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Chapter 11

Key Concepts:

Terms in this set (43)

I. Characterizing Intergroup Bias
-stereotypes-> beliefs that certain attributes are characteristic of members of particular groups
-involves thinking about a person not as an individual, but as a member of a group, and projecting what you think you know about the group onto your expectations about the individual
-prejudice-> a negative attitude of affective response toward a certain group and its individual members
-involves prejudging others because they belong to a specific category
-discrimination-> unfair treatment of members of a particular group based on their membership in that group
-stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination refer to the belief, attitudinal, and behavioral components, respectively
Modern Racism
-change in norms about how different groups of people are to be viewed and treated has created conflict in many people between what they really think and feel and what they think they should think and feel
-recent research has shown some of out reactions to other groups are unconscious and automatic, and these responses may differ from our more thoughtful beliefs and attitudes
-modern racism-> prejudice directed at other racial groups that exists alongside rejection of explicitly racist beliefs
-Study: Participants were in a position to aid a white or black individual in need of medical assistance. If the participants thought they were the only one who could help, came to the aid of the black victim (91%) more than they did for the white victim (81%). When they thought that other people were present and their inaction could be justified on nonracial grounds, they helped the black victim much less often than the white victim (38% versus 75%)
-prejudice or discrimination is "masked" and the individual remains comfortably unaware of being racist
-When the desire to appear unprejudiced is sufficiently strong the opposite result is sometimes observed: bias directed at the ingroup
Benevolent Racism and Sexism
-by rewarding women and minorities for conforming to the status quo, benevolent sexism and racism inhibit progress toward equality; in other words, those who hold ambivalent attitudes tend to act positively toward members of outgroups only if they fulfill the idealized image of what such people should be like
Measuring Attitudes about Groups
The Implicit Association Test (IAT)
-Implicit Association Task (IAT)-> a technique for revealing nonconscious prejudices toward particular groups
-A series of words and/or pictures are presented on a computer screen, and the respondent is told to press a certain key depending if the picture or word conforms to one rule or another rule. Idea that respondents would be faster to press on key for members of a particular groups and words stereotypically associated with that group than to press the same key for members of that group and words that contradict the stereotype associated with that group
-There is evidence that IAT responses do correlate with other measures of prejudice (but the system has its critics)
Priming and Implicit Prejudice
-priming-> a procedure used to increase the accessibility of a concept or schema (for example, a stereotype)
-an implicit measure of prejudice can be derived by comparing a person's average reaction time to positive and negative words preceded by faces of members of the target category. Studies using these methods show that people often have subtle prejudices against various target groups that they would steadfastly deny having
II. The Economic Perspective
-According to the economic view, groups develop prejudices about one another and discriminate one another when they compete for material resources
Realistic Group Conflict Theory
-realistic group conflict theory-> a theory that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources
-predicts that prejudice and discrimination increase under conditions of economic difficulty and should be strongest among groups that stand to lost the most from another group's economic advance
-pronounced ethnocentrism-> glorifying one's own group while vilifying other groups
The Robbers Cave Experiment
-22 fifth grade boys participating in what they think is a two-and-a-half week summer camp. Divided into two groups of 11, and neither knows the other exists
Competition and Intergroup Conflict
-first phase: two groups independently engage in activities designed to foster group unity. A consistent hierarchical structure also emerged within each group
-second phase: groups were brought together and participated in a tournament. The competitive nature of the tournament was designed to encourage each group to see the other as an impediment to the fulfillment of its own goals and hence as a foe, which is what happened
-The two groups hurled insults at each other, but the intergroup hostility was not limited to words
Reducing Intergroup Conflict through Superordinate Goals
-Third phase: assessing ways to reduce conflict between the two groups
-first try was to bring them together in noncompetitive settings to see if hostility lowered, which it did not
-next try was to make them work together to solve a number of crises
-superordinate goals-> goals that transcend the interests of any one group and that can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together
-Study results: neither differences in background nor differences in appearance nor prior histories of conflict are necessary for intergroup hostility to develop; competition against outsiders often increases group cohesion; to reduce the hostility that exists between certain groups, make them work together to fulfill common goals
The Minimal Group Paradigm
Minimal group paradigm-> an experimental paradigm in which researchers create groups based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria and then examine how the members of these "minimal groups" are inclined to behave toward one another
-First part of experiment-> divided into two groups. You know which group you are in, but you never learn who else is in your group or who is in the other group
-second part-> a majority of participants are interested more in maximizing the relative gain for members of their ingroup than in maximizing the absolute gain for their ingroup. Participants exhibit a tendency to favor their minimal ingroup. Moreover, they are willing to do so at a cost to the ingroup, which earns fewer points than it would if the focus were on absolute gain rather than "beating" the other group
Social Identity Theory
-Social identity theory-> a theory that a person's self-concept and self-esteem derive not only from personal identity and accomplishments but also from the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which the person belongs
Boosting the Status of the Ingroup
-feeling better about the group leads us to feel better about ourselves
-Studies: People allowed to display intergroup discrimination reported higher self-esteem than those who had not been given the opportunity. People who take particularly strong pride in their group affiliations are more prone to ingroup favoritism when placed in a minimal group situation. People who are highly identified with a particular group react to criticism of the group as if it were criticism of the self
Basking in Reflected Glory
-basking in reflected glory-> the tendency to take pride in the accomplishments of those with whom they are in some way associated, as when fans identify with a winning team.
