so what happens to the stereotype once it gets activated do we have to apply an activated stereotype and act upon it that is what we will cover in this section of chapter 4 as well as the ways in which activated stereotypes are applied so what happens to the stereotype once it gets activated the more strongly a stereotype is activated the more likely it is to be applied therefore if you find in a car accident with a woman and she's the one at fault you are now in a position where the stereotype of women as bad drivers becomes strongly activated which makes you more likely to act upon that stereotype but if you see a woman in a grocery store parking lot getting into her car The Stereotype might be activated but not strongly enough for you to act upon it furthermore we can inhibit the application of activated stereotypes if there's a strong motivation to do so for example if you're in a group in your psychology or Prejudice class with a stereotyped person but for the sake of the class and maybe even because you are trying to change you want to appear fair-minded and not prejudiced this is a strong motivation to not apply The Stereotype this strong motivation leads you to behave cordially and even friendly with the person in your group this does not mean that you can control implicit aspects of stereotype application ation such as sweating more in the presence of that person or having an increased heart rate in the presence of that person but at least you can control what the person sees of you but in general the more motivated a person is to control Prejudice the more likely they are to avoid applying activated stereotypes in fact research shows that people who are highly prejudiced are less motivated to control their Prejudice and are therefore more biased in their interactions with members of the outg group however the default is that once stereotype activation happens stereotype application will also follow therefore if there is no motivation to inhibit a stereotype from affecting your actions the person will act upon that stereotype so why are some people motivated to control Prejudice While others are not the first reason for a person to act on or not act upon a stereotype that has already been activated is comprehension goals a person who is highly motivated to understand the person they are interacting with rather than just grouping them into a category is less likely to act upon a stereotype because their goal is to understand the person herself so if a person is motivated to form accurate impressions of others they are less likely therefore to act upon their stereotypes however does this mean that if we have individuating information about a person that allows us to view them as an individual that we will act upon it or do we still stereotype them just because we might know a person as an individual does not mean that we do not stereotype them once we have categorized the person we tend to seek out information about individuals that support the stere ypes about them so for example even though we have a lot of individuating information about Barack and Michelle Obama because of their extremely public lives there are still people who will continue to seek out any evidence of their actions that fits the stereotype about blacks also stereotypes can affect the way we view individuating information about others so even if you are familiar with a person if that person engages in ambiguous behaviors you still rely on The Stereotype to judge the person's actions for example what would you think about your overweight friend going to McDonald's to buy a bag of chips versus your average weight friend engaging in the same action The Stereotype of overweight individuals affects the way you interpret the same exact Behavior by two different people one who fits The Stereotype and the one who who doesn't regardless of what individuating information you may have on each friend the motivation to apply activated stereotypes can also be affected by a person's cognitive style cognitive style or thinking style is a concept used in cognitive psychology to describe the way individuals think perceive and remember information cognitive style differs from cognitive ability your cognitive ability is a measure of your aptitude or intelligence but cognitive style has to do with your motivation to acquire and use information cachopo and Petty's 1982 need for cognition scale measures differences among individuals in their tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking so I'm going to give you three sample questions from their skill and I want you to answer them about yourself rate yourself from one to 10 one being most representative of you and 10 being highly or sorry one being least representative of you and 10 being highly representative of you so the first question is I tend to set goals that can be accomplished only by expending considerable mental effort rate yourself from 1 to 10 number two I prefer watching educational to entertainment programs again rate yourself from 1 to 10 can and three I prefer my life to be filled with puzzles that I must solve so how did you score on those three questions is your average above a five or below a five if you scored high on those three questions that is your average is above a five then you're more likely to be categorized as an analytical type of person Copo and Petty reported that the participants total scores on the for cognition scale could successfully discriminate between University faculty people who presumably engage in and enjoy thinking for a living compared to assembly line workers people who perform repetitive monotonous tasks for a living in addition the authors found that high scores were positively related to both field Independence and general intelligence but negatively correlated with dogmatism in