Jordan Axt And Trawalter's Study

During the time I was born, in the 90’s, stereotypes were taught to children through school, family members, and media. “A stereotype is a mental category based on exaggerated and inaccurate generalizations used to describe all members of a group” (Bennett 91). As a child, I obviously did not realize I was being taught these cruel definitions based to categorize people into which racial group they should belong to. To put it another way, Bennett states, “As psychologists have pointed out, stereotyping is a natural phenomenon in that all humans develop mental categories to help make sense of their environments” (91). Provided that, I stereotyped my interviewee the same exact way numerous people stereotype me. For this reason, to better understand both the interviewee and myself racial identity, I consequently analyzed how we each portrait the world we live in.

Prejudice and Discrimination are an all to common part of our cognitive social being, but many social psychologists believe that it can be stopped, but only with the help of social conditioning.

Racial biases are a form of implicit bias which deals with the attitudes or stereotypes the affect an individual’s understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. People become biased against someone due to their race, Color, and social and financial status. It was found that 90 percent of white people in America who take the implicit association test show an intrinsic racial bias for white people versus black people. Unreasonably hostile feelings or opinion about a social group; prejudice commonly results in treating some people unfairly. The present study examined the multidimensional nature of intergroup hate and the potential roles of hate and prejudice in expressions of White Americans' treatment of Blacks within the context of the U.S. legal system (Pearson, A. R., Dovidio, J. F., & Pratto). With reference to the journal it significantly reveals that there is a cold war going on in the society.

Generally we want to approach decisions with placing ourselves in another’s shoes, however, seeing past how we view ourselves within our own racial group can again lead to stereotyping behavior.

Originally, I was expecting a slightly preference for black people over white people due to the fact that over 80% of my friends are African American. Therefore, I do consider myself to get along better with the African American race but, that does not mean I have anything against the White community. Overall, I was impressed with my results because my data suggested a slight automatic preference for white people over black people. Personally, race does not implement my attitude towards someone specifically. For instance, If I'm meeting you for the first time no matter who you are or what your race is I will treat you with respect and good manners unless Ive been given a personal reason not to. These results measures the strength of association

In Vernā Myers’ TED Talk “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly towards them,” originally presented at TEDxBeaconStreet, diversity advocate Myers argues that peoples’ subconscious attitudes are affecting the prospering of black people in society. She also proposes three ideas on how to overcome our biases, which will open a world of possibilities where everyone no matters his or her ethnicity or race has equal opportunities to succeed in this constantly changing environment. According to Myers, the first step to overcome our prejudices is to acknowledge the biases that subconsciously influence our attitudes towards black people. According to Myers, “our default is white,” this demonstrates that people are more likely to trust white people

Racial stereotypes more or less affect our perceptions toward race, and judge people in a certain frame unconsciously, as Omi set forth in In Living Color: Race and American Culture. It greatly impact the images of minorities on the visual media, which the most direct medium to reflect the popular beliefs. Even though the “racist beliefs” have “just recently being reversed”, the portrayal of minorities on visual media is still not exemplary (Horton, et al “PORTRAYAL OF MINORITIES IN THE FILM, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIES”).

Much of society would have us believe that racism is no longer prevalent in today’s world. But, if this is true, why is there still such a societal gap between black and white? One lasting aspect of racism comes from the association of “negative traits” with a

Dovidio, Gaertner & Kawakami (2002) found that a shorter timed response of implicit prejudice predicted spontaneous nonverbal behaviors, such that there was a negative bias from Whites towards Blacks, despite explicit self-report measures by Whites indicating a more positive bias. However, studies have shown that individuals can employ implicit motivational tactics to control these implicit attitudes to such an extent that these associations and negative biases are non-existent. Glaser & Knowles (2008) found that those who had an implicit motivation to control prejudice did not show an association between weapons with Blacks (as opposed to Whites) and the Shooter Bias—being more likely to “shoot” the Black individual quicker than the White individual. That is, participants were equally likely to “shoot” both White and Black individuals. It might be noteworthy then, to investigate the effect priming has on more specific stimuli such as names. Namely, this study aims to investigate how likely White individuals are to match stereotypically Black or White names to a description of an individual after having been primed with hostile versus non-hostile behavior, and whether differences in frequency of matching are seen in individuals showing high versus low implicit prejudice. Thus, it is proposed that priming individuals with images of stereotypes characteristic of Black individuals (such as hostility) will facilitate the activation of implicit prejudices—high or