-We have an incentive (boosting self-esteem) to identify with such groups when they do well but to distance ourselves from them when they lose
Derogating Outgroups to Bolster Self-Esteem
-Study: Participants were either given positive or negative feedback on an intelligence test. Participants were then asked to watch a video of a job applicant interviewing. Half found out the applicant was Jewish, the other did not. Found that participants who had received negative feedback derogated the Jewish job candidate, and as well, the negative ratings of the Jewish candidate served to boost the participants' own self-esteem.
-Study: Participants were either praised or criticized by a black doctor. They were then asked to identify if a string of letters was a word. Some were medical terms, some where black stereotypical terms. Found that when participants received negative feedback from the black doctor, they were faster at subsequently recognizing words related to the African-American stereotype. When participants received positive feedback form the black doctor, they were faster at recognizing words related to medicine
Frustration-Aggression Theory
-frustration-aggression theory-> a theory that elaborates the idea that frustration leads to aggression
-people are particularly likely to vilify outgroups under conditions that foster frustration and anger
From Generalized to Targeted Aggression
-by itself, the link between frustration and aggression cannot explain the origins of prejudice and discrimination because frustration leads to generalized aggression; however, often we cannot lash out at the true source of our frustration without getting into further difficulty, so we displace our aggression onto a safer target. Thus frustration-aggression theory predicts that hardship will generate malevolence directed at minority groups that, by virtue of being outnumbered and in a weaker position, constitute particularly safe and vulnerable targets
IV. The Cognitive Perspective
-Stereotypes are a natural result of the way our brains are wired to store and process information
Stereotypes and the Conservation of Mental Reserves
-we should be particularly inclined to use stereotypes when we are overloaded, tried, or mentally taxed in some way-- that is, when we are in need of a shortcut
Construal Processes and Biased Assessments
-The upside of stereotypes is that they conserve cognitive resources, but it leads to occasional inaccuracy and error
-if people suspect that a particular group of people might differ from other groups in some way, it is shockingly easy to construe pertinent information is such a way that their suspicion is confirmed and solidified
Accentuation of Ingroup Similarity and Outgroup Difference
-people assume more similarity between members within a group than across groups
-people make such assumption even when the groups are formed arbitrarily or when they are formed on the basis of a dimension that may have no bearing on the particular attitude or behavior under consideration
The Outgroup Homogeneity Effect
-outgroup homogeneity effect-> the tendency for people to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups
-Easy to see why this effect occurs: 1) we typically have much more contact with fellow members of an ingroup than with members of an outgroup, so we have greater opportunity to encounter evidence of divergent opinions and habits among ingroup members 2) we do not treat an ingroup member as a representative of a group
Distinctiveness and Illusory Correlations
-People sometimes "see" correlations between events, characters, or categories that are not actually related-- a phenomenon referred to as illusory correlation
-distinctive events-> capture our attention and we more likely to remember them better
-by definition, minority groups are distinctive to most members of the majority, so their actions are, particularly negative ones, are doubly distinctive and doubly memorable, so negative actions by the minority are likely to seem more common than they really are
-paired distinctiveness-> the pairing of two distinctive events that stand out even ore because they co-occur
-Study: Participants were shown a series of slides, each of which described a positive or negative action initiated by a member of group A or group B. Two-thirds of the actions were attributed to group A, making A the majority group. Most of the actions attributed to each group were positive. Results: members of the minority group were thought to be disproportionately responsible for the negative behaviors. Members of the minority group were rated more highly on negative traits and less highly on positive traits than member of the majority group. Conclusion: Jointly distinctive events (minority status and rare behavior) stand out and form the basis of illusory correlations
Expectations and Biased Information Processing
-in general, people are more likely to generalize behaviors and traits that they already suspect may be typical of the group's members; stereotypes can therefore be self-reinforcing
