February 9th,
2000
Continuation of the Cognitive Approach
People tend to remember extreme and negative behaviors and people best.
Illusory correlation: people tend to remember small groups of things better than large groups of things. So…the things people remember best are negative things done by minority members.
In certain roles, people behave particular ways:
e.g., cop is aggressive, butler is submissive
When you infer that the behavior is a result of the person’s personality and not the social role, you have made what is called the Fundamental Attribution Error.
e.g., Regis (host of quiz show) is smart!! à, not necessarily, but because he has the answers it just appears that way.
In general, stereotypes you learn from personal experience are more strongly held than stereotypes learned from others.
TV & other ways of social learning are also important because you know others have learned them.
Stereotypes serve a communicative function.
e.g., Jack is a nerd à conveys a lot of information about Jack.
Trish Devine: Stereotypes are activated automatically. Knowledge of stereotypes almost automatically causes you to use it.
They almost always come to mind. You use it unless you actually take the time and effort to stop yourself.
The real issue is whether you have the mental effort to avoid using the Stereotype. These things affect that….
(1) tired
(2) preoccupied
(3) emotional
e.g., Bodenhausen’s morning/evening person. You need cognitive capacity to correct for stereotypes that you may have.
If put people under a cognitive load (e.g., remember numbers), they are more likely to engage in stereotyping.
According to Devine, unfortunately we are typically lacking cognitive resources.
Maybe we can eliminate stereotypes and prejudice by getting people together and letting them interact. This seems sensible à can eliminate misperceptions..
Cook’s Contact Hypothesis
Situation should have:
(1) acquaintance potential: need to get to know each other
(2) status equality (not roles): need level playing field
(3) Egalitarian norms: prevailing atmosphere ought to be positive and non-prejudiced
(4) Cooperation, not competition
(5) Friendly, positive interactions.
Text has a different approach, but still the same thing. Just focusing on cognitions.
Cook conducted a study à Took 46 of the most prejudiced people he could find. 23 of them went about business as ordinary. 23 went through an elaborate 8 week study that fulfilled all the conditions of the contact hypothesis.
Those in the experimental group: eliminated prejudice in 8, 14 no change, 1 had increase.
Those in control group: 2 people had decreases in prejudice, 19 stayed the same, and 2 increased.