Jordan Axt And Trawalter's Study

Results and Conclusion: The results of the study conclude that participants desired more social distance from fellow Black targets with stereotypically White traits or interest. The broader implication of this research suggests that the “acting White” hypothesis likely occurs only within the out-groups of Black targets as being labeled as the stereotypical White traits in question. Though this devaluing and increased distance of a specific

In Paul Bloom’s TED Talk, “Can Prejudice Ever Be a Good Thing?,” he discusses the stereotypes people encounter in their everyday lives. Bloom asserts his personal opinions, along with facts, to show how prejudice and stereotypes begin to form in the human mind at a young age. He states that prejudice can be rational and useful but it can also be irrational, often leading to immoral consequences. He presents studies done by other psychologists that prove the development of stereotypes throughout the lifetime of an individual. Some of the studies show the way people react when they view an African American in relation to a white American. People favor the white Americans over the African Americans because it’s an instinct to choose white over

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

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.

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 Implicit Association Test (IAT) was done again in relation to race by Project Implicit or PI which supports a collaborative network of researchers interested in basic and applied research concerning implicit social cognition and hosts data collection for many online research projects worldwide, in addition to providing demonstration IATs, such as the Race IAT, for racial implicit biases for educational uses (Xu, et. al.). This test was taken online by 2 million people nationally and researchers suggest they are more liberal and younger demographic, indicating that if the older and more right wing Americans took the test at higher rates the results would differ. “The Project Implicit test takers trend younger than average, as well as towards liberal political beliefs and higher levels of education. But other research has suggested that older Americans past the age of 65, in particular, tend to have higher IAT (D) scores” (Xu). For unknown reasons the rate of racial bias was the highest in the southeast and eastern portion of the country, which could possibly come from the historical racial issues that occurred in these areas for decades, such as civil war history. The bottom line is that research suggests that white Americans including police officers have a high possibility of subconscious negative feelings towards minorities supported by a chart from The Reverse Racism Effect article by Lois James depicting the negative connotations felt by 96% of white participants in the IAT

Stereotypes, which can be positive tends to skew negative as people typically associate negative characteristics with individuals and groups and then evaluate them on it. The African American community throughout history has been on the negative spectrum in regards to stereotypes perpetuated of them by the media throughout film and television. It is widely known through investigations of race and crime history that people of color are often associated with criminality. Due to the media’s representation of the black community non-minority viewers use mediated stereotypes as a way to make preconceived judgments about them. Negative stereotypes presented by the media in reference to African Americans have detrimental impact that transcends generations.

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.

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.

Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination (Amodio, 2014). What exactly is prejudice tendencies and how can one avoid it? One of the most common types of prejudice is racial. Racial prejudice is based upon negative preconceived notions of select racial groups with the assumption that all members of a particular racial group can be categorized with the same negative characteristics (Gassner & McGuigan, 2014). To better understand prejudice I took the “Test Yourself for Hidden Biases” questionnaire on race. I have to say that I was not impressed with how this test was used to find out if you have unconscious prejudice towards African Americans. The test

In order to develop a scale that examined not only the cognitive dimension, but also looked at the behavioral and affective dimension, she and her colleagues (Poteat & Spanierman, 2009) developed the White Privilege Attitude Scale. They felt that this type of research tool could contribute to the study and promotion of effective antiracist

Aversive racism can also be addressed with techniques aimed at its roots at both the individual and collective levels. At the individual level, strategies to combat aversive racism can be directed at unconscious attitudes. For example, extensive training to create new, counter-stereotypic associations with social categories (e.g., blacks) can reduce the insensible foundation of stereotypes, a factor of aversive racists’ negative attitudes. In addition, aversive racists’ conscious attitudes, which are already egalitarian, can be instrumental in motivating change (Aversive Racism - SUBTLE BIAS, COMBATING, 2011).

This has been documented by social psychologists for years. It is often assumed that processes such as visual perception work in the same ways however the paradigmatic understanding of the automatic stereotyping process highlights the mere presence that a person can lead one to think about the concepts with which that person’s social group has become associated. The presence or view of a Black man, for instance, can elicit thoughts that he is violent and criminal. Simply thinking about a Black person renders these concepts more accessible and can lead people to misremember the Black person as the one holding the razor. Merely on the sight of blacks can lead people to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscategorize harmless objects as weapons, or to shoot quickly, and, at times,