward
African Americans by comparing how quickly participants associate African American cues
with negative or positive concepts compared to how quickly they associate European
American cues with these same concepts. Thus, for example, if someone is consistently
slower identifying something goof after seeing a black face than a white face this would
indicate a degree of implicit racism.
,Interestingly the explicit measures tends to decline with age. However, the implicit measures
tend to remain more stable.
The IAT has one hand reported how implicit racism correlates with a range of attitudes and
behaviors, such as how an interviewer treats job candidates or how citizens vote in an
election. On the other hand, other researchers have concluded that IAT scores are not reliable
predictors of individuals behavior, particularly over time and across situations.
Implicit bias should be thought of as a social phenomenon that passes through individuals
like the wave passes through fans in a stadium. Rather than a property of individuals, it may
more properly be considered a property of social contexts.
Interracial interactions
A person of color may be concerned about the potential racism or insincere motives of the
white person they are interacting with. And the white person may be concerned by about the
potential racism or insincere motives of the white person they are interacting with.
People engaging in intergroup interactions of then activate meta stereotypes, or thought
about the outgroup’s stereotypes about them, and worry about being seen as consistent with
these stereotypes. People engaging in interracial interactions may therefore try to regulate
their behaviors and be on the lookout for signs of distrust or dislike from tehri interactions
partners, and so on. This might become awkward instead of smooth flowing.
This happens because of the way white want to act around black people which is warm and
likeable but this in turn lowers the competence and potential of a black person.
, Another example of well-intentioned behavior that can backfire is when white adults in an
interracial interaction try to adopt a color blind mentality and demeanor, acting or trying to
act, as if race is so unimportant to them that they don’t even notice and certainly do not care
about their interaction partner’s race. But this often backfires and makes members of the
racial minority group more rather than less uncomfortable.
Causes of the problem: intergroup, motivational, cognitive, and cultural factors
Social categorization: the classification of persons into groups on the basis of common
attributes. Categorization saves us time but comes at a cost, because people tend to
underestimate the differences between groups.
Even basic perception is affected by social categorization. Research has demonstrated that
people see racially ambiguous faces as darker and they trigger more negative implicit
associations if the faces are labeled racially black than white.
Ingroup vs outgroup: groups that we identify with – our country, religion, political party,
even our hometown sports team – are called ingroups. Where as groups other than our own
are called outgroup. We see people in fundamentally different ways if we consider them to
be part of our ingroup or as part of an outgroup
One consequence is that we exaggerate the differences between our ingroup and other
outgroups and this exaggeration of differences to form and reinforce stereotypes.
Another consequence is a phenomenon know as the outgroup homogeneity effect
where by perceivers assume that there is a greater similarity among members of
outgroups than among members of one’s own group. this can be because people tend
to have less personal contact and familiarity with individual members of outgroup.
Second, people often do not encounter a representative sample of outgroup members.
Dehumanizing outgroups: people may not only process outgroup faces more superficially
but also sometimes process them more like objects and lower order animals than like fellow
humans.
For example, black athletes being taunted with monkey chants illustrate the continued
presence of blatantly dehumanizing behaviors. Although they can be subtle too
research reveals that these dehumanizing associations can predict outcomes such as
