Within social psychology, the social cognition approach suggests prejudice and discrimination have automatic (implicit) and controlled (explicit) components, social cognition considers “mental processes that underlie human social behaviour” (Fiske & Taylor 1991). Automatic processes occur without intention, effort or awareness and they do not interfere with other mental processes (Hewstone et al 2009), they are very similar to implicit attitudes. Controlled processes however, are intentional, controlled and effortful (Hewstone et al 2009).
Prejudice can be defined as: 1) an attitude; 2) based upon faulty and inflexible generalisations; 3) a preconception; 4) rigid and resilient; and 5) bad (Augustinos et al 2006). The idea that individuals are automatically prejudiced and discriminatory is a difficult concept to grasp, however it is pretty simple when you think about it. When you think about black people, whats the first thing you think of? Often its something derogatory or stereotypical, the social cognition approach argues this is your implicit attitude coming into play.
There is a vast range of evidence which supports the idea that stereotypes can be automatically activated. The idea is that, if a stereotype is is learnt well and used often then the content of the stereotype comes to mind automatically when cues are present (Smith & Mackie 2007; Hewstone et al 2009).
Studies carried out to test this idea use a process called priming, which is where “activating one stimulus facilitates the subsequent processing of another related stimulus (Hewstone et al 2009), Devine (1989) uses this, argued that individuals cannot avoid the automatic stereotype, and this idea is supported by Bargh (1999).
However, Blair (2002) argues t...
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...y measure automaticity.
Also, people often consider implicit attitudes to be the truth, however research shows that these implicit attitudes are subject to personal, social, and situational pressures suggesting they may not be as ‘automatic’ as previously thought. (Blair 2002). This idea is supported by Sherman (2005) who suggests
The performance of two people who appear to have equally strong implicit biases may reflect different underlying processes. Thus, behavioural outcomes on automatic measures of stereotypes and prejudice may not reflect differences in underlying attitudes, per se”.
Furthermore, the approach fails to consider the influence of aspects other than whats happening inside an individuals head. It overlooks institutional factors which are seen to provide and reproduce inequality, which could easily influence prejudice and discrimination.
Prejudice is an issue that cannot be easily avoided in today's society. It has and always will have a huge impact on the discrimination that some people face based on religion, appearance, background, mental/physical disabilities and etc.
Implicit Bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions unconsciously. (Kirwan, 2015) The implicit bias, which includes both favorable and unfavorable being personal, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or voluntary control. The implicit interaction subconscious
Prejudices shape our perceptions of various people and influence our attitudes and actions toward particular groups and prejudicial attitudes that are negative often lead to hostile relations between domi...
The idea that people from majority groups think that they are not prejudiced is a concept known as colorblind ideology. This means that people who claim they are color-blind do not see “color” or race in any way. Many people in hiring positions or college admission claim to take on a color-blindness approach (Richeson and Nussbaum 2003). However, social psychologists would say that implementing the idea of colorblindness is not an effective approach. In order to help in eliminating prejudices actions and thoughts, people need to be aware about their thoughts and actions, even the ones in the subconscious. Adopting the color-blindness thought processes hinders from this progress being made. Especially since, much of the racism that occurs today is known as implicit racism or aversive racism. People from the dominant groups, when given notions about racism, think about it in an overt kind of manner. Overt racism is the idea that
One very controversial topic in the field of social psychology is the debate as to whether stereotyping is inevitable or not. When it comes to the concept of stereotyping the idea of prejudice often comes up making it very important to understand the definitions of both stereotyping and prejudice. A stereotype is a “widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. In other words, it is a prototypical schema of a person or group. When defining prejudice, the definition is “a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience”, therefore, it can be thought of as an unjustifiable/irrational opinion that someone possess. Being that there is no definite
From the family customs to common societal perceptions about groups of people, it is safe to say that our thoughts, implicit or explicit, and behavior can be shaped according to other people’s views and morals. Upon taking the Implicit Association Test, I understood there is space to the individual thought, through positive or negative cultural or social influence.