The Ho, Roberts and Gelman article ‘Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals’ examined the joint effects of cognitive biases and social biases on hypodescent. Loosely, hypodescent can be defined as individuals’ penchant to categorize mixed race individuals into solely the race of the minority category (Ho et al., 2015). While previous studies have examined the effects of cognitive biases and social motivation on hypodescence respectively, the authors were motivated by the dearth of available studies that examined the effects of cognitive biases and social motivations jointly. Since both cognitive biases and social motivations require higher levels of cognitive processes, it can be inferred that the researchers would endorse a top-down view of perception, especially when it comes to racial categorization (Psych 240 Lecture 9/14/15). The researchers hypothesized that subjects who exhibited essentialist thinking—the belief that individuals belong to specific discrete groups in which members share inextricable qualities—in conjunction with high levels of anti-black bias would exhibit hypodescence, by categorizing Black-White multiracial individuals into solely a Black racial category.

People also acquire attitudes by socializing with other groups, like teachers, television, parents and even religious groups. “Social learning approaches to stereotyping and prejudice suggest that attitudes and behavior toward members of minority groups are learned through the observation of parents and other individuals” (Myers, 1996). Investigators have found that differences in self-monitoring influence the link between attitudes and behavior. Individuals who are low in self-monitoring strive to make certain that their actions match their principals, values, and attitudes (Snyder, 1982).If a child that was raised in a white family that has negative attitudes towards blacks, will have principals, values and attitudes against black people.

Ongoing research efforts continue to focus on the cognitive processes involved in the perpetuation of intergroup biases as well as techniques that can be used to reduce racial prejudice (Stewart, Latu, Branscombe, Phillips & Denney, 2012). Descriptive studies (Neville, Lilly, Lee, Duran & Browne, 2000) and experimental investigations (Branscombe, Schmitt & Schiffhaurer, 2006) have found a significant relationship between the awareness of white privilege and the reduction of negative racial attitudes. In this research, I aim to extend the quantitative recorded results of these suggested findings and examine the role other interactive variables may have on the results.

     Thomas E. Ford, in a 1997 Western Michigan University study, found that “when whites are exposed to negative stereotypical television portrayals of African Americans, they are more likely to make negative judgements of an African American target person. However, exposure to negative stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans does not affect their judgements of a white target person”(Ford 271). The exposure to these negative images then only affects how the white viewer judges a member of the stereotyped group.

Throughout Dr. Steven Spencer’s lecture, the main question he addressed was whether racism is changeable or fixed. I learned that the difference between these two concepts refers to the belief in either the entity theory (fixed) or the incremental theory (changeable). Based on the three studies Dr. Steven discussed, I was surprised to learn that both white people and black people view racism as unchangeable. Racism in society can be changed, although most believe prejudice is fixed and that it can only be hidden. The second idea he analyzed was how prevalent prejudice is. White people and black people, unlike their view on how changeable it is, differed in their view of the prevalence of racism. Most white people see bigotry like seeing a

Beyond Fazio et al.’s (1995) intention to introduce an unobtrusive method of measuring attitudes (in their case, prejudice against African Americans), they demonstrated the problems of reactivity and conceptual confounding present in the frequently used Modern Racism Scale (MRS). Such unreliability of explicit attitude measures puts the use of self-reports in social psychological research into question. Essentially, their study aimed not so much as to demonstrate how prejudice is expressed and manifested but to provide evidence for their own method of measuring attitudes as they are automatically activated.