Psychology of Race Gender and Ethnicity

“At its purest and most simple, _________ holds that there is a straightforward one-to-one relationship between the events of the outside world and people’s knowledge of them… the goal of social psychology is to…discover reliable, factual knowledge about the social-world-as-it-really-is.” S-R p 39

Informed consent
Distress and discomfort
Deception
Debriefing
Alternative perspectives

observe and assess a phenomenon without manipulating variables

looking for associations – but saying nothing about causation

looking for cause and effect – field and laboratory

A set of statistical procedures used to review a body of evidence by combining the results of individual studies to measure the overall reliability and strength of particular effects

the extent to which the measures used in a study measure the variables they were designed to measure

• people connected by common descent – distinct ethnic ‘stock’; distinguished one population from another – usually based on visible traits (skin color; hair, facial features), genes and self-identification

• a person’s sense of cultural and historical identity and affiliation, a shared cultural heritage, national characteristics, religion, and language – based on race – or descent from common ancestors

socio-cultural dimensions of being male or female

An amalgam of who we think we are…values; priorities; attitudes; and beliefs

“…mental templates by which we organize our worlds” (Myers, 2003, p 41)

William James
the self-as-known (object) – one can describe the self – can be described – including physical traits, possessions, personality characteristics, social roles (multiple social selves), relationships, thoughts and feelings and spirituality

William James
the self as knower (subject) - the sense of agency; of uniqueness; the sense of continuity from moment to moment; an awareness of one’s own awareness

“…patterns of past behavior, as well as patterns for one’s current and future behavior, and described by two broad modes of being – an independent __________ and an interdependent ___________

the enduring sense of self

or collection of selves – defined by context

defined within relationships - family, friends, work

temperament, reactivity; innate tendencies (e.g. Eysenck concept of introversion-extraversion)

argues that people know who thy are by observing their own behavior

describes people whose childhood experiences taught them that they have no control over their destiny

a sense of confidence that one can perform the behaviors that are demanded in a specific situation

describes the degree to which a person sites control in themselves or in chance, luck or fate – as a product of their early experience

where a person identifies with a social group and categorizes themselves as a member of that group – and adopts the stereotypical behavior and persona expected of members of that group

proposes that people’s individual psychological processes (including, crucially, their identities) are transformed in group settings.

the self as insightful, shrewd and intuitive, self-aware and self-monitoring

the self as part of a shared system of meaning

the self as always in a state of ‘being in the world’ – where there is no separation between the person and the situation

the self as purposeful and strategic – according to what is at stake in any given situation

the self as understood or seen through presencing practices – ie where some kind of social reality is made real

the self as a product of common impressions, symbols, ideas, and understanding shared by people rather than being products of individual minds

one in which the person adopts highly rigid views which are strongly prejudiced

an approach that underlines the importance of context in the way that people perceive objects – particularly the ideas of figure and ground

• People absorb information
• Interpret it in relation to their experience and knowledge
• Store it as an interpreted memory

How we explain behavior in terms of internal dispositions or external circumstance

tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences

a figure/ground phenomenon – the central focus in observation is the person

a conscious state of self-focus therefore heightened sensitivity to our own attributes

individualistic versus collectivist

explicit, reflective, conscious

implicit – effortless, without awareness e.g. schematic connections; emotional reactions; heuristics

the tendency to be more confident than correct

a tendency to perceive relationships where none exists

an inflated sense of our own control over situations

primarily a theory about hoe individuals build up and use ‘personal constructs’ to make sense of and operate within the social world

we hold onto established beliefs regardless of contradictory information

we are vulnerable to the ‘priming’ effect – what William James called ‘waking of associations

assumes our behavior aims to create a desired impression

the tension that arises when we experience two inconsistent cognitions – to reduce the unpleasant feeling – we adjust our thinking

we make inferences about who we are based on observations of what we do

when there is less social pressure around expression of attitudes the relationship is strengthened

Specific, relevant attitudes predict behavior

An attitude predicts behavior when it is potent

including position and salience, master statuses – and their relation to the feelings and behavior

including self enhancement/esteem; existential needs (a ‘coherent self-conception’); control; self-knowledge

a period of free experimentation before a final identity is achieved

“…the acquisition of a set of beliefs, attitudes, and values about oneself as a man or a woman in many areas of social life, including intimate relations, family, work, community, and religion.”