other words if you have a high need for cognition you would choose a complex problem solving task over a simple one whereas if you have a low need for cognition you would choose the simple problem solving task over the difficult one research shows that those high in their need for cognition are more likely to desire and actively seek out issue relevant information when forming their attitudes or when deciding how to act on a particular issue higher need for cognition is associated with increased appreciation of debate idea evaluation and problem solving and those with a higher need for cognition may be inclined towards High elaboration of situations whereas those with a lower need for cognition process information more simplistically and humanistically that is they use snap judgments to get information about different situations and people all of these put together means that people high in the need for cognition are more motivated to reduce Prejudice and to seek out individuating information about others whereas those who are low in their need for cognition prefer to judge people based on Simple Rules like the stereotypes of the groups for which they belong in order to reduce cognitive effort there are also individual differences in people's causal uncertainty people who are high in uncertainty about the causal relationships in the world need to accurately understand the world and so they're more likely to seek out information based on scientific testing to understand causal relationships between things in the world when it comes to people this means that individuals who are high in uncertainty will seek out individuating information about others because they want to get to know them better on the other hand individuals low in causal uncertainty are sure that they know how the world works by using simple snap judgments about others or by using what Fox new news or CNN tells them which often of course leads to stereotyping similarly the need for closure differs among individuals people who have a high need for closure they dislike ambiguity in the world and they prefer simple definite answers about the world they are therefore less likely to seek out individuating information about others and more likely to make use of stereotypes when judging others but those who are low in their need for closure look for more information regarding ambiguous things in the world which makes them more likely to seek out individuating information about others and therefore less likely to use stereotypes the motivation to apply activated stereotypes also depends on how threatened a person feels when a person feels physically threatened such as fearing all Mexicans because they are all apparently criminals and rapists or or fearing all Muslims because they're all apparently terrorists or all immigrants this can lead to Greater stereotype application but a person can also experience threats to their self-esteem which also leads to stereotype application and you will notice that threat threats involve the fear of a person and politicians love to play up the fear of others to get points during elections for example college students give lower evaluations to a female Professor after receiving a low grade than to a male Professor after receiving the same low grade why because the stereotype of female professors is that they are less competent than male professors and so when you receive a low grade your self-esteem is threatened so stereotyping the professor protects your self-esteem it's her fault not yours similarly if you're just fired by a black employer you're more likely use stereotypes about the person's racial group compared to if you were fired by a white employer so now why do you think we stereotype others when we feel threatened when we feel a fear of them whether physically or in our self-esteem well because an inherent goal as humans is to make ourselves look better this is called self-enhancement and viewing others in a negative light makes ourselves look better this also means that if someone makes us feel good about ourselves we are less likely to activate and use stereotypes against them people with high power are also more likely to apply stereotypes generally speaking people with lots of social or political power are motivated to stereotype others to maintain their position in society their subordinates often depend on their judgments and criticisms in order to thrive and this makes powerful people feel entitled to judge others furthermore stereotyping those who are subordinate to them as less competent allows them to continue to maintain power low powerered people receive benefits from high-powered people such as their bosses so they must learn individuating information about their bosses in order to please them in a way that will lead to tangible rewards such as bonuses but high-powered people are the ones giving out the bonuses so they don't need to learn individuating information instead it is sufficient for them to use group stereotypes to judge others when deciding who gets a bonus and who doesn't the final aspect of stereotype application that is necessary is whether or not a person is able to inhibit The Stereotype some people might be motivated to inhibit a stereotype but not actually able to do it successfully first when it comes to stereotype activation if your working memory is occupied at the moment such as with a difficult problem solving task stereotypes are not activated however if working memory is not occupied stereotypes will be activated under the right circumstances the opposite happens though with stereotype application once a stereotype gets activated if a person's working memory is occupied they will be unable to prevent the application of the stereotype therefore The Stereotype will be applied regardless of how motivated you are