Biased Observer
Dana Wood, Beth Kurtz-Costes, Stephanie Rowley & Ndidi Okeke-Adeyanju
Journal of Educational Psychology, May 2010, Pages 521-530
Abstract:
The role of African American mothers' academic gender stereotype endorsement in shaping achievement-related expectations for and perceptions of their own children was examined. Mothers (N = 334) of 7th and 8th graders completed measures of expectations for their children's future educational attainment, perceptions of their children's academic competence, and academic gender stereotypes. Consistent with hypotheses, mothers held less favorable expectations for sons and perceived sons to be less academically competent than daughters. In addition, mothers reported stereotypes favoring girls over boys in academic domains; stereotype endorsement, in turn, was related to mothers' educational expectations for and beliefs about the academic competence of their own children, even with youths' actual achievement controlled. Negative stereotypes about the academic abilities of African American boys may create a negative feedback loop, thereby contributing to the maintenance of the gender gap in African Americans' educational outcomes.
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Latino Immigrants and the U.S. Racial Order: How and Where Do They Fit In?
Reanne Frank, Ilana Redstone Akresh & Bo Lu
American Sociological Review, June 2010, Pages 378-401
Abstract:
How do Latino immigrants in the United States understand existing racial categories? And how does the existing U.S. racial order influence this understanding? Using data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), our analysis points to changes in how the U.S. racial order might operate in the future. We find that most Latino immigrants recognize the advantages of a White racial designation when asked to self-identify, but wider society is not often accepting of this White expansion. Our findings suggest that relatively darker-skinned Latino immigrants experience skin-color-based discrimination in the realm of annual income. Furthermore, Latinos who are most integrated into the United States are the most likely to opt out of the existing U.S. racial categorization scheme. We predict that a racial boundary is forming around some Latino immigrants: those with darker skin and those who have more experience in the U.S. racial stratification system.
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Catherine Evans Davies
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, May 2010, Pages 179-200
Abstract:
The point of this article is to show how the "You might be a redneck" joke cycle is appropriated to designate a lower social category within the Southern working class in Alabama, and to negotiate the boundaries between the good old boy working class "red neck" and the lower category of "white trash." Close attention to language is important in the analysis because the jokers exaggerate features of the vernacular dialect to perform members of the lower social category. Within the tradition of the study of conversational joking (Fry, Sweet madness: A study of humor, Pacific Books, 1963; Tannen, Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends, Oxford University Press, 1984; Davies, C. E., Joint joking: Improvisational humorous episodes in conversation: 360-371, 1984, Language and American ‘good taste': Martha Stewart as mass-media role model, Routledge, 2003a, Journal of Pragmatics 35: 361-1385, 2003b; Norrick, Conversational joking: Humor in everyday talk, Indiana University Press, 1993; Kotthoff, Coherent keying in conversational humour: Contextualizing joint fictionalisation, John Benjamins, 1999), combined with the discourse analyis of radio talk (Coupland, Language, situation, and the relational self: Theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics, Cambridge University Press, 2002; Goffman, Forms of talk, The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), and "performance speech" (Schilling-Estes, Language in Society 27: 53-83, 1998), this study examines joking interaction on a popular morning radio talk show in Alabama that is hosted by two men, known to their audience as Jack and Bubba. The data are a set of CD recordings identified as "The Best of . . ." supplemented with additional regular shows. Examining the joking as an important part of a linguistic "presentation of self" (Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life, Doubleday, 1959; Davies, C. E., Texas Linguistic Forum 44: 73-89, 2002), the analysis reveals how the joking between the two hosts and with members of the studio audience is rooted in sociolinguistic and cultural dimensions of the working class American South.
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Self-regulation of Gendered Behavior in Everyday Life
Melissa Guerrero Witt & Wendy Wood
Sex Roles, May 2010, Pages 635-646
Abstract:
The present research tested whether gender self-concepts influence behavior through self-regulatory processes, with emotions and self-esteem signaling that people's responses meet or fail to meet their gender standards. In the first study, cross-sectional survey data from 3,174 young adults living in the United States revealed that esteem increased with behavioral conformity to gender standards for personality. In the second study, an experience-sampling diary design provided a dynamic view of regulation to gender standards for personality and romance. One hundred seventy-seven American undergraduates reported their emotions and esteem immediately following everyday social interactions. As anticipated, students became more positive when they acted in ways that confirmed rather than disconfirmed personal gender standards.
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Equilibrium Fictions: A Cognitive Approach to Societal Rigidity
Karla Hoff & Joseph Stiglitz
American Economic Review, May 2010, Pages 141-146
Abstract:
This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves constrained by fundamental values. We illustrate the model using the historical construction of racial categories. Given the post-Reformation fundamental belief that all men had rights, colonial powers after the 15th century constructed ideologies that the colonized groups they exploited were naturally inferior, and gave these beliefs precedence over other aspects of belief systems. Historical work finds that doctrines of race came into their own in the colonies that became the US after, not before, slavery; that out of the "scandal of empire" in India emerged a "race theory that cast Britons and Indians in a relationship of absolute difference"; and that arguments used by the settlers in Australia to justify their policies towards the Aborigines entailed in effect the expulsion of the Aborigines from the human race. Racial ideology shaped categories and perceptions in ways that we show can give rise to equilibrium fictions. In our framework, technology, contacts with the outside world, and changes in power and wealth matter not just directly but because they can lead to changes in ideology.
