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143-462: In social psychology , a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are often overgeneralized , inaccurate, and resistant to new information . A stereotype does not necessarily need to be

286-423: A category to identify response patterns. Second, categorized information is more specific than non-categorized information, as categorization accentuates properties that are shared by all members of a group. Third, people can readily describe objects in a category because objects in the same category have distinct characteristics. Finally, people can take for granted the characteristics of a particular category because

429-686: A change in attitudes or behavior. Research on attitudes has examined the distinction between traditional, self-reported attitudes and implicit, unconscious attitudes . Experiments using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) , for instance, have found that people often demonstrate implicit bias against other races, even when their explicit responses profess impartiality. Likewise, one study found that in interracial interactions, explicit attitudes correlate with verbal behavior, while implicit attitudes correlate with nonverbal behavior. Attitudes are also involved in several other areas of

572-466: A cognitive mechanism known as illusory correlation – an erroneous inference about the relationship between two events. If two statistically infrequent events co-occur, observers overestimate the frequency of co-occurrence of these events. The underlying reason is that rare, infrequent events are distinctive and salient and, when paired, become even more so. The heightened salience results in more attention and more effective encoding , which strengthens

715-419: A common identity. They have a number of emergent qualities that distinguish them from coincidental, temporary gatherings, which are termed social aggregates: The shared social identity of individuals within a group influences intergroup behavior , which denotes the way in which groups behave towards and perceive each other. These perceptions and behaviors in turn define the social identity of individuals within

858-461: A cultural context. It was also in this period where situationism , the theory that human behavior changes based on situational factors, emerged and challenged the relevance of self and personality in psychology. By the 1980s and 1990s, social psychology had developed a number of solutions to these issues with regard to theory and methodology . At present, ethical standards regulate research, and pluralistic and multicultural perspectives to

1001-420: A given behavior is known as "functional autonomy." Allport gives the example of a man who seeks to perfect his task or craft. His original motive may be a sense of inferiority engrained in his childhood, but his diligence in his work and the motive it acquires, later on, is a need to excel in his chosen profession, which becomes the man's drive. Allport says that the theory: ... avoids the absurdity of regarding

1144-417: A group and being part of that group must also be salient for the individual. Craig McGarty, Russell Spears, and Vincent Y. Yzerbyt (2002) argued that the cognitive functions of stereotyping are best understood in relation to its social functions, and vice versa. Stereotypes can help make sense of the world. They are a form of categorization that helps to simplify and systematize information. Thus, information

1287-449: A landmark study, David Hamilton and Richard Gifford (1976) examined the role of illusory correlation in stereotype formation. Subjects were instructed to read descriptions of behaviors performed by members of groups A and B. Negative behaviors outnumbered positive actions and group B was smaller than group A, making negative behaviors and membership in group B relatively infrequent and distinctive. Participants were then asked who had performed

1430-415: A lot about their thinking. In this stage, it is believed that future goals are built to give a sense of meaning to one's life. Allport viewed a healthy person to create problems by making future goals that can be seen as unattainable in many cases. This sense of creating these long-term goals is set to differentiate from other stages and even from having a healthy or sick personality. In this final stage,

1573-550: A more negative stereotype of people from countries that were the United States's WWII enemies . If there are no changes to an intergroup relationship, then relevant stereotypes do not change. According to a third explanation, shared stereotypes are neither caused by the coincidence of common stimuli, nor by socialisation. This explanation posits that stereotypes are shared because group members are motivated to behave in certain ways, and stereotypes reflect those behaviours. It

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1716-413: A need for money, fame, etc. 2. Central trait - These traits are general characteristics found in some degree in every person. These are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behavior although they are not as overwhelming as cardinal traits. They influence but do not determine behavior. An example of a central trait would be honesty. 3. Secondary trait - These traits are the bottom tier of