not to apply The Stereotype because working memory is too occupied to help you to inhibit The Stereotype this chart summarizes the points I just made let's say that you are a cashier and you come across a person paying for their food with food stamps if you had to calculate the cost of the bill plus the cost of change in your head because your cash register isn't working that's a really difficult task that occupies your working memory and renders it unable to engage in any other higher order cognitive task at the same time the nature of working memory is that it is very limited in capacity and time it can only hold a limited amount of information for a limited amount of time so stereotypes about the food stamp person will not be activated because you're too busy doing math but if stereotypes are not activated they cannot be applied however your cash register is working fine and working memory is free stereotypes about the food stamp customer will then become activated and once they're activated stereotypes will either be applied in your behavior or not cognitive business again plays a role here but this time it has the opposite effect if working memory becomes occupied once The Stereotype has already been activated for example let's let's say that your manager comes over and starts questioning you about something at the same time that you are checking the person's groceries this occupies your working memory because your manager is an important person and that prevents you from being able to inhibit the application of The Stereotype your mind is occupied so you have no cognitive resources left to inhibit The Stereotype in this case The Stereotype is applied and you might assume that the food stamps customer cannot afford a $20 bottle of olive oil but if the stereotype is activated and no manager comes to question you there's no overload in working memory which allows you to inhibit The Stereotype and stop it from becoming applied if you are motivated enough to do so this chart summarizes everything we've talked about so far first a stereotype must be activated if it is not activated it cannot be applied second if a stereotype is activated and the person is motivated to inited then The Stereotype cannot be applied third if a stereotype is activated and the person is able to inhibit it then The Stereotype will not be applied but if the person is not able to inhibit it The Stereotype will be applied so now we start to look at the consequences of stereotype usage both on a personal and a societal level number one when a stereotype is applied it influences the person's perceptions and interactions with members of the stereotyped group activated stereotypes lead to biased interpretation of behavior and biased evaluations of individuals and cultural artifacts biased interpretation of the behaviors of stereotyped groups is all too real and all too common in our society and has huge consequences black unarmed men are shot more than white unarmed men because police officers misinterpret their actions a black man walking with a hoodie pulled over his face is perceived as more dangerous than a white man with a hoodie a black man with a weapon is perceived as more dangerous than a white man with a weapon a black man speeding on the road is perceived as more dangerous than a white man speeding even more an Arab man with a beard is perceived as more dangerous than a white man with a beard he is suspected of terrorism and harassed at the airport just for having a laptop a Muslim woman and a hijab is always patted down at the airport there's not even any Shame about it now at least before TSA officers tried to make it look like it was random searching now there's no reluctance to tell you that you are being racially profiled because you are black or Arab or Muslim stereotype activation can even influence the interpretation of subtle behaviors and we've mentioned this before that if someone's facial expression is ambiguous if that ambiguous facial expression comes from a black face it is described as anger but if the ambiguous facial expression comes from a white face it is less likely to be interpreted negatively and more likely to be interpreted with a positive emotion stereotype activation also affects the evaluation of a member of the stereotyped group whether that person will be liked or disliked people who are from highly stereotyped groups like blacks Mexicans Arabs Muslims and gays are far less likely to be accepted and liked and more socially ostracized than other members of society let's look at some statistics of bullying among gays and other sexual minorities in schools results from the 2017 youth risk behavior survey shows that Nationwide more us High School more us high school students who self-identify as lgbtq report having been bullied on school Pro property and Cyber Bullied than their heterosexual peers more lgbtq students than heterosexual students reported not going to school because of safety concerns among students who identified as not sure of their sexual orientation they are also reported as being more bullied on school property being Cyber Bullied and not going to school because of safety concerns so members of Highly stereotyped groups are less accepted and less liked in society stereotypes against entire groups of people also influence the evaluation of their cultural artifacts for example rap music is stereotyped as more negative than country music because one is attributed to the black community and the other to the white community in fact almost all cultural artifacts associated with negatively stereotyped groups are perceived more negatively than AR s that come from the majority culture now I want you to stop and reflect on this can you think of some cultural artifacts from negatively stereotyped minority groups that are also evaluated