Psychology / Unit 10: Social Psychology
10.5 Prejudice and Discrimination
Notes
- Stereotype: a generalized belief about a group. Prejudice: an unjustified negative attitude toward a group. Discrimination: unfair behavior toward people because of their group.
- Causes: in-group bias (favoring your own group), scapegoating, social learning, and the brain's tendency to categorize. Implicit bias is unconscious attitudes that can affect behavior.
- A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when an expectation leads to behavior that makes it come true.
- Reducing prejudice: contact under equal status with shared goals (contact hypothesis, Allport), cooperation to reach superordinate goals (Sherif's Robbers Cave study), education and speaking up.
Practice
A person assumes that all teens are irresponsible. This is an example of a:
A generalized belief about a group is a stereotype.
Refusing to hire someone because of their ethnicity is:
Discrimination is unfair behavior based on group membership.
In Sherif's Robbers Cave study, hostility between two groups of boys decreased when they:
Cooperation toward superordinate goals reduced conflict.
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