1859-471: A negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative. An explicit stereotype refers to stereotypes that one is aware that one holds, and is aware that one is using to judge people. If person A is making judgments about a particular person B from group G , and person A has an explicit stereotype for group G , their decision bias can be partially mitigated using conscious control; however, attempts to offset bias due to conscious awareness of

2002-471: A newer model of stereotype content theorizes that stereotypes are frequently ambivalent and vary along two dimensions: warmth and competence. Warmth and competence are respectively predicted by lack of competition and status . Groups that do not compete with the in-group for the same resources (e.g., college space) are perceived as warm, whereas high-status (e.g., economically or educationally successful) groups are considered competent. The groups within each of

2145-410: A person may generally value the environment but may not recycle a plastic bottle because of specific factors on a given day. One of the most influential 20th century attitude theories was Cognitive dissonance theory . According to this theory, attitudes must be logically consistent with each other. Noticing incongruence among one’s attitudes leads to an uncomfortable state of tension, which may motivate

2288-446: A person retains information and uses it to interact with the external world. Phenotypes are external forces, these relate to the way an individual accepts his surroundings and how others influence their behavior. These forces generate the ways in which we behave and are the groundwork for the creation of individual traits. The Problem with this hypothesis is that it cannot be proven as they are internal theories, influenced presumably by

2431-497: A population. This type of research is usually descriptive or correlational because there is no experimental control over variables. Some psychologists have raised concerns for social psychological research relying too heavily on studies conducted on university undergraduates in academic settings, or participants from crowdsourcing labor markets such as Amazon Mechanical Turk . In a 1986 study by David O. Sears , over 70% of experiments used North American undergraduates as subjects,

2574-582: A pretest had revealed that subjects had no preexisting expectations about attitudes toward euthanasia and the department that students belong to. The attribution error created the new stereotype that law students are more likely to support euthanasia. Nier et al. (2012) found that people who tend to draw dispositional inferences from behavior and ignore situational constraints are more likely to stereotype low-status groups as incompetent and high-status groups as competent. Participants listened to descriptions of two fictitious groups of Pacific Islanders , one of which

2717-440: A restaurant, doing laundry) are known as scripts . Self-concept is the whole sum of beliefs that people have about themselves. The self-concept is made up of cognitive aspects called self-schemas —beliefs that people have about themselves and that guide the processing of self-referential information. For example, an athlete at a university would have multiple selves that would process different information pertinent to each self:

2860-458: A set of actions: a person of group A or group B. Results showed that subjects overestimated the frequency with which both distinctive events, membership in group B and negative behavior, co-occurred, and evaluated group B more negatively. This despite the fact the proportion of positive to negative behaviors was equivalent for both groups and that there was no actual correlation between group membership and behaviors. Although Hamilton and Gifford found

3003-435: A similar effect for positive behaviors as the infrequent events, a meta-analytic review of studies showed that illusory correlation effects are stronger when the infrequent, distinctive information is negative. Hamilton and Gifford's distinctiveness-based explanation of stereotype formation was subsequently extended. A 1994 study by McConnell, Sherman, and Hamilton found that people formed stereotypes based on information that

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3146-447: A simulated exercise involving students playing at being prison guards and inmates, attempted to show how far people would go in role playing. In just a few days, the guards became brutal and cruel, and the prisoners became miserable and compliant. This was initially argued to be an important demonstration of the power of the immediate social situation and its capacity to overwhelm normal personality traits. Subsequent research has contested

3289-438: A social group and a domain or attribute. For example, one can have beliefs that women and men are equally capable of becoming successful electricians but at the same time many can associate electricians more with men than women. In social psychology , a stereotype is any thought widely adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as

3432-862: A spokesman for personality psychology. He appeared on radio talk shows, wrote literature reviews, articles, and a textbook. He was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 1939, being the second youngest person to hold that office. In 1943, he was elected President of the Eastern Psychological Association . In 1944, he served as President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. In 1950, Allport published his third book titled The Individual and His Religion . His fourth book, The Nature of Prejudice ,