negatively hairstyle their clothing the things that they build the things that they make now how about some cultural artifacts from positively stereotyped groups in the society the question we turn to next is how stereotypes are maintained in personality psychology you would have learned that there are two kinds of people those who implicitly believe personality is fixed regardless of the situation and individual's character is the same in all situations these people have an entity Theory of Personality they are more likely to stereotype others because they don't believe that a person's character can change with the situation other people believe that personality is malleable and that an individual's behavior is influenced by the situation at hand these people are incremental theorists they can sometimes entertain stereotypes about others but often will look for distinguishing information to understand others the distinction between those who see personality as fixed and those who see personality as malleable is important for stereotype maintenance entity theor are more likely to maintain their stereotypes about other groups regardless of the information they receive or the social context whereas incremental theorists are more likely to change their stereotypes if they encounter different information another way in which stereotypes are maintained is through self-fulfilling prophecies stereotypes can become generally true over time because of the self-fulfilling prophecy but note that this does not make the stereotype true from the beginning The Stereotype becomes true only after the self-fulfilling prophecy occurs a self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction about a person's actions or behaviors that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true due to the positive feedback between the belief and the expected Behavior now that's a mouthful so let's explain that sociologist Robert Merton is credited with coining the expression self-fulfilling prophecy and formalizing its structure and consequences in his 1984 article self-fulfilling prophecy Merchant defines it in the following terms the self-fulfilling prophecy is in the beginning a false definition of the situation evoking a new Behavior which makes the original false conception come true this specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates A Reign of error from the prophet for the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proofs that he was right from the very beginning in other words a positive or negative prophecy strongly held belief or delusion about someone declared as the truth when in actuality it is false May sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once false prophecy and so after hundreds and hundreds of years of telling an entire group of minority people that they are lazy and dumb and second class citizens has resulted in higher rates of poverty lower educational levels and lower IQ scores over time amongst these people this is exactly the self-fulfilling prophecy a prophecy that was once false that has been manifested because you keep repeating it over and over and over again this model shows how the stereotypes confirm themselves over time leading to the self-fulfilling prophecy using an interviewer and an interviewee as an example first first there's The Stereotype of the interviewee that leads to subtle changes in behaviors in the interviewer both non-verbal and verbal which leads to reciproc reciprocation of the behavior by the interviewee which then confirms the interviewer's original perceptions and stereotypes of the interview thus the self-fulfilling prophecy has I'm sure you the self-fulfilling prophecy Works through a behavioral confirmation effect in which behavior influenced by the expectations of others causes a person to behave in a way that those expectations come true I'm sure you've all heard the story of the very clever horse named clever Hans Hans was credited with responding to questions requiring mathematical calculations by tapping his hoof and thus being a very clever horse who could do math if his master William Van Austin was asked him what is the sum of three plus two the horse would tap his hoop five times it appeared the animal was responding to human language and was capable of grasping mathematical Concepts it was 1891 when Van Austin began showing Hans to the public Hans could also tell time and name people by the way so now reflect on this we know that horses can't actually comprehend human speech and we know that they can't actually do math so how do you think Hans was coming up with the the correct answer it was eventually discovered in 1904 by Oscar F that the horse was responding to subtle physical cues from his master as Ray Hyman puts it Hans was responding to a simple involuntary postural adjustment by the questioner which was his skew to start tapping and an unconscious almost imperceptible head movement which was his skew to stop yet more than a dozen scientists had observed Hans and were convinced that there was no signaling or trickery involved they were impressed that Hans performed almost as well without Von Austin his master as with him but the scientists were eventually wrong F noted that when the correct answer was not known to anyone present clever Hans didn't know it either and when the horse couldn't see the person who did know the answer the horse could not respond correctly this led FS to conclude that the horse was getting VIs ual Clues albeit very subtle ones it turned out that Von Austin and others were queuing Hans unconsciously by tensing their muscles until Hans produced the correct answer so Hans the horse truly was clever but not because he understood human language not because he could do math but because he could perceive very subtle muscle movements