-Actions that are consistent with an existing stereotype are noticed, deemed significant, and remembered, whereas those at variance with the stereotype may be ignored, dismissed, or quickly forgotten
-Study: participants shown a video of two people in a heated discussion. For half the participants a black man did the shoving, for the other, a white man did the shoving. Participants coded the white man shoving as playing around, but coded the black man shoving as aggressive behavior
-The influence of stereotypes is likely to be even greater when the episode is presented to people secondhand and is therefore more open to differential construal
-Studies show that people do not evaluate information even-handedly. Instead, information that is consistent with a group stereotype typically has more impact than information that is inconsistent with it
Explaining Away Exceptions
Subtyping
-subtyping-> explaining away exceptions to a given stereotype by creating a subcategory of the stereotyped group that can be expected to differ from the group as a whole
-evidence that supports a stereotype is treated differently from evidence that refutes it. Supportive evidence tends to be accepted at face value, whereas contradictory evidence is often critically analyzed and discounted
-Attribute behavior consistent with a stereotype to the dispositions of the people involved and attributing inconsistencies to external causes
Concrete versus Abstract Construal
-The more concrete the description, the less it says about the individual involved (lifting an individual- concrete; helping an individual who has fallen-> abstract)
-If people's evaluations are guided by their preexisting stereotypes, we might expect them to describe actions that are consistent with a stereotype in abstract terms (thus reinforcing the stereotype), but to describe actions that are inconsistent with it in concrete terms (thus avoiding a potential challenge to the stereotype)
Automatic and Controlled Processing
-Research has shown that our reactions to different groups of people are to a surprising degree guided by quick and automatic mental processes that we can override but not eliminate
-Study: Presented participants ranging from high to low scored on the Modern Racism Scale a set of words, one at a time, so briefly that they could not be consciously identified. Hypothesized that although the stereotypical words were presented too briefly to be consciously recognized, they would nonetheless prime participants stereotypes of blacks. Next presented the participants with a written description of an individual who acted in an ambiguously hostile manner. Results indicated that he was seen as more hostile-- and more negative overall-- by participants who had earlier been primed by words designed to activate stereotypes of blacks. This result was found equally for prejudiced and non-prejudiced participants. To demonstrate that prejudiced and non-prejudiced individuals differ primarily in their controlled cognitive processes, participants were asked to list characteristics of black Americans. Found that the prejudiced used more negative words than non-prejudiced participants
-Study: participants were exposed to white and black faces. When shown faces for only 30 milliseconds, the participants exhibited greater activation in the amygdala (which registers emotional response) after exposure to black faces than after exposure to white faces. But when faces were shown for 525 milliseconds, participants showed no difference in amygdala activation, suggesting that participants (all of whom avoid prejudice) initially had an automatic response to black versus white faces that they then tried to control
-Study: White participants were shown a white face or black face. Immediately after viewing a face, participants were shown an object and asked to identify it as a gun or a tool as quickly as possible. Results: Participants identified guns more quickly and mistook tools for guns more often after being primed with black faces. Conclusion: Implicit stereotypes influence identification and categorization
V. Being a member of a Stigmatized Group
Attributional Ambiguity
-members of stigmatized groups live in a less certain world, not knowing whether to attribute positive feedback to their own skill or to others' condescension and not knowing whether to attribute negative feedbacks to their own error or to others' prejudice
-Study: white and black students were received flattering or unflattering feedback from a white student in the adjacent room. Half were told the comment giver could see them. Whether or not they could be seen had no effect on how white students reacted to the feedback. When black students thought the other person could not see them (and therefore didn't know their race) their self-esteem went down from the unflattering feedback and was boosted by positive feedback. When they thought the other person could see them, their self-esteem was not injured by the bad news, nor was It enhanced by the good news.