3575-497: A state of consummate love. According to social exchange theory , relationships are based on rational choice and cost-benefit analysis. A person may leave a relationship if their partner's "costs" begin to outweigh their benefits, especially if there are good alternatives available. This theory is similar to the minimax principle proposed by mathematicians and economists. With time, long-term relationships tend to become communal rather than simply based on exchange. Social psychology

3718-493: A stereotype often fail at being truly impartial, due to either underestimating or overestimating the amount of bias being created by the stereotype. Implicit stereotypes are those that lay on individuals' subconsciousness, that they have no control or awareness of. "Implicit stereotypes are built based on two concepts, associative networks in semantic (knowledge) memory and automatic activation". Implicit stereotypes are automatic and involuntary associations that people make between

3861-439: A subset of the population that is unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Regardless of which method has been chosen, social psychologists statistically review the significance of their results before accepting them in evaluating an underlying hypothesis. Statistics and probability testing define what constitutes a significant finding, which can be as low as 5% or less, and is unlikely due to chance. Replication testing

4004-425: A unit of personality. Allport emphasized that an individual's personality is the single most unique thing about a person. One of his early projects was to go through the dictionary and locate every term that he thought could describe a person. From this, he developed a list of 4500 trait-like words. He organized these words into three levels of traits. This is similar to Goldberg's fundamental lexical hypothesis , or

4147-408: A white face. Similarly, Correll et al. (2002) showed that activated stereotypes about blacks can influence people's behavior. In a series of experiments, black and white participants played a video game, in which a black or white person was shown holding a gun or a harmless object (e.g., a mobile phone). Participants had to decide as quickly as possible whether to shoot the target. When the target person

4290-504: A whole. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. Within psychology and across other disciplines, different conceptualizations and theories of stereotyping exist, at times sharing commonalities, as well as containing contradictory elements. Even in the social sciences and some sub-disciplines of psychology, stereotypes are occasionally reproduced and can be identified in certain theories, for example, in assumptions about other cultures. The term stereotype comes from

4433-415: A year, before returning to Harvard to pursue his Ph.D. in psychology on a fellowship in 1920. His first publication, Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement in 1921, was co-authored with his older brother, Floyd Henry Allport . Allport earned his master's degree in 1921, studying under Herbert Langfeld , and then his Ph.D. in 1922, along the way taking a class with Hugo Münsterberg before

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4576-515: Is obedience ; this is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person. Obedience as a form of compliance was dramatically highlighted by the Milgram study , wherein people were ready to administer shocks to a person in distress on a researcher's command. An unusual kind of social influence is the self-fulfilling prophecy . This is a prediction that, by being made, causes itself to become true. For example, in

4719-607: Is a false memory of having predicted events, or an exaggeration of actual predictions, after becoming aware of the outcome. The confirmation bias is a type of bias leading to the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. Schemas are generalized mental representations that organize knowledge and guide information processing. They organize social information and experiences. Schemas often operate automatically and unconsciously. This leads to biases in perception and memory. Schemas may induce expectations that lead us to see something that

4862-450: Is a compliance method in which the persuader requests a small favor and then follows up with a larger favor (e.g., asking for the time and then asking for ten dollars). A related trick is the bait and switch , which is a disingenuous sales strategy that involves enticing potential customers with advertisements of low-priced items which turn out to be unavailable in order to sell a more expensive item. The third major form of social influence

5005-487: Is a tendency to work harder and faster in the presence of others. Another important concept in this area is deindividuation , a reduced state of self-awareness that can be caused by feelings of anonymity. Deindividuation is associated with uninhibited and sometimes dangerous behavior. It is common in crowds and mobs, but it can also be caused by a disguise, a uniform, alcohol, dark environments, or online anonymity. A major area of study of people's relations to each other

