Evaluate+three+theories+of+prejudice.

= __ Evaluate Three Theories of Prejudice __ =


 * ~ __Term__ ||~ __Definition__ ||
 * Prejudice || An attitude, which is the combination of emotion and cognition. ||
 * Heuristics || Shortcuts or tricks to making easy decisions. ||
 * Availability Heuristic || Judgments based on the information that is most readily available. ||
 * Social Cognition || Schemas people use to process social information. ||
 * Impression Management Theory || (Tedeschi & Rosenfield 1981) Much attitude change is seen as an attempt to avoid social annuity and embarrassment, or to protect the positive view of one's own identity. ||
 * Actor-Observer Bias || The belief in a group that the in-group members are successful because of who they are, whereas the out-group is not successful because of who they are. ||
 * Robbers' Cave Experiment || (Sherif 1961) Famous field experiment on the role of group identity on intergroup conflict. ||
 * Superordinate Goals || An urgent situation which affected both groups, and which needed all of them to participate in order for the problem to be solved, in order to diminish the hostility between the groups. ||
 * Contact Hypothesis || (Allport 1956) " It has sometimes been held that merely by assembling people without regard for race, color, religion, or national origin, we can thereby destroy stereotypes and develop friendly attitudes." ||
 * Multi-Factorial || There is no one factor that completely explains the origin of prejudice and how to reduce it, as the interaction of the three levels of analysis demonstrates the problems of looking at any one factor in isolation. ||

- (Phelps 2000) Correlation between those individuals whose amygdala was most strongly activated after being exposed to these subliminal stimuli and scores on a standardized test for ethic prejudice. - These studies have been used to support the findings of the Implicit Association Test developed by Banji & Greenwald (1998) || - Prejudice has an emotional component, which means that cognitive factors play a strong role in determining whether one actually acts in accordance with these immediate brain responses. - (Bettelheim & Janowitz 1964) = One's stereotypes do not predict one's feelings of prejudice or acts of discrimination. - (Cunningham 2004) = Study using brain scans which showed that when participants have longer exposure to images, it is not simply the amygdala, but also the frontal lobe that is activated. This means that cognitive control of emotions reactions is exerted by the frontal lobe. - Correlational studies do not demonstrate causality and can lead to bidirectional ambiguity. || = Tedeschi & Rosenfield (1981) argues that much attitude change is seen as an attempt to avoid social anxiety and embarrassment, or to protect the positive view of one's own identity. - Devine (1989) found that even when a person considers himself/herself to be low in prejudice, when put into contact with a member of a stereotyped group, the person will immediately react according to the cultural norms. || - People who identify themselves as low in prejudice experience shame and/or guilt for their reaction, because this is not how they want to be seen by society, or how they want to see themselves. || = Allport (1956) " It has sometimes been held that merely by assembling people without regard for race, color, religion, or national origin, we can thereby destroy stereotypes and develop friendly attitudes." - Amir (2000) prejudice is strengthened or increased if contract between two group produces competition and is unpleasant. || - Pettigrew & Tropp (2000, 2003) carried out a meta-analysis of 516 empirical studies and found that the inverse relationship was strongest when the contact was natural and not forced. - Bowen & Bourgeois (2001) found that university students' attitudes about gays and lesbians were directly influenced by the part of the campus they lived on: those who lived closest to dorms where some gays and lesbians lived had fewer stereotypes and less prejudice against them. - Limitations of Sherif's study: all the participants came to the camp voluntarily, the group was homogeneous, and there was no long history of oppression, which resulted in equal status contact. - Ma'oz (2002) found that when Israeli and Palestinian students are brought together to reduce prejudice, equal status contact took place only 65% of the time or less. - Therefore contact in which one group is seen as lower in status is likely to be rather ineffective. ||
 * ~ Theory ||~ Description ||~ Evaluation ||
 * 1) __Biological__ [[image:http://www.connect2ideas.com/Portals/0/SectorDefaultImage/88c3019d-2898-4fd8-ba62-b2ddab970ddf/New%20ImageBio.JPG width="210" height="158"]] || - (Hart 2000) When white and black participants were given brief subliminal glimpses of faces of individuals from other ethnic groups, both showed increased activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that is responsible for processing emotional responses to stimuli even though the participants reported that they had no noticeable change in their emotional state during the study.
 * 2) __Cognitive__ [[image:http://www.mcgill.ca/files/cogsci/CognitiveScience.gif width="193" height="203"]] || Impression Management Theory
 * 3) __Sociocultural__ [[image:http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/images/sociocultural_projects.jpg]] || Contact Hypothesis

All of the three theories of the prejudice describe different aspects of the influences of prejudice. The Biological theory focuses on the emotional component which affect prejudice, which means that cognitive factors play a strong role in determining whether one actually acts in accordance with these immediate brain responses. Bettelheim & Janowitz showed in 1964 that one's stereotypes do not predict one's feelings of prejudice or acts of discrimination. The cognitive theory of prejudice, the impression Management Theory, argues that much attitude change is seen as an attempt to avoid social anxiety and embarrassment, or to protect the positive view of one's own identity. Lastly, the sociocultural theory of prejudice, also known as the contact hypothesis, is said to be by Allport (1956) that "it has sometimes been held that merely by assembling people without regard for race, color, religion, or national origin, we can thereby destroy stereotypes and develop friendly attitudes." In conclusion, the origins of prejudice are multifactorial as there is an interaction of the three levels of analysis demonstrate the problems of looking at any one factor in isolation.