Stereotype Threat
performance of members of stigmatized groups can be impaired by stereotype threat-> the fear that they will confirm the stereotypes that others have regarding a group of which they are a member
-Study: Study about the effect on women's math test scores of making salient the stereotype that women do not perform well in mathematics. Half of women participants told the test they were about to take has a gender difference in favor of men. Men and women performed equivalently when told there was no gender difference on the test, but women performed worse than men when they were told that there was a gender difference
-Study: White and black Stanford students given a verbal test from the GRE. Half told the test would measure intellectual ability, other half wasn't. White students performed equivalently in both cases, but the black students did much worse than white students when they thought their intellectual ability was being tested
-Stereotype threat leads to increased arousal, which can directly interfere with performance on complex tasks and serve as a source of distraction that interferes with concentration on the task at hand. Furthermore, knowing that one's group is "suspect" in the eyes of others tends to elicit negative thinking, which can both directly undermine performance and lead individuals to "play it safe" by being more obsessed with avoiding failure than reaching for success
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
-members of a stigmatized group often feel trapped in invalid and unfair stereotypes because the majority's stereotypical beliefs can create a self-fulfilling prophecy-- that is, people act toward members of certain groups in ways that encourage the very behavior they expect, making the stereotype self-fulfilling
VI. Reducing Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
-increased day-to-day interactions between members of different groups makes it easier to see one another more as individuals and less as representatives of particular groups
-contact between different groups is likely to be more positive and more productive if certain conditions are met
-different groups need to have equal status
-have a shared goal that requires cooperative interaction-- and thus promotes a common ingroup identity
-a community's broader social norms need to support intergroup contact
-contact should encourage one-on-one interactions between members of the different groups. Doing so puts each person's identity as an individual in the foreground and downplays a person's group membership
Some Initial Thoughts
• Many reasons why humans tend to be stereotypic and prejudiced
• Psychologists have some insights on how to reduce prejudice but can't get rid of it completely
• Slight pessimist while still holding out some hope
o There are some challenges involved when trying to reduce stereotype/prejudice
It's a common mistake to assume that people who stereotype/are prejudiced are stupid
It's more about power
Stereotyping/prejudice reflects an underlying desire for power for your group
Stereotyping/prejudice often reflects a desire to keep the status quo (keep dominant group in power)
Prejudice/discrimination are often very subtle and unconscious
This is very hard to control
Hard to get people to monitor this behavior
Prejudice/discrimination is often linked to very obvious visual cues
Sex and skin color are two examples
Hard to not take these things into account
Stereotyping can often become more accessible when you're trying to suppress it
If you're monitoring working memory for these thoughts, they become more accessible (repetition priming)
Exceptions are often subcategorized
Maintains stereotypic view of the group even in the face of disconfirming evidence
Stereotype change studies in labs are very localized
Evidence for stereotype change is often localized to a particular context (like the specific lab where the experiment occurred)
People who attend workshops on stereotyping/discrimination are probably already on board with minimizing this
Preaching to the choir
What is a stereotype?
• People often use word to refer to belief systems that are:
o Rigid - this is supported by research
Stereotypes are very impervious to change (even in face of disconfirming evidence)
o Negative
Evidence suggests that stereotyping/prejudice has duality of excessive hate for outgroup which is accompanied by love of ingroup
Hitler's glorified stereotype of the Aryan race
o False
Some stereotypes do contain a grain of truth to them
Do people ever openly acknowledge that it's ok to use stereotypes/prejudice?
• Depends on the type of group
• Crandall (1999) - Subjective appropriateness of stereotyping
o Asked subjects "under what conditions is it appropriate to feel negatively towards this group" with a 0-2 scale
0 - not ok
1 - maybe ok
2 - ok
o What determines the rank ordering?
Perceived responsibility or choice of the group
Judgment of fat people is determined by perceived choice
You feel it's more ok to judge if you think they just eat a lot as opposed to if you think it's genetic
Ambivalent Sexism
• Theory arose as opposition to traditional view of sexism just being negative
• Ambivalent sexism says its not so clear
o Men have a duality of seemingly positive and negative views towards women
Picture says that every woman should be on a pedestal
Seemingly positive - women should be cherished
Underlying negative current - women can't look after themselves
• People who promote theory says that there's a negative undercurrent to seemingly positive beliefs
• People who criticize this theory say that you're second guessing everything men say about women - always looking for a negative undercurrent even when it could just be positive
Big Question: if most reasonable people can agree that prejudice and discrimination is bad, why does it still exist?