5148-399: Is also important in ensuring that the results are valid and not due to chance. False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias , are a hazard in the field. The Asch conformity experiments used a line-length estimation task to demonstrate the power of people's impulses to conform with other members in a small group. The task

5291-544: Is an empirical science that attempts to answer questions about human behavior by testing hypotheses. Careful attention to research design, sampling, and statistical analysis is important in social psychology. Whenever possible, social psychologists rely on controlled experimentation , which requires the manipulation of one or more independent variables in order to examine the effect on a dependent variable . Experiments are useful in social psychology because they are high in internal validity , meaning that they are free from

5434-470: Is an estimate of how people spontaneously stereotype U.S social groups of people using traits. Koch et al. conducted several studies asking participants to list groups and sort them according to their similarity. Using statistical techniques, they revealed three dimensions that explained the similarity ratings. These three dimensions were agency (A), beliefs (B), and communion (C). Agency is associated with reaching goals, standing out and socio-economic status and

5577-607: Is an extension of the theory, positing that tendency exists to make dispositional attributions for other people's behavior and situational attributions for one's own. The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute dispositional causes for successes, and situational causes for failure, particularly when self-esteem is threatened. This leads to assuming one's successes are from innate traits, and one's failures are due to situations. Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts which are used to make decisions in lieu of conscious reasoning. The availability heuristic occurs when people estimate

5720-517: Is an overarching term that denotes the persuasive effects people have on each other. It is seen as a fundamental concept in social psychology. The study of it overlaps considerably with research on attitudes and persuasion. The three main areas of social influence include conformity , compliance , and obedience . Social influence is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most effects of influence are strongest when they take place in social groups. The first major area of social influence

5863-495: Is better to categorise ingroup members under different categories (e.g., Democrats versus Republican) than under a shared category (e.g., American). Finally, ingroup members may influence each other to arrive at a common outgroup stereotype. Different disciplines give different accounts of how stereotypes develop: Psychologists may focus on an individual's experience with groups, patterns of communication about those groups, and intergroup conflict. As for sociologists, they may focus on

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6006-650: Is conducted by an ethics committee or institutional review board , which examines the proposed research to make sure that no harm is likely to come to the participants, and that the study's benefits outweigh any possible risks or discomforts to people participating. Gordon Allport Allport had a profound and lasting influence on the field of psychology, even though his work is cited much less often than that of other well-known figures. Part of his influence stemmed from his knack for exploring and broadly conceptualizing important topics (e.g. rumor , prejudice , religion , traits). Another part of his influence resulted from

6149-543: Is conformity. Conformity is defined as the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. The identity of members within a group (i.e., status), similarity, expertise, as well as cohesion, prior commitment, and accountability to the group help to determine the level of conformity of an individual. Conformity is often driven by two types of social influences: informational social influence, which involves conforming to gain accurate information, and normative social influence, which involves conforming to be accepted or liked by

6292-415: Is due to a request or suggestion from another person. Two common compliance strategies are 'foot-in-the-door,' which involves getting a person to agree to a small request to increase the likelihood of agreeing to a larger one, and 'door-in-the-face,' which involves making a large request that is likely to be refused to make a subsequent smaller request more likely to be accepted. The foot-in-the-door technique

6435-414: Is important to note from this explanation that stereotypes are the consequence, not the cause, of intergroup relations . This explanation assumes that when it is important for people to acknowledge both their ingroup and outgroup, they will emphasise their difference from outgroup members, and their similarity to ingroup members. International migration creates more opportunities for intergroup relations, but

6578-452: Is interpersonal attraction, which refers to all factors that lead people to like each other, establish relationships, and in some cases fall in love. Several general principles of attraction have been discovered by social psychologists. One of the most important factors in interpersonal attraction is how similar two particular people are. The more similar two people are in general attitudes, backgrounds, environments, worldviews, and other traits,

