Stereotypes

1
Stereotypes

• Hilton von Hippel
• Annual Review of Psychology 1996

2
Key Question Is Prejudice

• Inevitable by-product of miserly cognitive style
• vs.
• Product of deep-seated personality motivational
  factors

3
Answer

• Affect and motivation often increases reliance on
  cognitive stereotyping processes
• Also may inhibit or decrease stereotyping
  processes

4
Heuristics

• Humans cant process all info available, in
  thoroughly scientific, unbiased manner
• Brain/Mind has evolved info-processing rules,
  algorithms, short-cuts
• Select a little info evaluate it quickly
• ? cognitive miser

5
Definitions

• Beliefs about the characteristics, attributes,
  and behaviors or members of certain groups.
• ? Sometimes accurate representations of reality
• ? Sometimes formed independent of real
  differences

6
Focus of Review

• Stereotypes arising from miserly cognitive
  style
• But maintained when no evidence of
  corresponding group characteristics

7
Organization of Review

• How are stereotypes represented in mind/brain
• How formed?
• How maintained?
• How applied?
• How changed?

8
Representation of Stereotpyes

• Prototype groups typical features
• Exemplar prototype is specific individual
• Associative network linked attributes
• Schemas general, abstract beliefs
• Base rates average expectable behavior

9
Queston

• What of the exaggerated caricatures of we saw
  in Ethnic Notions?
• Flawed information processing?
• or
• Evidence of emotion motivation?

10
Formation

• Self-fulfilling prophecies (C. Word)
• Non-conscious detection of covariation
• (a few stereotype-congruent examples ?
  self-perpetuating)
• Illusory correlation
• (more processing devoted to negative info about
  minorities same correlation not noted or not
  remembered among in-group members)

11
Formation (cont)

• Out-group homogenaiety
• heuristic of info-processing see out-group
  members as similar
• H. Tajfels minimal group experiments

12
Maintenance

• Info-processing heuristics
• Priming
• Assimilation
• Attribution processes
• Memory processes

13
Maintenance

• Priming effects
• Making category or trait salient, so people
  perceive think in terms of it
• Usually outside of conscious awareness

14
Maintenance

• Assimilation
• Individual automatically perceived as
  resembling group stereotype

15
Maintenance

• Attributional processes
• ? Fundamental attribution error
• (overestimate others personal dispositions)
• ? Ultimate attribution error
• (dispositional attributions for positive in-
• group and negative out-group actions)

16
Maintenance

• Memory Processes
• Better memory for stereotype-incongruent
  information ? works against stereotyping
• But incongruent info ? dissonance ?
  diss.-reducing defense of stereotype
• Also high demand ? better memory for
  stereotype-congruent info.

17
Application

• Automaticity stereotype activation becomes
  automatic at young age
• Suppression takes effort
• Threats to self-esteem activate
• Ambiguity ambiguous situations ? greater
  reliance on stereotypes
• (Gaertner Dovidio)

18
Prejudice as application of stereotypes

• Aversive racism egalitarian values but negative
  affect
• Modern / symbolic / subtle racism
  negative affect rationalized by non-racist issues
• Ambivalent racism egalitarian Protestant
  ethic values ? quick to praise to condemn

19
Prejudice
Style of information processing that uses
stereotypes for repre-senting out-groups
20
Stereotype Change

• Bookkeeping model incremental updates
• Conversion model dramatic change
• Subtyping model inconsistent info given new
  sub-category
• Exemplar model change prototype

21
Inhibition of Stereotypes

• Suppression likely to prime stereotypic
  perception and processing
• Personal commitment to not stereotype makes
  suppression more successful

22
Conclusions

• Know more about development of stereotypes than
  how to reduce their use
• Dont understand non-conscious aspects of
  stereotyping

23
Questions

• What is the causal role played by cognitive
  heuristics by natural biases in
  information-processing?
• How do we integrate cognitive factors with
  emotional, motivational, and societal to explain
  prejudice?
• Do cognitive heuristics doom us to prejudice?