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Who Confronts Prejudice? The Role of Implicit Theories in the Motivation to Confront Prejudice
Aneeta Rattan & Carol Dweck
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the possible costs, confronting prejudice can have important benefits, ranging from the well-being of the target of prejudice to social change. What, then, motivates targets of prejudice to confront people who express explicit bias? In three studies, we tested the hypothesis that targets who hold an incremental theory of personality (i.e., the belief that people can change) are more likely to confront prejudice than targets who hold an entity theory of personality (i.e., the belief that people have fixed traits). In Study 1, targets' beliefs about the malleability of personality predicted whether they spontaneously confronted an individual who expressed bias. In Study 2, targets who held more of an incremental theory reported that they would be more likely to confront prejudice and less likely to withdraw from future interactions with an individual who expressed prejudice. In Study 3, we manipulated implicit theories and replicated these findings. By highlighting the central role that implicit theories of personality play in targets' motivation to confront prejudice, this research has important implications for intergroup relations and social change.
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Steve Loughnan, Nick Haslam, Tess Murnane, Jeroen Vaes, Catherine Reynolds & Caterina Suitner
European Journal of Social Psychology, August 2010, Pages 709-717
Abstract:
Philosophers have argued that when people are objectified they are treated as if they lack the mental states and moral status associated with personhood. These aspects of objectification have been neglected by psychologists. This research investigates the role of depersonalization in objectification. In Study 1, objectified women were attributed less mind and were accorded lesser moral status than non-objectified women. In Study 2, we replicated this effect with male and female targets and extended it to include perceptions of competence and pain attribution. Further, we explored whether target and perceiver gender qualify depersonalization. Overall, this research indicates that when people are objectified they are denied personhood.
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But I'm No Bigot: How Prejudiced White Americans Maintain Unprejudiced Self-Images
Laurie O'Brien, Christian Crandall, April Horstman-Reser, Ruth Warner, AnGelica Alsbrooks & Alison Blodorn
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, April 2010, Pages 917-946
Abstract:
Four experiments investigate a modern paradox: White Americans harbor racial prejudice, but view themselves as unprejudiced. We hypothesized that social representations of prejudice available in American culture lead many Whites to conclude that they are relatively unprejudiced. In Experiment 1, participants primed with the bigot stereotype viewed themselves as less prejudiced. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants exposed to media representations of racists viewed themselves as less prejudiced. In Experiment 4, participants sought exposure to media representations of prejudice after a threat to their unprejudiced self-image. These experiments suggest that representations of prejudice in American culture lead prejudiced individuals to view themselves as unprejudiced, and the effect of these representations on people's unprejudiced self-images can be passive or intentional.
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Sandra Waxman
European Journal of Social Psychology, June 2010, Pages 593-610
Abstract:
For children as well as adults, object categories (e.g., dog, animal, car, vehicle) serve as a rich base for inductive inferences. Here, we examine children's inferences regarding categories of people. We showed 4-year-old children a picture of an individual (e.g., a white woman), taught them a novel property of the individual (e.g., is good at a new game called zaggit), and examined children's projections of that property to other individuals. Experiment 1 revealed that children used the broad category person as an inductive base: they extended the novel property to other people, regardless of their race or gender, but not to non-human animals or artifacts. However, naming prompted children to use more specific social categories as an inductive base. When the target individual was identified as a member of a named, novel social category, children were more likely to extend the property to members of the same race-based (Experiment 2) or gender-based (Experiment 3) category as the target. Implications of naming in children's formation of social categories based on race or gender are discussed, and the consequences on the emergence of stereotypes are considered.
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Absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping in Williams syndrome children
Andreia Santos, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg & Christine Deruelle
Current Biology, 13 April 2010, Pages R307-R308
Abstract:
Stereotypes - often implicit attributions to an individual based on group membership categories such as race, religion, age, gender, or nationality - are ubiquitous in human interactions. Even three-year old children clearly prefer their own ethnic group and discriminate against individuals of different ethnicities. While stereotypes may enable rapid behavioural decisions with incomplete information, such biases can lead to conflicts and discrimination, especially because stereotypes can be implicit and automatic, making an understanding of the origin of stereotypes an important scientific and socio-political topic. An important process invoked by out-groups is social fear. A unique opportunity to study the contribution of this mechanism to stereotypes is afforded by individuals with the microdeletion disorder Williams syndrome (WS), in which social fear is absent, leading to an unusually friendly, high approachability behaviour, including towards strangers. Here we show that children with WS lack racial stereotyping, though they retain gender stereotyping, compared to matched typically developing children. Our data indicate that mechanisms for the emergence of gender versus racial bias are neurogenetically dissociable. Specifically, because WS is associated with reduced social fear, our data support a role of social fear processing in the emergence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping.