6721-421: Is more easily identified, recalled, predicted, and reacted to. Stereotypes are categories of objects or people. Between stereotypes, objects or people are as different from each other as possible. Within stereotypes, objects or people are as similar to each other as possible. Gordon Allport has suggested possible answers to why people find it easier to understand categorized information. First, people can consult

6864-434: Is no longer as clearly and/or as positively differentiated from relevant outgroups, and they want to restore the intergroup differentiation to a state that favours the ingroup. Stereotypes can emphasize a person's group membership in two steps: Stereotypes emphasize the person's similarities with ingroup members on relevant dimensions, and also the person's differences from outgroup members on relevant dimensions. People change

7007-407: Is not there. One experiment found that people are more likely to misperceive a weapon in the hands of a black man than a white man. This type of schema is a stereotype , a generalized set of beliefs about a particular group of people (when incorrect, an ultimate attribution error ). Stereotypes are often related to negative or preferential attitudes and behavior. Schemas for behaviors (e.g., going to

7150-445: Is perceived when infants can understand themselves through sensations and figure out what makes them and what does not. Though understanding whom they are by having a significance in their name has. This can then give them a sense of how they are and what that can mean socially. With having a sense of who they are in this stage, they want to have a form of independence that can be stepped away from adult supervision. In this stage,

7293-492: Is related to competence in the SCM, with some examples of traits including poor and wealthy, powerful and powerless, low status and high status. Beliefs is associated with views on the world, morals and conservative-progressive beliefs with some examples of traits including traditional and modern, religious and science-oriented or conventional and alternative. Finally, communion is associated with connecting with others and fitting in and

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7436-810: Is similar to warmth from the SCM, with some examples of traits including trustworthy and untrustworthy, cold and warm and repellent and likeable. According to research using this model, there is a curvilinear relationship between agency and communion. For example, if a group is high or low in the agency dimension then they may be seen as un-communal, whereas groups that are average in agency are seen as more communal. This model has many implications in predicting behaviour towards stereotyped groups. For example, Koch and colleagues recently proposed that perceived similarity in agency and beliefs increases inter-group cooperation. Early studies suggested that stereotypes were only used by rigid, repressed, and authoritarian people. This idea has been refuted by contemporary studies that suggest

7579-463: Is statistically less frequent than desirable behavior. Since both events "blackness" and "undesirable behavior" are distinctive in the sense that they are infrequent, the combination of the two leads observers to overestimate the rate of co-occurrence. Similarly, in workplaces where women are underrepresented and negative behaviors such as errors occur less frequently than positive behaviors, women become more strongly associated with mistakes than men. In

7722-544: Is used for printing instead of the original. Outside of printing, the first reference to stereotype in English was in 1850, as a noun that meant 'image perpetuated without change'. However, it was not until 1922 that stereotype was first used in the modern psychological sense by American journalist Walter Lippmann in his work Public Opinion . Stereotypes, prejudice , racism, and discrimination are understood as related but different concepts. Stereotypes are regarded as

7865-548: The elaboration likelihood model ) maintain that persuasion is mediated by two separate routes: central and peripheral. The central route of persuasion is influenced by facts and results in longer-lasting change, but requires motivation to process. The peripheral route is influenced by superficial factors (e.g. smiling, clothing) and results in shorter-lasting change, but does not require as much motivation to process. Social cognition studies how people perceive, recognize, and remember information about others. Much research rests on

8008-455: The probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome is to imagine. As such, vivid or highly memorable possibilities will be perceived as more likely than those that are harder to picture or difficult to understand. The representativeness heuristic is a shortcut people use to categorize something based on how similar it is to a prototype they know of. Several other biases have been found by social cognition researchers. The hindsight bias

8151-512: The representativeness heuristic . The results show that sector as well as non-work role-referencing influences perceived employee professionalism but has little effect on the confirmation of particular public sector stereotypes. Moreover, the results do not confirm a congruity effect of consistent stereotypical information: non-work role-referencing does not aggravate the negative effect of sector affiliation on perceived employee professionalism. Research has shown that stereotypes can develop based on

