2. Race and Ethnicity
• Race = a category of people who have been
singled out as inferior or superior, often on the
basis of real or alleged physical characteristics
such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape, or
other subjectively selected attributes
• Ethnicity or Ethnic group = collection of people
distinguished, by others or by themselves,
primarily on the basis of cultural or nationality
characteristics
3. Race and Ethnicity
• Race is NOT biologically Real! (Although it is
culturally/socially very real)
– How people are classified according to ‘races’ differs
from place to place and changes over time.
– *There is as much genetic variations within a racial
category as there is differences between them.
– Stated differently, two people of different races are
as (likely to be as) genetically similar as two people
within the same race.
4. Race and Ethnicity
• Race is NOT biologically Real!
(Although it is culturally/socially
very real)
– There is no single physical
characteristic that all members of
a single race possess that no one
of any other race does not
possess.
– Racial markers are not
concordant with (i.e. do not
correlate with) either simple
traits (e.g. height, weight, eye
color, etc.), nor any of the
complex traits that matter
socially (e.g. intelligence, athletic
ability, etc.)
5. Prejudice
• Prejudice: a hostile or negative attitude
toward people in a distinguishable group,
based solely on their membership in that
group.
• Three components:
1. Cognitive
2. Emotional (‘affective’);
3. Behavioral (discrimination).
6. Prejudice
Prejudiced Attitude? Discriminatory Behavior?
1. Unprejudiced
nondiscriminator
NO NO
2. Unprejudiced
discriminator
NO YES
3. Prejudiced
nondiscriminator
YES NO
4. Prejudiced discriminator YES YES
7. Prejudice (Cognitive)
• Stereotype: a generalization about a group of
people, in which certain traits are assigned to
virtually all members of the group, regardless
of actual variation among the members.
– Stereotypes can be positive or negative
– Why do we stereotype? “The law of least
effort”- because the world is complicated … for
most things we rely on simple, sketchy beliefs.
8. Prejudice (Cognitive)
• Positive Stereotypes
– Example: African American athletic ability
– In one study, students were asked to listento a 20-
minute audio tape of a college basketball game and to
rate the performance of ‘Mark Flick.’ Students who
were told that ‘Mark Flick’ was African American
consistently rated his performance higher than those
who were told he was caucasion.
• Illusory correlation: the tendency to see
relationships, or correlations, between events
that are actually unrelated.
9. Prejudice (Behavioral)
• Discrimination: an unjustified negative or
harmful action toward the members of a group
solely because of their membership in that group.
• ‘micro-aggressions’: the slights, indignities, and
put-downs that many minorities and people with
disabilities face.
• In 1942, 98% of the white population supported
segregation of schools. By 1988, only 3% of
whites said they wouldn’t want their child to
attend school with black children.
10. Modern Racism and
Other Implicit Prejudices
• Modern racism: outwardly acting unprejudiced
while inwardly maintaining prejudiced attitudes.
• Implicit Association Test (IAT):
– Claim: if it takes whites longer to associate positive
words with black faces than negative words with black
faces, then whites must harbor some implicit
prejudice towards blacks.
– However, other researchers showed they got a
significant effect when using nonsense words or
neutral words, so whatever it is measuring, it might
not be a stable prejudice, but how much the word
associated with the target stands out, i.e. its salience.
11. Modern Racism and
Other Implicit Prejudices
• ‘Shooter-bias’ in a video
game
• Findings: Participants
were especially likely to
pull the trigger when the
people in the picture were
black, whether or not they
were holding a gun.
12. Modern Racism and
Other Implicit Prejudices
• However, the book does
not mention that this bias
also holds for black video
game players!
• What does this mean?
13. Effects of Prejudice on the Victim
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
– In one study, White college undergraduates were
asked to interview candidates for a job. They acted
disinterested in African American candidates, sat
farther away, tended to stammer, and ended the
interview sooner than compared to white candidates.
– The ‘employers’ (actually confederates in the study),
then interviewed only white applicants, acting
towards half of them the way they had acted towards
African Americans.
– Independent judges watching these interviews
evaluated those applicants who had been treated as
the African Americans had!
14. Effects of Prejudice on the Victim
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
– This study shows that how applicants were
evaluated, how competent they appeared to be,
was largely influenced by something over which
they had little control: the expectations of the
interviewer.
15. Effects of Prejudice on the Victim
• Stereotype threat: the stress and apprehension
experienced by members of a group that their behavior
might confirm a cultural stereotype.
• Study: African and American and white students were
given a difficult test: the GRE. Half of them were told it
measured intellectual ability, and the other half were told
the test was still being developed, wasn’t reliable, and
didn’t measure anything.
• Findings: white students performed equally well (or
poorly) regardless of whether they thought they were
being evaluated. African American students who thought
they were being evaluated performed much worse than
those who were led to believe the test was meaningless,
who also performed as well as whites.
16. How can prejudice be reduced?
• Contact hypothesis: contact with people from
other groups tends to reduce your prejudice
against them.
– Study: black students at majority white
universities felt a greater sense of belonging and
satisfaction the more white friends they made.
17. How can prejudice be reduced?
• NOT ALL CONTACT REDUCES PREJUDICE!
• After all, slavery is also a kind of ‘contact.’
18. How can prejudice be reduced?
Six Conditions in which Contact Reduces Prejudice:
1. Mutual interdependence
2. Having a common goal
3. Equal status and power
4. Must occur in friendly, informal setting
5. Individual must learn that these out-group
members who they come to know are typical of
their group
6. Social norms that promote and support equality
among groups are operating in the situation
19. Sex and Gender
• Sex = biological, physical
characteristics; “Nature”
• Gender = cultural roles or
social expectations about
the attributes and behavior
of males and females;
“Nurture”
– ‘Gender is not something you
have, it is something you do’
20. Gender Gap Rankings
Country
(top 10)
Overall
Rank
Iceland 1
Norway 2
Finland 3
Sweden 4
New Zealand 5
Ireland 6
Denmark 7
Lesotho 8
Philippines 9
Switzerland 10
*USA *19
• Ranking based on the
extent to which women
have achieved equality
in 4 areas:
1. Economic participation
and opportunity
2. Education
3. Health
4. Political empowerment
21. Gender Gap Rankings
Country
(bottom 10)
Overall
Rank
Egypt 125
Turkey 126
Morocco 127
Benin 128
Saudi Arabia 129
Cote d’Ivoire 130
Mali 131
Pakistan 132
Chad 133
Yemen 134
22. Sex and Gender
• What are some ‘cultural
scripts’ (stereotypes) we
have about men and
women?
– Dress, emotional states, ways
of talking…
Would you ever see a male
human proposing to a female
dog in a cartoon?
