Not Inherently Negative Stereotypes Generalized beliefs about a group of people. People make judgments of others based on their knowledge of the categories to which others belong. Not Inherently Negative But… Automatic Inaccurate Overused Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes have a negative connotation, but they aren’t bad in themselves. Stereotypes help us organize information in a chaotic world. When we see a child, we wouldn’t offer him/her alcohol or use profanity. When you encounter a nun, you have certain stereotypes…religious, pious…this help drive your actions. BUT, stereotypes can be very harmful and can lead to prejudice and discrimination because they are inaccurate, overused, self-perpetuating, and automatic.

Prejudice: a negative attitude held toward members of a group Affective Component: fear, hostility, threat Behavioral Component: discrimination – unjustified or harmful action toward someone based only on group membership. Cognitive Component: stereotypes – generalized beliefs about a group of people Remember the ABCs of attitudes… Prejudice is a specific attitude, and it has three components: affect (fear, hostility), behavior (discrimination), and cognition (stereotypes). We think of race often when we hear the word prejudice, but many groups experience prejudice in our society: women, gay people, Muslims, the poor.

Prejudice No Relevant Behaviors Discrimination Absent Present No Relevant Behaviors A restaurant owner hates Muslims, but treats them fairly because he needs their business. Discrimination Absent An executive with religious tolerance won’t hire anyone wearing a cross due to company policy. A professor who is hostile towards women downgrades them on assignments. Present

Automatic activation of stereotypes We all hold learned stereotypes about different groups of people. Thought to be automatically activated when a member of a certain group is encountered Automatic activation can lead to implicit prejudice (we are unaware that our attitudes are affecting our behavior). Where do we learn stereotypes? (1) Stereotypes are taught by our family members and peers. (2) We also learn from our own experiences, and that plays into the stereotypes we grew up with. Implicit prejudice is different from explicit prejudice (which is behavior of which you are aware). Example of implicit prejudice.

How does prejudice happen? In-group Favoritism We tend to divide the world into “us” and “them”. This is part of our social identify (who we are as a person). The in-group is the people with whom we share a common identity. The out-group is people not in your ingroup…perceived a different from you. We like to consider ourselves as part of a group…I’m a mom, a wife, a teacher, a Catholic, a Georgia fan. (get other examples from the class). We trust people more from our in-group, and we typically like people from our ingroup more than “outsiders”. Those emotions often operate without our conscious awareness. PROBLEM: In-group bias (we favor our own group). PROBLEM: Out-group homogeneity (we perceive people in out-groups as more similar in attitudes, personality and appearance than people in our in-group).

How does prejudice happen? Self-perpetuating stereotypes Self-fulfilling prophecies Stereotype threat (fear of confirmation the negative stereotype actually elicits the behavior) Self-fulfilling prophecies maintain stereotypes. Graduate school professor once told me that I should dye my hair a different color because blonds are perceived as being intelligent. He made me nervous, and I wasn’t as comfortable answering questions when he asked them. So he probably continued to think I was less intelligent because I acted less intelligent around him. In 1997, researcher Steven Spencer discovered that equally intelligent women performed worse on a challenging math test than did men. However, if before the test, women were first led to believe that women typically perform as well as men on the test, women's scores were similar to the scores of the men. It seems that the negative stereotype of women's abilities in math causes women to under-perform on tests. Further research shows that women score higher on math-based tests when testing with a group of all women than when testing in a mixed-gender group. In one study, participants listened to a radio broadcast of a college basketball game and were asked to evaluate the performance of one of the players. All participants heard the same game, but some were told the player was black and others told the player was white. Participants expectations drive what they perceived. People who believed the player was black perceived him as showing greater athletic ability than those who perceived the player as white. So even though the behavior was exactly the same, people perceived what they expected. Perceptual confirmation (tendency for people to see what they expect to see, based on their stereotypes)

How does prejudice happen? Competition over scarce resources Realistic Conflict Theory: If two groups compete for scarce resources (good jobs, college scholarships, affordable housing), one groups’ gain is the other’s loss. Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif and Sherif)

How does prejudice happen? Cognitive bias Ultimate Attribution Error Scapegoat Theory: blaming an out- group for negative events or emotions. Other-Race Effect: tendency to recall faces of one’s own race better than other races (emerges at 3-9 months of age). Taking the fundamental attribution error one step further, Thomas Pettigrew (1979) suggested that an "ultimate attribution error" occurs when ingroup members (1) attribute negative outgroup behavior to dispositional causes (more than they would for identical ingroup behavior), and (2) attribute positive outgroup behavior to one or more of the following causes: (a) a fluke or exceptional case, (b) luck or special advantage, (c) high motivation and effort, and (d) situational factors. This attributional double standard makes it virtually impossible for outgroup members to break free of prejudice against them, because their positive actions are explained away while their failures and shortcomings are used against them.

How can prejudice be reduced? AWARENESS COOPERATION ACTION Be aware of cognitive bias, be aware of stereotypes, be aware attribution errors. Research has shown that awareness significantly reduces automatic stereotype activation. Cooperate toward a mutual goal. Take positive actions toward other groups…cause dissonance to help attitudes become more positive.

Jane Elliott’s Discrimination Experiment Start at 4:00 and end around 12:15 In 1970, Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher in a small Iowa town, divided her class into two groups for a lesson in discrimination--one group being superior to the other. While only a classroom "experiment," the experience had a profound and lasting effect on the students.

Aggression: A Biopsychosocial model Physical or verbal behavior meant to harm someone Aggression: A Biopsychosocial model Genetic Influences (MAOA gene – warrior gene) Neurology: frontal lobe – impulse control) Biochemical: testosterone, alcohol Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis – blocking goal achievement leads to anger, which leads to aggression. Violence increases with temperature. Social Script – a culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations Behavioral model: we model aggression from watching others