and provide an accurate answer based on that and this is how behavioral confirmation works in the self-fulfilling prophecy F of course went on to discover that people can also unconsciously communicate information to others by subtle movements and that some animals can perceive these unconscious movements as well thus the unconscious subtle cues that are communicated to others in our interaction with them convey our expectations about them that may cause them to adjust or change their behavior to meet those expectations similar the self-fulfilling prophecy also occurs through behavioral confirmation and also also through perceptual bias Rosenthal and fod in 1963 have demonstrated this very phenomenon in the context of controlled lab research in one of his early experiments Rosenthal tested the effects of experiment or expectancy on May's running performance he had two groups of students test rats wrongly informing them either that the rats were specially bred to be maze dull or maze bright in reality all the rats were standard Lab Rats and were randomly assigned to the dull and bright conditions the results showed that the rats labeled as bright learned The Mazes more quickly than those labeled as dull apparently students had unconsciously influenced the performance of their rats depending on what they had been told Rosenthal reasoned that a similar effect might occur with teachers expectations of student performance so Rosenthal and Jacobson tested children at an elementary school with an IQ test in order to create an expectancy teachers were informed that the test was the Harvard test of inflected acquisition which served as a measure of academic blooming therefore teachers were led to believe that certain students were entering a year of high achievement whereas others were not in reality the test had no such predictive validity 18 teachers at the school were informed of the students in their classes who had obtained scores in the top 20% of the test these students were ready to realize their potential according to the test scores and therefore were Bloomers what the teachers did not know is that students were placed on these lists completely at random there was absolutely no difference between these students and other students whose names were on the list at the end of the school year all students were once again tested with the same IQ test to observe the change in IQ score from before teacher expectations to after expectations Rosenthal and Jacobson's found that there was a market difference in IQ test scores students who had been labeled as Bloomers showed greater gains than those who had not been labeled in this way Rosenthal and Jacobson's results demonstrate a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy students believe to be on the verge of great academic success performed in accordance with these expectations but students who were not labeled did not later research has supported rosenthal's original conclusion that teacher expectations have a substantial effect on students Scholastic performance and so just for the record I believe that you are all very smart and will all get A's in this class teachers the self-fulfilling prophecy occurs through behavioral confirmation and also through perceptual bias perceptual bias is a generic term to describe a range of techniques that people use to make sense of the world the techniques are short cuts that allow us to more accurately or quickly gain an understanding of a person event or situation however because they are shortcuts they can also lead to us getting only a partial or possibly inaccurate impression which means that very often our perception of a person or a group of people is a biased one perceptual bias can make some things seem more noteworthy than others it guides our reactions and thoughts about what we experience see or feel in a situation therefore when you encounter an Asian person your perceptual bias leads you to automatically assess that person as smart based on the cultural stereotype type when you see a Latino person your perceptual bias might automatically lead you to assume that he or she is illegal based on the group stereotype similarly if a teacher expects some of her students to be bloomers and others to be non- Bloomers then her expectation guides her to make certain assumptions about one group of students over the other which changes the way she Peres the work turned in by the Bloomers versus the non- bloomers and as a teacher if you expect a student to turn in a quality work because you assume they're bright then when you come to grade their work you perceive it as better than someone who you expect to not perform as well this ultimately affects the grades that students receive students who are expected to perform better will receive better grades than students who are expected to perform worse not necessarily because the quality of work is different but because one set of work is perceived as better than the other simply because of a preconceived expectation about one person over the other research has confirmed perceptual bias in the classro and in the workplace where expectations of bright versus average students or employees leads to different perceptions of their work now now now the question we turn to is whether minority students are more likely to be affected by expectations and the self-fulfilling prophecy research has found that girls and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds experience a half a letter grade drop when teachers have low expectations of them due to the self-fulfilling prophecy and black students experience a grade and a half drop when teachers have low expectations of them due to the self-fulfilling prophecy that is when the expectation is that the student is not good at math either because she's female or because