• Three classes of approaches to this question
o Economic perspective
o Intrinsic Motivational Perspective
o Cognitive Perspective
• All three perspectives emphasize that people "gain" certain things through stereotyping and prejudice, however the exact nature of what is being gained differs as a function of each perspective
The Economic Perspective
• General idea: competition over scarce or limited resources
o Wealth, land, power, other valued commodities
• Not really individuals competing over these resources, but groups competing
o "Realistic group conflict"
• There is some support for this theory - if you track history of discrimination in the United States, it tends to spike in times of economic hardship
• How do you resolve this conflict?
o Negotiation - but the problem is that groups tend to always think that other group got the better deal (perceived fairness)
o Temporary fix - if you introduce a third party that both groups dislike, you will get a temporary unification
Robber Caves experiment by Sherif demonstrated the superordinate goal principle
Some important caveats over the economic view
o Tough to predict in advance if/what type of intergroup conflict will occur in a context
Useful in a general sense but can't make precise predictions (like what specific groups or future dates)
Intrinsic Motivational Perspective (Lambert added the Intrinsic part)
o Developed as a reaction against the economic perspective: in particular, researchers wanted to argue that prejudice can arise even in the absence of any real competition over resources/power (intrinsic to people even when there's no competition)
Not saying economic perspective is wrong, just incomplete
o Psychologist Henri Tajfel
Ingroup favoritism (IGF)
Tendency to show favoritism towards members of your own group
Exception is system justification jost theory
o Henri Tajfel's insight (people already knew IGF was a thing)
Tajfel, like other psychologists before him, recognized that there are multiple reasons why IGF effects are so common, including:
Historical context (e.g. memory for previous wars) - people have selective memories (Americans remember things about American history that place themselves in favorable light)
Competition for scarce resources - Tajfel recognized that economic perspective was right
Familiarity - mere familiarity effects (people prefer what's familiar to them)
Power/resources
However, Tajfel wondered whether one would still obtain evidence for IGF effects even when these contributing elements are stripped away**** (this is Tajfels major insight)
Tajfel was particularly taken with the idea that mere categorization, in and of itself, would be sufficient to trigger IGF effects
o Why the "mere categorization" idea is important
Even superficial and seemingly meaningless distinctions between individuals can become the basis for collective identity" - Tajfel
o Minimal Group Paradigm
Tajfel would sort people into groups based on meaningless criteria
A brief consideration of some different minimal group paradigms
The "Klee vs Kadinsky" paradigm
• Two images where 50% prefer one, 50% prefer other
Dot estimation: "overestimators" vs. "underestimators"
Coin flip (pure random assignment)
• The most "minimal" of all of the minimal group paradigms
o Key findings from the minimal group paradigm (IGF effects)
In some paradigms, you give each group some amount of money and tell them to decide how to distribute it
Typical finding is people award somewhat more money to own group than others (~55 - 45)
Studies are controlled for self interest (this effect is not due to greed)
When ask to rate traits, you give your group slightly more favorable traits
The act of being sorted into a group that you now value (even though it's random) gives your self-esteem a boost
"If I belong to a group it must be good"
People want to be a part of groups that are of some positive value (boosts self esteem even if it's a randomly selected group)
Key findings from the minimal group paradigm
• **Subjects know that the group divisions are arbitrary and random
• Even when self is excluded, give slightly more money to ingroup (55/45 split)
• According to original theory, engine driving this effect is self esteem
o Subjects want to maintain a positive self esteem by associating with valuable, likeable groups
Other evidence for the role of self esteem in stereotyping and prejudice (other than that obtained in minimal group paradigms)
• Fein and Spencer 1997 Study (indirect support for Tajfel)
o Study done with non-Jewish subjects, people were first asked to evaluate through purposes of film, a candidate who was applying for a job. Your job as the subject was to evaluate how well the person did in the job interview
o One IV was whether or not person was Jewish (did this reasonably subtly)
o Other IV was participants received either positive or negative feedback on a prior intelligence test
o Results - For non-Jewish candidate, positive or negative feedback didn't have impact on rating, for jewish candidate, negative feedback led to way worse rating
o Prepost design - there was only one condition where there was a significant increase in self-esteem (Jewish negative feedback)
o Putting down outgroup = more self esteem for ingroup
Critiques of Tajfel's self-esteem perspective
• In minimal group paradigm, the predicted boost in self esteem after derogating the outgroup has not always been supported
• It is true that you judge the ingroup more favorably is a robust effect
• Demand characteristics in the study, subjects guessing what the experiment is about
• One explanation is that its ingroup favoritism instead of outgroup derogation
• Don't always favor the ingroup
Appears to be important exception to IGF: "black sheep" effects
• Basic idea: in the case of a serious "infraction", behaviors "feel" more negative when performed by IG members
• "Kansas state student arrested on rape charge"
• "Washington University student arrested on rape charge"
o Predict that you find this more aversive
BSE might seem, in a literal sense, to be the "opposite" of IGF
• IGF - favoring ingroup
• BSE - punishing ingroup
But, on a psychological level, are BSEs really the opposite?