• The child’s knowledge of gender roles shapes their preferences and behavior.
• Parental influence is complex.
• As children learn the rules of gender they begin to establish gender-linked cognitive schemas (Bem 1981).
• Gender rules become more established with age.
• Girls continue to be more flexible with gender rules.
• Children with multiple classification skills are also more flexible.
• Children of non-traditional parents are also more flexible.

• How closely your attributes and skills approximate the gender the role standard
• How much the child likes the same sex parent
• The perceived cultural value of each sex

…the child identifies with the same sex parent- via the castration complex and the resolution of the Oedipal complex – difficult to test empirically and to a large extent rejected as marginalizing women.

learning through observation and modeling

sex-role typing follows naturally and inevitably from universal principles of cognitive development

“… proposes that sex typing derives in large measure from gender-schematic processing, from a generalized readiness on the part of the child to encode and to organize information …according to the culture’s definition of maleness and femaleness”

“…a cognitive structure, a network of associations that organizes and guides an individual’s perception.” An “anticipatory structure” Bem (1983 p 603) – “entails a readiness to sort information into categories on the basis of some particular dimension”

“…the child…learns to encode and to organize information in terms of the evolving gender schema.”

“…sex-typed individuals are seen to differ from other individuals not primarily in the degree of femininity or masculinity they possess, but in the extent to which their self-concepts and behaviors are organized on the basis of gender rather than on the basis of some other dimension.” p 605

“…a component of ongoing interactions in which perceivers emit expectancies, targets (selves) negotiate their own identities, and the context in which interaction occurs shapes the resultant behavior.” p 369

• The ‘perceiver’ interprets the targets behavior – often in line with expectations and regardless of confirmation
• The target interprets his/her behavior – and may internalize that interpretation – “In effect, the target person has become the person the perceiver expected.”

A breeding stock of animals; a family, tribe, people or nation belonging to the same stock

[the] differential concentration of gene frequencies responsible for traits which….are confined to physical manifestations such as skin color or hair form

Shared physical characteristics, along with area of geographic origin and shared culture

when discussing or assessing race-related processes at an interpersonal level

to refer to intraphysic dynamics assumed to result form racial socialization

specific norms, values, attitudes that distinguish that group

including strength of identification; personal, social and political salience; the developmental changes

some ethnicities are more equal than others

inequality – socio-economic and political

‘race salience and value’ describes the importance of race at this stage – characterized by “miseducation and self-hatred”

characterized by the adoption of a pro-American or mainstream identity

– a reiteration of original model - a “single event” or a “series of small eye-opening events”

now can be pro-Black and/or anti-White

The stage is resolved when the heightened emotion of this period is brought under control

now collapsed into one stage – with 3 internalized (comfortable) identities
• Black Nationalist – being Black is the only salient identity - expressed through social/political action
• Biculturalist – incorporates two identities – typically a sense of “Blackness” fused with American values
• Multiculturalist – includes a matrix of 3 or more cultural frames of reference

group with short term minimal involvement

group with typically prolonged contact; a shared commitment; common goals

group with identification; group affiliation; self-categorization; a frame of reference for a person’s social identity

the ‘mere presence’ hypothesis – e.g. social categorization and the selective allocation of resources; idling or energizing

Differentiation on the basis of group membership is essentially competitive – either on the level of broad social comparison or ‘realistic’ competition involving incompatible group goals – often based on the distribution of finite resources

(inhibition) – the tendency to exert less effort toward a common goal

(facilitation) – the strengthening of dominant responses in the presence of other

• The conservative nature of groups (Allport 1924)
• The ‘autokinetic effect’ – converging to the mean (Sherif 1936)
• Group norms

“…the shared standards of conduct expected of group members.” – both explicit and implicit (Stainton Rogers, p. 272)

• …in group settings they use the judgements of others in the group as a source of reliable information.”

“…people follow the norms of the group.”

• Loss of awareness and evaluation apprehension
• Particularly in a group situation that fosters responsiveness to group norms
• Influenced by – anonymity; group size; in a situation of diminished self awareness

“…the tendency of group decisions to be more extreme than the mean of the individual decisions made by the group members.”

focuses on people’s desire for social approval and avoidance of social censure –members try to align themselves with the group position.

(also informational influence theory) (Burnstein and Vinokur, 1977) highlights the capacity for novel arguments to change people’s opinions.

highlights people’s tendency to identify with the group – to see it as an in-group and then seek to endorse its particular norms, rules etc specifically in relation to the out-group.

what happens when a small, highly cohesive group of like-minded people becomes so obsessed with reaching consensus that they loose touch with reality and make a catastrophic decision.”