she's black or because she's poor expectations guide teach treatments of those students which leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy which results in poorer math performance in fact Studies have found that if you have two groups of women who are about to take a math test and they're all on the same level of math intelligence but you tell group a just before they enter the exam room that men are better at math than women and you tell Group B absolutely nothing Group B Will outperform Group a on the m math test therefore disadvantaged or minority groups are more affected by stereotyping that leads to expectations that then lead to the self-fulfilling prophecy now reflect on this so now which do you think will lead to a bigger self-fulfilling prophecy effect positive expectations or negative expectations about people this question has to do with other variables that might moderate the relationship ship between expectations and the self-fulfilling prophecy research has found that positive teacher expectations have more influence on students self-fulfilling prophecy than negative teacher expectations in other words when you expect highly of someone they are very likely to live up to that expectation and self- fulfill if you don't expect much from someone they can either live up to that expectation or they can outperform that expectation so that correlation tends to be low furthermore madon and colleagues have found that previously low achieving students benefited more from a teacher's positive expectations than high achieving students in other words the students who need the most help will benefit more when someone in Authority believes in them and expects highly of them this positive expectation causes the self-fulfilling prophecy to play a larger role in their performance and they can then change their behavior to meet the positive expectations of the teacher but students who are already high Achievers don't necessarily need someone to encourage them to reach their potential they are already high Achievers so the self-fulfilling prophecy is less related to their achievements a third moderator of the self-fulfilling prophecy is how much a teacher knows about a student when a teacher bases her expectations of her students on previous knowledge about them the effects of the self-fulfilling Prof prophecy can be avoided however the less a teacher knows about her students let's say she's teaching them for the first time and has no prior test scores to go on the more likely she is to rely on stereotypes whether based on gender race or socioeconomic status informing her expectations of the students and this in turn can affect students behaviors and ultimately their performance in class we also know from research that the effects of the self-fulfilling prophecy can accumulate over time in other words the longer time that is spent with someone who has positive expectations of you the better you become over time the longer time is spent with someone who has negative expectations of you the worse you become over time which is why the classroom experience is critical to a student's long-term success or failure think of how much time how many hours a day students spend with their teachers in a classroom research also demonstrates a synergistic accumulation which describes that the self-fulfilling prophecy effect increases as the length of time and the number of individuals that hold that expectation increases this is why cultural stereotypes that have become institutionalized and ingrained and accepted in the culture for many many many generations and decades are so dangerous to the stereotyped group in essence the longer the stereotype is held and the more people in society that holds that stereotype the greater the chance of stereotype threat and the self-fulfilling prophecy occurring and that stereotyped group therefore acting and behaving in ways that fulfill the stereotypes against them so given the negative effects of stereotyping others how can we expect people to change their stereotypic beliefs we change our stereotypes infrequently even in the face of disconfirming evidence we often cling to our obviously wrong beliefs about others when we do change the stereotypes we do so in one of three ways the bookkeeping model the convers the conversion model and the subtyping model the bookkeeping model holds that as we learn new contradictory information we incrementally adjust the stereotype to adapt to the new information we add and subtract away information from The Stereotype as we encounter more and more people from the stereotyped group and therefore more and more individuating information for this model change occurs slowly and gradually we usually need quite a lot of repeated information for each incremental change to occur for example you get hired by a company where mostly Latino people are employed it takes many many exposures to these individuals from the outg group to change your original stereotype ypes about them as being criminals the conversion model claims that we throw away the old stereotype and start again this is often used when there is significant disconfirming evidence for example your daughter marries an amazing Muslim man and this slaps you in the face so hard that you have no choice but to wake up and start again so you get rid of The Stereotype this of course occurs very rarely but it is actually a very effective method of stereotype change in fact groups across the country are trying to change stereotypes by setting up dates between highly prejudiced individuals and the people that they stereotype the most for example soldiers who are trained to stereotype all Arabs as terrorists and therefore to just shoot and kill them when they return to America after duty it is very difficult to break this stereotype but