8294-420: The trait theory of personality, and is known as a "trait" psychologist. He opposed the idea that people can be classified according to a small number of trait dimensions, arguing that each person is unique and distinguished by particular traits. In his work, Concepts of Trait and Personality (1927) , Allport states that traits are "habits possessed of social significance" and become very predictable, traits are

8437-513: The 11th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Allport grew up in a religious family. He was born in Montezuma , Indiana , and was the youngest of four sons of John Edward and Nellie Edith (Wise) Allport. When Gordon Allport was six years old, the family had already moved many times and finally settled in Ohio. His early education was in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio. John Allport

8580-426: The 1940s refuted the suggestion that stereotype contents cannot be changed at will. Those studies suggested that one group's stereotype of another group would become more or less positive depending on whether their intergroup relationship had improved or degraded. Intergroup events (e.g., World War II , Persian Gulf conflicts) often changed intergroup relationships. For example, after WWII, Black American students held

8723-539: The 1960s, there was growing interest in topics such as cognitive dissonance , bystander intervention , and aggression . These developments were part of a trend of increasingly sophisticated laboratory experiments using college students as participants and analysis of variance designs. In the 1970s, a number of conceptual challenges to social psychology emerged over issues such as ethical concerns about laboratory experimentation, whether attitudes could accurately predict behavior, and to what extent science could be done in

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8866-560: The French adjective stéréotype and derives from the Greek words στερεός ( stereos ), 'firm, solid' and τύπος ( typos ), 'impression', hence 'solid impression on one or more ideas / theories '. The term was first used in the printing trade in 1798 by Firmin Didot , to describe a printing plate that duplicated any typography . The duplicate printing plate, or the stereotype ,

9009-404: The U.S. military (see also psychological warfare ). Following the war, researchers became interested in a variety of social problems, including issues of gender and racial prejudice . Social stigma , which refers to the disapproval or discrimination against individuals based on perceived differences, became increasingly prevalent as societies sought to redefine norms and group boundaries after

9152-429: The actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions . In the 19th century, social psychology began to emerge from the larger field of psychology . At

9295-548: The age of eighteen which earned him a scholarship that allowed him to attend Harvard University. Notably, one of his older brothers, Floyd Henry Allport , was working on his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard. Allport earned his A.B. degree in 1919 in Philosophy and Economics (not psychology). After graduating from Harvard, Allport traveled to Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey, where he taught economics and philosophy for

9438-470: The agency–beliefs–communion (ABC) model suggested that methods to study warmth and competence in the stereotype content model (SCM) were missing a crucial element, that being, stereotypes of social groups are often spontaneously generated. Experiments on the SCM usually ask participants to rate traits according to warmth and competence but this does not allow participants to use any other stereotype dimensions. The ABC model, proposed by Koch and colleagues in 2016

9581-518: The antisemitic "facts" as presented in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. People create stereotypes of an outgroup to justify the actions that their in-group has committed (or plans to commit) towards that outgroup. For example, according to Tajfel, Europeans stereotyped African, Indian, and Chinese people as being incapable of achieving financial advances without European help. This stereotype

9724-432: The assertion that people think about other people differently than they do non-social, or non-human, targets. This assertion is supported by the social-cognitive deficits exhibited by people with Williams syndrome and autism . A major research topic in social cognition is attribution . Attributions are explanations of behavior, either one's own behavior or the behavior of others. One element of attribution ascribes

9867-482: The attributes that people think characterize a group. Studies of stereotype content examine what people think of others, rather than the reasons and mechanisms involved in stereotyping. Early theories of stereotype content proposed by social psychologists such as Gordon Allport assumed that stereotypes of outgroups reflected uniform antipathy . For instance, Katz and Braly argued in their classic 1933 study that ethnic stereotypes were uniformly negative. By contrast,

