Prejudice, Stereotyping, & Discrimination
Are prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination necessarily negative?
No!
Why are emotions useful? Are negative emotions maladaptive?
They keep us alive and protect us!
No!
What can and cannot evolve?
Altruism cannot evolve
Reciprocal altruism can evolve
People say having friends is integral to their happiness, it’s on par with having a job, being healthy, and having a family. In the last 10 years, researchers have realized some interesting things about friendships. What has having friends been linked to?
Economic mobility, greater happiness, better health, longer life, and benefits to our children
Define stigma.
Stigma → devaluation of target’s identity (typically to the individual)
Define Information Threat Theory and attribution theory. When would shame be evoked if these were right?
Information threat theory (ITT) → Shame helps you limit the costs of others devaluing you
when the threat of others devaluing you is high, regardless of if you did anything wrong
Attribution theory → shame is evoked when one attributes a negative outcome to oneself
Only when you think you’ve done something wrong
What is the bystander effect and why does it occur?
Bystander effect → tendency of a bystander to be less likely to help in an emergency if there are others present
Because of a diffusion of responsibility → tendency for each onlooker to dilute personal responsibility for acting by spreading that responsibility among the group
Define loneliness.
Loneliness → discrepancy between social needs and actual social support
Describe the weight stigma study.
These women with the same height and weight are stigmatized differently! So shape does matter! Figures that are underweight are stigmatized more due to their weight, but when we go up in weight, shape is stigmatized more than weight. So more fat is less stigmatized.
Average-weight women were stigmatized less than underweight women
Overweight women (gluteofemoral fat) were stigmatized more for shape
Overweight women (abdominal fat) were stigmatized more than obese women (gluteofemoral fat)
What is the invisibility hypothesis?
Invisibility hypothesis → shame displays interfere with identification
People are worse at identifying faces with averted gazes
Shame displays interfere with memory
What is the main example of altruism in animals?
The vampire bats! For vampire bats, blood is hard to get (33% of young bats fail on any given night) and they can only survive three days without blood. However, vampire bats share blood/food - a “successful” bat will vomit blood into the mouth of an “unsuccessful” bat.
Define friendship? Can friendship occur in non-humans?
Friendship → enduring, highly cooperative relationships with specific individuals (cannot be kin or mates)
Cows form enduring special bonds with specific individuals, They preferentially feed next to specific “friends” and spend more time grooming their preferred friends. They also get very anxious when separated from their herd, but remain calmer when placed with their “friends”.
Female Baboons who have more friends have lower cortisol, more offspring, and their offspring live longer. (Similar findings for horses, zebras, and giraffes)
Define prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination. What are the main differences between the three?
Prejudice → generalized feeling toward a person based on their membership in a group
Stereotypes → generalized belief about a person based on their membership in a group
Discrimination → behaving differently toward someone based on their group membership
Main difference = prejudice is the feeling, stereotype is the belief, and discrimination is the behavior
Describe the study on women’s tears and men’s aggression.
Women played a game against men. Men were led to believe that women playing against them had cheated and could retaliate. Before deciding, men sniffed either saline or women’s tears (both odorless and colorless)
Results: men aggressed 40% less after smelling the tears
Why do people punish non-cooperators?
Social benefits hypothesis → someone who mistreats others is bad for society, so I punish them to benefit my group
Deterrence hypothesis → someone who mistreats others now might mistreat me later, so I punish them to benefit myself
Because it makes us look good, so others will want to cooperate with us
Why is it hard to make friends?
Low trust in others, lack of time, and introversion
Women had lower trust in other women
Older people were likelier to mention lack of time, children, and other obligations
Describe the study on race and ecologies. What does it tell us about why people stereotype?
If we don’t know their race, we stereotype them in the desperate category, so we hold them to the stereotypes that white Americans do to black Americans. When we don’t have ecology information, they stereotype black Americans as being more likely to have “faster” traits compared to white Americans. If you describe them as being in these desperate ecologies, you stereotype them to have these “fast traits” no matter the race. If you describe them as coming from hopeful ecologies, you have decreased negative stereotyping, no matter the race.
People stereotype in order to fill in missing information or make the most educated guesses possible, since stereotypes are mentally efficient.
What were the results when we looked at sadness displays and people's ability to believe those who are depressed?
As the sadness outputs/behaviors increased, the participants' likelihood of believing them and helping them increased
Describe the results of the study where we looked at competitive altruism, runaway selfishness, and equal opportunity.
In the competitive altruism condition, responders have more outside options, so proposers offer them more money which suggests that proposers compete to give better offers and get picked back
What did we find when we looked at cheaters and friends?
Friends were significantly less likely to use different colored pens and friends weren’t concerned with who was doing most of the work. We are highly skilled at detecting “cheaters” in social exchanges. A friend who did none of the work but still took the money would be a “cheater”, but we’re okay with that!