introducing them to Local Arab Americans and allowing them to develop a friendship with that individual changes The Stereotype against others using the conversion model the subtyping model holds that we create a new stereotype that is a subclassification of the existing stereotype particularly when we draw a boundary around the subass this is by far the most common and most important way in which stereotypes change over time and it's not necessarily positive so if we sub stereotype if we have a stereotype for Americans a visit to New York may result in us having a New Yorkers are different subtype stereotypes diversify through subtypes and this allows the original stereotype to persist in the society what this means is that if particular members of a particular social group consistently defy a particular stereotype instead of getting rid of the original stereotype we create subtypes of the main social group this preserves The Stereotype for the main group while accommodating those that do not fit The Stereotype allowing for some diversity so if enough blacks become successful do we then change our stereotype of blacks no rather we create a subtype these particular kinds of blacks are successful but the rest of them the majority of them in fact are not thus we have created a subtype in our minds that accounts for the exception but that also allows the original stereotype to persist blacks are generally lazy but black athletes not so much or blacks are generally not that smart but Obama and his wife they are the exception to the rule thus we have created a subtype that accounts for the exception but allows the original stereotype to persist so subtyping is not necessarily a good thing now what are the functions of stereotypes do they benefit us in any way do you think there are any benefits to stereotyping others it is important to note that stereotypes hold different functions for different people even if the content of The Stereotype is exactly the same the most obvious function which we've talked about before is making ourselves feel better by derogating others this is based on an ego defensive function we aim toing protect our ego by making another person or another group look bad this function of stereotypes also serves the purpose of projecting our own negative feelings onto members of another group for example if you experience fear and anxiety when you see a Muslim person then you avoid them in interactions you avoid eye contact with them and you avoid having to have conversations with them because apparently they're all terrorists and so they elicit fear in you so The Stereotype in this example Le is used to avoid interacting with members of the stereotyped group similarly a person with negative stereotypes against gay or disabled individuals avoid interacting with them at all costs another function of stereotypes is to maintain group membership and ties Conformity we actually go to Great Lengths as humans to fit in with the group and to maintain our group ties if your group expects you to behave and think a certain way behave or thinking contrary to that can lead you to being ostracized and for most people being excluded from the group is the worst possible treatment watch the clip I've posted on what happens when members of a group are ostracized of course the need to fit in can have much more Grand consequences in society if the culture dictates that all Muslims must be terrorists then if you are from the majority culture whether you agree with it or not you have to go along with it or you run the risk of being ostracized from your group if the culture of the time dictates that lynching is the norm then you go along with it whether you agree with it or not because otherwise you run the risk of being killed yourself so watch the example I posted from the movie The Help showing how Maids were mistreated just because it was the fashion of the times even if you yourself personally did not believe in it the Holocaust was largely a case of Conformity many Germans might have felt horrible with the treatment of Jews but they needed to conform because that's what we do as social creatures we conform to the group whether the actions of the group make sense or not and we see that again today with the genocide in Palestine whether you like it or not when your Society tells you it's okay to eliminate 40,000 people from the face of the Earth you conform your mind begins to justify it because your group tells you to and therefore you begin to think it's okay watch the elevator experiment to see how Conformity to what the group is is doing Conformity to the fashion of the times Conformity to what Society forces you to accept as okay can devolve into utter stupidity and we laugh at these kinds of experiments but Conformity to the trends of the times have led to the acceptance of horrific crimes like genocide like ethnic cleansing like wars fought on the basis of lies and deception how do we react when we feel different from others Research indicates that people's reaction to feeling different is manifested in five different ways distancing denial defensiveness devaluing and Discovery distancing is avoiding situations where we feel out of place it can be physical distancing emotional distancing or intellectual distancing denial involves denying differences between ourselves and others defensiveness involves the desire to guard against the possibility that they will appear biased so we become defensive in our differences devaluing involves when differences are treated as deficiencies or unimportant and discovering involves appreciating differences between yourself and another and seeing how are enriching those differences can be so for your discussion this week you will be looking at each of these reactions in terms of how they can be used to combat stereotypes