• As it turns out, no, not really
• In other words, while BSEs represent, by definition, harsh treatment of a fellow ingroup member, this is done in the service of wanting to preserve the positive identity of the group as a whole (including the self)
Cognitive Perspective - Gordon Allport
• Cognitive Effort Hypothesis - stereotypes are labor saving devices, help us to make judgments quickly and efficiently
• Under conditions in which you need a labor saving device, the amount of stereotyping should
• Huge numbers of studies supporting this general view
o "Cognitive load" or "concurrent task" paradigm
iiterfere with ability to focus on primary task
• Evidence in support of the Cognitive Effort Hypothesis
• Cognitive load studies
• "Circadian Rhythm" study (Bodenhausen, 1990)
o Through prior questionnaire, subjects sorted to morning/afternoon people and then randomly assigned to a morning or afternoon task
o Participant was given a sizable packet regarding student
o Target race, White: +,+,+,+
o Target race, Hispanic+.-.-,+
o Under tired conditions, more likely to use race as judgment call
An ironic implication of the "cognitive load" framework
As we have seen, situations that lead to higher "cognitive load" can exacerbate stereotyping effects
Basic idea: when people are under high load they are less able to self-regulate their behavior
Higher levels of cognitive load can be triggered by all sorts of things....
Circadian rhythms
"noisy environments"
Anxiety/distraction
One major source of anxiety...
Public situations—being watched!
So, other things being equal, people are more likely to feel anxious/distracted if they are being watched than if they are not
Studies finding more stereotyping in (anticipated) public settings: Lambert, Cronen, Chasteen, and Lickel (1996)
Lambert, Payne, Jacoby et al. (2003)
Why would it be the case that public settings would tend to exacerbate stereotyping effects?
Three keys to understanding this:
public settings tend to make people anxious/distracted.
When people are anxious/distracted, they tend to rely on "well-learned responses" as a basis for judgment (i.e. rely on well—learned associations

The irony of self-regulation!
Self-regulation can fail precisely under the conditions in which you WANT it to succeed
To the extent that (public) self regulation makes you nervous, this can lead to self-defeating behavior, making you even more likely to "slip up"
The Modern Unconscious: Beyond Freud
• Some similarities between Freud's unconscious and modern unconscious but mostly separate
After Freud's theories fell out of popularity, the "unconscious" becomes respectable again
• Especially in the context of research and theory on
• Looking at abstracts, the phrase "stereotype implicit" or "stereotype prejudice" occurred more frequently in 1990-2001
• Why did these become popular again?
Similarities/differences between "modern" vs Freudian views of the unconscious
• Freud was right that there's a lot going on in people's subconscious
• There is an unconscious but it isn't as smart as Freud thought it was, it's actually relatively simple
• The unconscious according to modern social psychology is no more and no less than processes going on below level of awareness, no hidden repression or anything
Modern view of unconscious ("implicit") processing
• Powerful, hard to control, but not particularly complex
• A lot of implicit processing is associative in nature (associating that x goes with y)
• Obeys simple rules of association, for the most part
• Modern cognitive science emphasizes that the unconscious is often dominated by automatic processes...
o Outside of awareness
o Uncontrollable
o Unintentional
o Effortless
Many modern implicit tests rely heavily on the logic of the Stroop task
• Reading the letters is automatic, reading colors is not
• When these conditions match, we get facilitation
How and why this is relevant to stereotyping
• If you associate positivity with "white", you will be faster to associate with a word like "nice" (facilitation)
• Implicit Association Task (IAT) generally builds on this logic
Other methods to measure implicit attitudes
• Keith Payne's "guns vs. tools" task (already covered)
• Josh Correll's "shooter bias" measure
o Video game where person appears on screen, if person has a gun, shoot him. If person doesn't have a gun, don't shoot him.
o Two variables: gun or not, white or black
o General findings
General population (e.g. college students, community sample)
Speed: participants shot a white armed man slower than a black armed man
Errors: participants were more likely to shoot an unarmed black man than an unarmed white man
• What about bias among police officers?
o Evidence shows that they are less biased than the rest of the general population
o Speed: police officers show same effect, faster to shoot a black armed man than white armed man
o Errors: police officers did not show any effect of race for these errors
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