Social Relations: Prejudice
• Unjustifiable and often negative
attitude toward a group and its
members
• usually involves stereotyped beliefs,
and a predisposition to
discriminatory action
• Prejudices are schemas that effect how
we notice and interpret events.
Brown v. Board of Education
• Doll Test – summarize findings
from article provided
In-group bias
• In-group bias: the belief that our group is good
and right, excluding other groups
• groups, self-serving bias.
Discrimination may lead to harming a
racial or ethnic group which leads to
behaviors than reinforce the
stereotype creating a self-fulfilling
prophesy.
• Scapegoating is when you use a
racial or ethnic group as a target to
blame when things go wrong.
Cognitive roots of prejudice:
•Prejudices often have a germ of truth which is built
into schemas
•our tendency for confirmation bias and belief
perseverance sustains the belief.
•We then form illusory correlations in our schemas that further
reinforce our belief system.
•Also our in-group bias leads us to believe we are correct and others
wrong.
People also have a tendency to blame
the victim of discrimination because
we assume a just world and they
wouldn’t be discriminated against if it
weren’t just: Just World Phenomenon.
Aggression:
Any physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt or destroy.
• Genetic: inherited thresholds
in the amygdala.
• Neural: Head injuries;
testosterone levels
Aggression: Psychological roots.
•Aversive situations lead to aggression;
•heat, crowded rooms, stress.
•Learned- operantly, classically, socially
•Frustration-Aggression Principle: frustration –
the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal
– creates anger, which can generate aggression
•Correlation with property rights, gun loving and physical
punishments, fatherless homes
Aggression and Television.
Correlation or causation?
Immediately after viewing violence, children
demonstrate more aggression, particularly if the hero
is violent.
Provides social
scripts.
Do aggressive kids, watch aggressive shows or do the shows
cause the aggression.
Violence and culture probably desensitize
people to violence as a fact of life.