Category and stereotype activation: Is prejudice inevitable?

Lepore, Lorella; Brown, Rupert

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.2.275

Cited by 488 publications

(502 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Men more strongly endorse both hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes (Glick & Fiske, 2001), view women as possessing fewer agentic traits (Diekman & Eagly, 2000;660 vesCio, gervais, snyder, & hoover i n Journal o f Personality a n d social Psychology 88 (2005) Spence & Buckner, 2000), and have less complex representations of women (Park & Judd, 1990) than do women. Findings from the prejudice literature additionally show that those who endorse stereotypes (e.g., high prejudice) have stronger links between the content of stereotypic representations and category labels (Lepore & Brown, 1997) and are less motivated to temper prejudiced responding (Plant & Devine, 1998;Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986) than people who reject stereotypes (e.g., low prejudice). Together, these findings suggest that those who endorse (vs. reject) negative stereotypes should more readily and frequently use stereotypes to make judgments about women and racial minorities.…”

Section: When Do Powerful People Behave In Patronizing Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power and the Creation of Patronizing Environments: The Stereotype-Based Behaviors of the Powerful and Their Effects on Female Performance in Masculine Domains.

Vescio¹,

Gervais²,

Snyder³

et al. 2005

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

232

195

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This work tested the following hypothesis: When powerful men stereotype their female subordinates in masculine domains, they behave in patronizing ways that affect the performance of their subordinates. Experiment 1 examined the stereotyping tendencies and patronizing behaviors of the powerful. Findings revealed that powerful men who stereotyped their female subordinates (i.e., those who were weakness focused) gave female subordinates few valued resources but much praise. In Experiment 2, low-power participants received resources (valued or devalued positions) and praise (high or low) from a powerful man. Subordinates who were assigned to a devalued position but received high praise (i.e., the patronizing behavior mirrored from Experiment 1) were angry. However, men performed better in the anger-inspiring situation, whereas women performed worse.

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Section: When Do Powerful People Behave In Patronizing Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power and the Creation of Patronizing Environments: The Stereotype-Based Behaviors of the Powerful and Their Effects on Female Performance in Masculine Domains.

Vescio¹,

Gervais²,

Snyder³

et al. 2005

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

232

195

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…We know from the stereotype literature that, upon perceiving (or reading about) the behavior of an actor, people automatically activate the mental representations associated with the person or the social category to which the person belongs (Devine, 1989;Fiske, 1998;Gilbert & Hixon, 1991;Lepore & Brown, 1997;Wigboldus, Dijksterhuis & Van Knippenberg, 2003). For example, the category label professor activates stereotype consistent trait terms such as smart and inhibits stereotype inconsistent trait terms such as stupid (Dijksterhuis & Van Knippenberg, 1996).…”

Section: The Negation Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

Beukeboom¹,

Finkenauer²,

Wigboldus³

2010

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

106

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Research on linguistic biases shows that stereotypic expectancies are implicitly reflected in language and thereby subtly communicated to message recipients. We examined whether these findings extend to the use of negations (e.g., not smart instead of stupid). We hypothesized that people use more negations in descriptions of stereotype inconsistent behavior than in descriptions of stereotype consistent behavior. In three studies, participants either judged the applicability of experimentally controlled person descriptions, or spontaneously produced person descriptions themselves. Results provided support for this hypothesis. Moreover, a fourth study demonstrated that negations have communicative consequences. When a target person's behavior was described with negations, message recipients inferred that this behavior was an exception to the rule, and that it was more likely caused by situational circumstances than by dispositional factors. These findings indicate that by using negations people implicitly communicate stereotypic expectancies, and that negations play a subtle but powerful role in stereotype maintenance. The negation bias 3The Negation Bias: When Negations Signal Stereotypic ExpectanciesWhen people describe others' behaviors they can choose different words and formulations.For example, people can describe a person's dim comment as Harry was stupid or Harry was not smart. Which description they choose seems arbitrary at first sight. Both sentences adequately describe the event and people do not seem to give their choice of words muchthought. Yet, research shows that rather than being arbitrary, people's choice of words and language use is driven by systematic and implicit social cognitive processes. For instance, research on linguistic biases shows that people's prior expectancies and stereotypes influence their choice of words in describing others. That is, people use more abstract predicates to describe stereotype consistent behaviors than stereotype inconsistent behaviors. This biased language use not only reflects a speaker's stereotypic expectancies about a person, but, importantly, also transmits these expectancies to recipients. In this way, biased language use is one of the predominant means of stereotype maintenance at an interpersonal level (Maass, 1999;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri & Semin, 1989;Sekaquaptewa et al., 2003;Wigboldus, Semin & Spears, 2000).To extend our knowledge on linguistic biases, the present paper introduces the negation bias. Negation descriptions contain a negation marker such as not or no to deny the truth value of a particular proposition (e.g., Harry was not smart). We will refer to descriptions of others' behavior that include such negation markers as negations. Conversely, affirmation descriptions assert the truth value of a particular proposition and may be used to describe the same behavioral event (e.g., Harry was stupid). In the present research, we investigate whether the use of negations is influenced by people's stereotypic expectancies and whether negations...

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“…The activation of stereotype seems to trigger associations that thoughtlessly influence the interpretation of ambiguous behavior (cf. Lepore & Brown, 1997).…”

Section: Stages Involved Stereotypingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stereotypes in Social Psychology

Klein

Bernard

Wright³

2015

International Encyclopedia of the Social &Amp; Behavioral Sciences

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Social stereotypes are an individual's set of beliefs about the characteristics of members of a group. They fulfill a variety of functions, such as interpreting others' behaviors, explaining social events and legitimizing the organization of society. They influence social judgment via both automatic and controlled cognitive processes. The formation of shared stereotypes reflects a group's attempt to appraise the social position of relevant out-groups in line with its pre-existing norms and beliefs. Two main dimensions, competence and warmth, organize the content of stereotypes. The position of an out-group on these two dimensions is a function of its perceived status and level of cooperation towards the ingroup. When they are shared within majority groups, stereotypes can exert a variety of undesirable influences on the members of minority group, including impairing their performance in domains targeted by these social stereotypes.

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Category and stereotype activation: Is prejudice inevitable?

Cited by 488 publications

References 80 publications

Power and the Creation of Patronizing Environments: The Stereotype-Based Behaviors of the Powerful and Their Effects on Female Performance in Masculine Domains.

Power and the Creation of Patronizing Environments: The Stereotype-Based Behaviors of the Powerful and Their Effects on Female Performance in Masculine Domains.

The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

Stereotypes in Social Psychology

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