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When Not Thinking Leads to Being and Doing: Stereotype Suppression and the Self
Natalie Wyer, Giuliana Mazzoni, Timothy Perfect, Guglielmo Calvini & Helen Neilens
Social Psychological and Personality Science, April 2010, Pages 152-159
Abstract:
Suppressing stereotypes often results in more stereotype use, an effect attributed to heightened stereotype activation. The authors report two experiments examining the consequences of suppression on two self-relevant outcomes: the active self-concept and overt behavior. Participants who suppressed stereotypes incorporated stereotypic traits into their self-concepts and demonstrated stereotype-congruent behavior compared to those who were exposed to the same stereotypes but did not suppress them. These findings address issues emerging from current theories of suppression, priming, and the active self.
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The Motives Underlying Stereotype-Based Discrimination Against Members of Stigmatized Groups
Eric Luis Uhlmann, Victoria Brescoll & Edouard Machery
Social Justice Research, March 2010, Pages 1-16
Abstract:
We argue that the motivations that underlie stereotype-based discrimination against racial minorities and other stigmatized groups often fail to meet standard criteria for rational judgments. Stereotyping of such groups is often driven by threats to one's self-esteem and a desire to rationalize inequality, and declines when the perceiver is motivated to be accurate. Also, Bayesian racism - the belief that it is rational to discriminate against individuals based on stereotypes about their racial group - correlates highly with negative feelings toward minorities and the desire to keep low-status groups in their place, and correlates negatively with indices of rational thinking. The motives that drive social judgments call into question whether people engage in stereotype-based discrimination for rational reasons.
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Behavioral rebound following stereotype suppression
Alice Follenfant & François Ric
European Journal of Social Psychology, August 2010, Pages 774-782
Abstract:
Attempts to suppress stereotypes have often been found to result in an increased accessibility of these stereotypes. According to thought suppression literature together with research on prime-to-behavior effects, we hypothesized that suppression of stereotype can lead people to subsequently behave in accordance with its content and that these effects are stronger after suppression (rebound) than after a classical priming condition (i.e., no-suppression condition). Experiment 1 showed that suppression of the stereotype of sportsmen (associated with poor math performance) but not of Italian men (not related to math performance) led participants to subsequently perform worse on a calculus task in comparison to non-suppressors. These effects were replicated in a second experiment with another stereotype (elderly) and another behavior that does not require self-regulation (walking speed): Suppressors walked slower than non-suppressors. These findings are considered in the context of mental control and social stereotyping.
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Wayne Chan & Gerald Mendelsohn
Journal of Research in Personality, April 2010, Pages 251-257
Abstract:
To what extent are observer judgments biased by social stereotypes? We calculated the relative contributions of stereotype and individuating information to personality judgment. Participants read several instant messaging conversations and rated the partners on trait scales. In the combined information condition, participants received individuating information from the conversation and stereotype information in the form of systematically varied gender-by-ethnic group labels. In the category information condition, participants rated "typical" members of each group, and in the transcript information condition, participants rated conversation partners without label. Person effects accounted for the majority of explained variance, and gender, but not ethnic, labels significantly affected the ratings. When abundant individuating information was available, the force of stereotypes, though not entirely eliminated, was significantly reduced.
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An Experimental Test of the Persistence of Gender-Based Stereotypes
Philip Grossman & Oleksandr Lugovskyy
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper experimentally investigates the role of gender-based stereotypes in the forecasting of risk attitudes. Subjects predict the gamble choice of target subjects in one of three treatments: (1) Visual - the predictor can only observe the target; (2) Information - the predictor has individuating information about the targets' response to two statements from a risk-preference survey; and (3) Combined - the predictor both observes the targets and has the targets' two responses to the risk-preference survey. Our results suggest that stereotypes play a considerable role in forming predictions about others' risk attitudes and that these stereotypes persist even when individuating information is available.
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Perceiving Racism in Ambiguous Situations: Who Relies on Easy-to-Use Information?
Alexandra Corning & Michaela Bucchianeri
Journal of Social Psychology, May-June 2010, Pages 258-277
Abstract:
In situations that are ambiguous with regard to the presence of discrimination, how do people arrive at their conclusions that discrimination has (or has not) taken place? This question was examined from a motivated social cognition perspective via the interaction of two factors: the prototype effect-the notion that ambiguously discriminatory behavior is more likely to be perceived as discriminatory when the executor is prototypical and the need for cognitive closure-the tendency to jump hastily to and seize on an answer. Results provided replicating evidence of the prototype effect among European American participants but not among African American participants. Specifically, European Americans were likely to perceive ambiguously racist behavior enacted by a prototypical executor (i.e., a White person) as more discriminatory than the same behavior exhibited by a non-prototypical executor (i.e., a Black person). African American participants, on the other hand, showed no reliance on this simple cognitive heuristic. Furthermore, results showed that European Americans with a higher need for cognitive closure were more likely to rely on the easy-to-use information offered by prototypes. These findings are discussed from a motivated social cognition perspective.