Definition Of Terms

Prejudice: Affect/Feeling - negative feeling about others because of their connection to a social group

Discrimination: Behaviour - behaviours specifically negative directed against persons because of their membership in a particular group

Stereotypes: Cognition - beliefs or associations that link the whole groups of people with certain traits or characteristics; overgeneralizations that can be more or less true (and could be positive)

Implicit Racism: Racism that operates unconsciously and unintentionally

Ingroups: Groups with which an individual feels a sense of membership, belonging, and identity

Outgroups: Groups with which an individual does not feel a sense of membership, belonging or identity

Outgroup Homogeneity Effect: the tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of outgroups than among members of ingroups. Overestimate the differences between groups, and Underestimate the differences within groups

Example Of Cognitive Heuristics: stereotypes

Problem With Stereotypes: Judge individuals on the basis of our expectancies about the group they belong to. Over simplify or over generalize. We are just plain wrong

Social Identity Theory: people favor ingroups over outgroups in order to enhance their self esteem

Social Identity Leads Us To: Feel good about ourselves, take pride in group memberships and seeing ourselves as superior, feeling even better about ourselves

2 Components Of Self Esteem: (a) Personal Identity (b) Social identity

2 Predictions Of SIT: (a) threats to one’s self-esteem heighten the need for in-group favortism (b) expressions of in-group favortism enhance one’s self- esteem (both supported by research)

SIT Is Based On Our Natural Tendency To: (a) Categorize things (b) Identify and associate ourselves with different groups (c) Compare and contrast our groups with other groups with a bias toward our own

Contact Hypothesis: the theory that direct contact between hostile groups will reduce intergroup prejudice under certain conditions

Jigsaw Classroom: A cooperative learning method used to reduce racial prejudice through interaction in group efforts

Consequences Of Ingroup-Outgroup Perception Include The Tendency To: (a) perceive members of the outgroup as more homogenous, as alike than different (outgroup homogeneity effect) (b) perceive members of the ingroup as more heterogenous, as more different than alike

Realistic Conflict Theory: hostility between groups is caused by direct competition for limited resources. Competition may be more imagined than real. People may become resentful of other groups because of a sense of relative deprivation (one fares poorly in relation to others

How Stereotypes Survive: (a) we draw illusory correlations (certain characteristics go together) (b) the attributions we make about other people can reinforce our cognitions about others (c) subtyping effects (d) confirmation biases occur when we pay attention to information that confirms our biases and discount information that does not (e) self-fulfilling prophecies occur when the other person becomes the person we think them to be

Stereotype Threat: the fear that one will be reduced to a stereotype in the eyes of others