Stereotypes as Justifications of Prejudice

Abstract

Three experiments investigate how stereotypes form as justifications for prejudice. The authors created novel content-free prejudices toward unfamiliar social groups using either subliminal (Experiment 1, N = 79) or supraliminal (Experiment 2, N = 105; Experiment 3, N = 130) affective conditioning and measured the consequent endorsement of stereotypes about the groups. Following the stereotype content model, analyses focused on the extent to which stereotypes connoted warmth or competence. Results from all three experiments revealed effects on the warmth dimension but not on the competence dimension: Groups associated with negative affect were stereotyped as comparatively cold (but not comparatively incompetent). These results provide the first evidence that-in the absence of information, interaction, or history of behavioral discrimination-stereotypes develop to justify prejudice.

Perceived collective continuity and attitudes toward outgroups

“…In order to do this, we needed to select a group that American participants would have little familiarity with. Past research has shown that American undergraduates are very unfamiliar with the European nation of Slovenia (Crandall, Bahns, Warner, & Schaller, ). A pretest with eight students at the researchers' university was consistent with this finding that students had a mean familiarity of 1.63 ( SD = 0.52) with Slovenia on scale 1 (very unfamiliar) to 7 (very familiar).…”

Autistic people’s perspectives on stereotypes: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

“…Furthermore, evidence suggests that stereotypes can act to justify prejudice and discrimination (Crandall, Bahns, Warner et al, 2011;Devine, 1989;Rutland and Brown, 2001), which may also add to any stigma that people may face. Self-stigmatisation involves a process where people are both aware of and agree with group stereotypes, and then apply these stereotypes to themselves (Corrigan, Bink, Schmidt et al, 2016).…”

Feminist Radical Empiricism, Values, and Evidence

“…A racist, when in contact with an individual who does not fit her stereotypes, would surely find it easier to classify the individual as an exceptional case rather than revise her racial stereotypes. Even when these counterexamples to her beliefs become increasingly common, stereotypes are extremely resistant to change (Rothbart and Park 1987;Schneider 2004;Crandall et al 2011). This, of course, fits very well with a naturalized epistemology in which anything may in fact be held true "come what may."…”

“…Even when these counterexamples to her beliefs become increasingly common, stereotypes are extremely resistant to change (Rothbart and Park ; Schneider ; Crandall et al. ). This, of course, fits very well with a naturalized epistemology in which anything may in fact be held true “come what may.” But in that case, it is not so promising from an anti‐oppressive point of view.…”