Prejudice, there is more than one type: intellectually, morally, racial, religious, sexist, and/or social. The definition of prejudice is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. If ‘preconceived opinion’ is broken down, preconceived means formed before finding evidence of its truth or usefulness. Opinion means a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, prejudice is described as the “simple hell people give other people without even thinking” (pg. 269: ch. 20) and the novel powerfully portrays examples of racial, social, and sexist prejudice.
“Implicit attitude is defined as unacknowledged attitudes external to a person’s awareness which nonetheless have measurable effects on people’s response times to stimulations” (Grinnell, 2009). This is a topic of importance on reading within the field of social psychology.
If a person has an explicit negative outlook toward a specific group or holds prejudicial feelings, more than likely their implicit attitude would also be the same. In turn someone holding these views would have a biased opinion against such a group or person and would discriminate against someone of said group for no reason other than they are a part of the group.
The basis for this concept, begins with the causes of prejudice. While there are many causes that relate to prejudice, the context ...
Prejudice is the attitude of conveying negative stereotypes to a particular group, usually known as the out-groups. Usually the stereotypes are generalizations based on superficial opinions, so they have an invalid connotation behind it. Stereotypes in some cases evoke prejudice mindsets, leading to discriminate a certain ethnic group, age group, religion, seuxal orienntation, or body size. Stereotypes are usually socially learned from one’s environment and latched onto the mind of a young child. This could possibly later influence their opinion about something they are not fully educated on. One cannot control what they are taught, but one can control what they do with that information. They can either not believe a word of it or take it into
According to Baron, Byrne & Suls in their book Attitudes: Evaluating the social world. (1989) they defined the term Social Psychology as “the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior in social situations”. (p. 6). There are many concepts of social perception, two of these that will be looked at in this essay are Implicit Personality Theory and stereotypes. Implicit personality theory describes the beliefs, biases and assumptions, that an individual uses when he or she forms impressions on a stranger based on limited information. The way we form impressions and the different conclusions we make about other people based upon our individual impressions is also part of this theory. One of the first people to investigate how people form impressions was Solomon Asch in the 1940’s in his experiment ‘Forming Impressions of Personality' he was interested in how people form impressions and if certain traits affected peoples impressions. A good example of Implicit personality theory is if someone who is considered unpredictable they may be considered dangerous. The second Concept of Social Psychology that will be considered is stereotypes. Cardwell (1996) described stereotypes as “...A fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.” may have beliefs and thoughts on different social groups and individual people and how they should act, and believe that all people in that group conform and have the same characteristics as the rest. By using stereotypes, it helps us simplify how we think of the social world as having a stereotype reduces our thinking process when we meet new people. An example of stereotyping is saying that all French people wear berets and have garlic a...
According to Devine (1989), automatic processing involves the unconscious retrieval of obtained associations that develop through memory repetition; this process links with stimulus cues in the environment. The intense nature of automaticity is that an individual cannot escape or try to ignore the process (Devine, 1989). People build and enforce stereotypes through this automatic process and have no conscious control of memory retrievals. Human bodies take a lot of effort to function, but automatic processing requires little effort. People, therefore, mostly rely on automatic thinking, rather than controlled. This is why some researchers argue that automatic processing is why stereotyping is inevitable; because automaticity is easier, it does not mean controlled thinking cannot disband stereotypes (Devine, 1989). Controlled thinking is intentional and requires active participation of an individual. This proce...
What are attitudes? How are they formed, measured and changed? What degree of influence do they exert on behavior? What important effects does prejudice have on attitudes, and how is prejudice caused? These are all questions that are central to the study of social psychology and, by reviewing the findings of psychological research into these areas, this essay will attempt to provide a balanced explanation of the topic.
There are several factors that play a role in the development of stereotypes. The biggest learning of stereotypes come from family influences. Young children don’t see color or hold beliefs about culture and religion, but as they grow up, their ideas about people change with the people that they are surrounded by and associated with. Stereotypes also come from the media and social categorization (Ferguson). In young l...