Concepts, Stereotypes, and the Totalitarian Ego

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Concepts, Stereotypes, and the Totalitarian Ego

• The Hot-Dog Vendors
• Darrell Worthy
• Tyler Davis
• Anushka Pai
• Cindy Stappenbeck

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Concepts The building blocks of cognition

• A concept is
• A mental representation of a category. Things
  that belong together.
• Concepts can be about objects, people, or
  behavior
• Can be accurate or inaccurate. They arent
  necessarily what the world is like, theyre what
  we think its like.
• Other than concepts about people, can you think
  of some concepts that you have, or individuals in
  American culture hold that are inaccurate?

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What concepts do

• Help us make sense of the world
• Facilitate communication
• Classification
• Inference
• Guide attention
• Promote reasoning
• Have you ever been in a situation where you were
  conceptless, as in Kundas example of being
  baffled by another cultures practices?

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How you activate a concept

• Activation depends on stimulus properties, the
  context, and the observer
• Stimulus features.
• Salience- what stands out
• What goals you have
• What has been primed.
• Priming- a general term for activating a concept
  used to explain how a concept is activated.
  Comes in several varieties.

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More about priming

• If a concept is primed, it is likely that it will
  be used to interpret subsequent events.
• Example- Hearing a talk on a certain phenomenon
  and then seeing nothing but that phenomenon in
  your own research. Do you have any of your own?
• Priming can be subliminal
• Attitudes and feelings can be primed
• Chronic accessibility (always primed)
• Character traits. Example- Chronic paranoia that
  leads to classifying strangers behavior as
  suspicious.
• Chronic way of classifying others. Example-
  Psychiatrists who see ADHD everywhere they turn.

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Basic level categories

• Natural level to talk about objects
• Highest level that someone can create an image of
  the category as a whole
• Can be different depending on
• Expertise
• Goals
• Not as clear in social psychology
• Very flexible
• Context dependant
• Impossible to create hierarchies
• More like a tangled web

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Models of representation

• Social psychologists are not as interested in
  mapping the architecture as describing its
  implications
• Associative network Models
• Made up of links and nodes
• Activation spreads to nodes via links
• Activation gradually decays in activated nodes
• Activation can only spread so far. It either
  just peters out or runs into some sort of barrier
• Our interpretation of events is determined which
  nodes have been activated.
• Explains priming phenomena

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Parallel constraint satisfaction models

• Connectionist models
• Involve excitatory and inhibitory links. A node
  can be activated as well as deactivated.
• Constrains spreading activation
• Higher-level concepts are spread out
• In addition to the phenomena that associative
  networks can explain, parallel constraint
  satisfaction models can explain higher level
  reasoning within the same models as mental
  representation.
• Can you think of any phenomena where architecture
  might be important for social psychologists to
  think about?

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Stereotypes
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Stereotypes

• Definition
• cognitive structures that contain our knowledge,
  beliefs, and expectations about a social group
• These stereotypes guide our expectations about
  group members and can color our interpretations
  of their behavior and traits.

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Stereotype Activation

• We may activate a groups stereotype
  automatically, with little awareness and
  intention.
• Study by Patricia Devine (1989)
• Do White Americans activate the stereotype
  aggressive for African Americans automatically?
• White participants exposed subliminally to words
  related to African American stereotype, but that
  werent directly associated with aggressive

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Stereotype Activation

• Either presented with 80 or 20 of stereotype
  words out of 100
• Then asked to form an impression of a person who
  performed a series of ambiguously hostile
  behaviors (ethnicity not specified)
• Those who received 80 of primed words rated
  Donald as more hostile than those with 20 of
  primed words.

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Stereotype Activation

• Devines finding is disturbing because if we are
  unaware of these associations, we have no control
  over them
• How might this influence our behavior towards
  different groups of people?
• Is there a way we can use this information to
  promote positive associations?

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Fulfilling a Stereotype

• As we behave in keeping with a stereotype, we may
  cause the stereotyped individual to respond in
  kind, thereby fulfilling the stereotype
• Stereotype
• Behavior Of Our
  Behavior
• Stereotyped Person

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Fulfilling a Stereotype

• White participants exposed subliminally to photos
  of either African American or white men.
• Paired with partner to play a word-guessing game
• Individuals shown African American photos were
  more aggressive.
• Partners (not primed with photos) were also more
  aggressive
• The behavior of one individual influences the
  behavior of another.

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Inhibiting Stereotypes

• When we want to, we can inhibit a stereotype that
  would otherwise be activated.
• An African American man praised white
  participants abilities
• These participants suppressed negative
  stereotypes to maintain credibility.
• The opposite also true (negative feedback led to
  stereotype activation)
• Do you think we can only inhibit stereotypes when
  its for personal gain?

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Stereotypes on the Rebound

• Suppressing a thought may make us especially
  likely to entertain that thought
• White bear phenomenon
• A series of studies in Britain focused on
  stereotypes of skinheads
• Participants shown photo of skinhead and asked to
  write a brief description of his typical day
• Half told to suppress stereotypical assumptions

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Stereotypes on the Rebound

• Subsequent tasks revealed that initial
  suppression of stereotype led to increase in
  activation and use later on.
• Word recognition tasks
• Behavioral tasks
• Is this really suppression of a stereotype (could
  it be activation)?
• Given this finding, should people try to suppress
  stereotypes?

