social categorisation, stereotypes and prejudice

• categorisation


  collection of things that have a family resemblance organised around a prototype
• prototype


  cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category
• why do we categorise?


  saves cognitive memory

  clarifies perception of the world

  maintain positive self-esteem
• illusory correlation (Hamilton & Sherman, 1966)


  people inaccurately pair minority groups with negative events or behaviours

  white Americans assumed that black Americans had the highest arrest rates
• what are the three effects of stereotyping?

  behavioural assimilation, stereotype threat and prejudice
• behavioural assimilation


  stereotypes influence our behaviour and we assimilate to the labels assigned to us
• Bargh et al., 1996


  pps asked to create a sentence with words related to the elderly or neutral words

  pps in condition 1 left the room slightly slower than the neutral group, showing their preconceptions of the elderly being slow and fragile
• stereotype threat


  threat of negative evaluations can lead to poor performance
• Steele and Aronson (1995)


  negative stereotypes define our group and we behave in line with them

  but negative stereotypes can also bring positive effects as some see it as a challenge and eliminate the effect (Aller et al., 2010)
• prejudice


  negative views of other people that negatively impact the way we treat and view others. dominated by cognitive bias and negative stereotypes
• types of prejudice


  reluctance to help - directed to the outgroup

  tokenism - favouring one member of a minority group in an isolated episode
• what are the three types of subtle prejudice?


  modern racism

  ambivalent racism

  ambivalent sexism
• modern racism


  blaming the victim

  support of policies that disadvantage racial minorities
• ambivalent racism


  pity for the disadvantages

  hostility towards the deviant
• ambivalent sexism


  hostile sexism - paints women in negative light

  benevolent sexism - thinking all women need to be saved or protected.
• frustration-aggression hypothesis


  individuals need a scapegoat for their frustrations
• which Freudian coping mechanism does the frustration-aggression hypothesis link to?

  displacement