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Differing Interpretations

• The same ambiguous behavior will be interpreted
  differently for differently stereotyped groups.
• Does this necessarily reflect prejudice?
• How might this lead to racial profiling?
• Is racial profiling useful?

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Individuating Information

• People can base their impressions on
  individuating information when it is there, and
  ignore stereotypes.
• John the construction worker vs. John the
  accountant
• Who is more aggressive?
• Stereotypes may influence predictions about a
  persons trait-related behavior even when
  individuating information impacts the trait.
• Who is more likely to engage in working-class
  aggressive behavior in the future?

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Ambiguity vs. Unambiguity

• Stereotypes can determine the meaning we attach
  to the individuating information.
• A construction worker or a housewife hits someone
  who annoys him or her.
• A construction worker or a housewife
• decked a neighbor
• spanked his/her son
• Most social behavior is ambiguous, how much can
  individuating information influence impressions?

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Stereotype Application

• When our cognitive resources are strained, our
  impressions of individuals may be especially
  likely to be colored by our stereotypes.
• Why do we become more likely to apply our
  stereotypes to stereotyped individuals when our
  cognitive capacity is taxed?
• Should we have people judge crimes without
  knowledge of race or gender?

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Motivated Application and Inhibition

• We may also be more likely to use negative
  stereotypes if we are motivated to disparage the
  individual.
• However, we will only do so if we feel we have a
  good justification for this.
• Can we make strides to avoid this when people are
  in positions of power?

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The Targets Perspective

• Attributional Ambiguity- After receiving positive
  or negative feedback, stigmatized individuals may
  remain uncertain about their abilities and how
  they are perceived.
• So, what clues will people use to regulate
  behavior?
• Is it better for the indiv. to remain in this
  uncertainty or to assume that negative feedback
  is always because of a negative stereotype?

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Stereotype Threat

• Stereotype threat- the fear that one will be
  reduced to the negative stereotypes of ones
  group can influence performance.
• Remedial vs. Honorific Programs
• Do you think that stereotype threat has an
  influence in social behaviors? Friendships?
  Dating?

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Stereotype Change

• The Contact Hypothesis
• Subtyping counterstereotypic individuals
• Extreme vs. moderate deviations
• Stereotypes can evolve over time.
• Is there a way to prevent certain stereotype
  formations in the first place?
• Can we change a stereotype we dont want to have?

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Discussion Questions

• If you were in a negatively stereotyped group,
  would there be something you could do in your
  behavior to decrease the likelihood of being
  stereotyped?
• Is it better to socialize with/work with people
  of your own stereotyped group?
• Do we stereotype within our groups?

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The Totalitarian Ego

• How your ego uses biases in a selfish and
  manipulative manner

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Organization of Knowledge

• Self defined by beliefs, goals, values etc.
• Desire for unity, consistency, continuity
• Resist major attitude changes
• Self uses biases to preserve self-concept

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Three cognitive biases

• Egocentricity self as the focus of knowledge
• Beneffectance responsible for good, but not bad
  outcomes
• Cognitive conservatism resistance to cognitive
  change

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Egocentricity

• Past is remembered from our perspective,
  necessary for autobiographical memories
• Rogers et al. information is well remembered if
  considered in relation to ourselves
• Brenner memory decline for persons preceding or
  following us
• Better memory for things related to ones self of
  social group

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Beneffectance

• Take credit for success, deny blame for failure
• Judging ones contributions to the group
• Johnson (1967) subjects took credit for good
  scores, but blamed partner for bad scores
• Vicarious beneffectance fair weather sports fans

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Cognitive Conservatism

• Tendency to preserve existing knowledge
  structures (including stereotypes)
• Confirmation bias promotes information that
  confirms current judgments
• Snyder Swann selected questions that were
  biased toward confirming hypothesis
• Scientists biased to confirm existing theory
• Memory search better for info consistent with
  current belief

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More Cognitive Conservatism

• Knew-it-all-along effect
• Fischhoff subjects first informed of the
  correct answer claimed to have known it all along
• Rewrite memories without registering the
  occurrence of change

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Fear of change

• Orwell to change ones mind, or even ones
  policy, is a confession of weakness.
• Why are we afraid to admit that our opinions have
  changed?
• Should it be considered weak to change ones
  mind?
• Do people differ in cognitive conservatism like
  they do in political conservatism?

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Scientific Paradigm

• Does the stability of a scientific paradigm
  reflect the stability of the ego?
• Do we shift paradigms with the same reluctance
  that we change attitudes and let go of
  stereotypes?
• Does a stereotypical belief mirror a null
  hypothesis that requires significant evidence to
  be rejected?

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Is it advantageous?

• Do people gain by possessing these biases?
• Are people who dont employ biases at a
  disadvantage?
• Prolongs the life of an incorrect theory
• Bandura inflated efficacy expectations may lead
  to better performance