10010-596: The automatic activation of negative stereotypes. In a study by Kawakami et al. (2000), for example, participants were presented with a category label and taught to respond "No" to stereotypic traits and "Yes" to nonstereotypic traits. After this training period, subjects showed reduced stereotype activation. This effect is based on the learning of new and more positive stereotypes rather than the negation of already existing ones. Empirical evidence suggests that stereotype activation can automatically influence social behavior. For example, Bargh , Chen, and Burrows (1996) activated

10153-406: The behavior confirms and even strengthens existing stereotypes. Second, the affective or emotional aspects of prejudice render logical arguments against stereotypes ineffective in countering the power of emotional responses. Correspondence bias refers to the tendency to ascribe a person's behavior to disposition or personality, and to underestimate the extent to which situational factors elicited

10296-445: The behavior will be repeated or changed under similar circumstances). Individuals also attribute causes of behavior to controllable and uncontrollable factors (i.e., how much control one has over the situation at hand). Numerous biases in the attribution process have been discovered. For instance, the fundamental attribution error is the bias towards making dispositional attributions for other people's behavior. The actor-observer bias

10439-426: The behavior. Correspondence bias can play an important role in stereotype formation. For example, in a study by Roguer and Yzerbyt (1999) participants watched a video showing students who were randomly instructed to find arguments either for or against euthanasia . The students that argued in favor of euthanasia came from the same law department or from different departments. Results showed that participants attributed

10582-500: The belief that the events are correlated . In the inter-group context, illusory correlations lead people to misattribute rare behaviors or traits at higher rates to minority group members than to majority groups, even when both display the same proportion of the behaviors or traits. Black people , for instance, are a minority group in the United States and interaction with blacks is a relatively infrequent event for an average white American . Similarly, undesirable behavior (e.g. crime)

10725-480: The category itself may be an arbitrary grouping. A complementary perspective theorizes how stereotypes function as time- and energy-savers that allow people to act more efficiently. Yet another perspective suggests that stereotypes are people's biased perceptions of their social contexts. In this view, people use stereotypes as shortcuts to make sense of their social contexts, and this makes a person's task of understanding his or her world less cognitively demanding. In

10868-436: The cause of behavior to internal and external factors. An internal, or dispositional, attribution reasons that a behavior is caused by inner traits such as personality, disposition, character, and ability. An external, or situational, attribution reasons that a behavior is caused by situational elements such as the weather. A second element of attribution ascribes the cause of behavior to stable and unstable factors (i.e., whether

11011-434: The child can see their bodies and extend to toys. The words that seem to be stated in their mind is mine. There seems to be an awareness of the good me and the bad me for the children that can bring up what they expect others to expect from them. In this stage, certain goals they see for themselves are brought up. At this stage, it is brought to the awareness that thoughts can help solve problems in which they tend to think

11154-720: The deep and lasting impression he made on his students during his long teaching career, many of whom went on to have important careers in psychology. Among his many students were Jerome S. Bruner , Anthony Greenwald , Stanley Milgram , Leo Postman , Thomas Pettigrew , and M. Brewster Smith . His brother Floyd Henry Allport , was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University 's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (in Syracuse, New York) from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Allport as

11297-521: The discipline, such as conformity , interpersonal attraction , social perception, and prejudice . Persuasion is an active method of influencing that attempts to guide people toward the adoption of an attitude, idea, or behavior by rational or emotive means. Persuasion relies on appeals rather than strong pressure or coercion . The process of persuasion has been found to be influenced by numerous variables that generally fall into one of five major categories: Dual-process theories of persuasion (such as

11440-425: The efforts of certain physicians of Cleveland." Allport was criticized for diagnosing and treating morphine addicts via mail simply on the basis of letters and no in-person appointments. Upon receiving Adams' letter detailing his concocted affliction, Allport replied back via mail, diagnosing Adams as a morphine addict and sending doses of the "Dr. J. Edward Allport System," designed to cure morphine addicts. Analysis of

11583-451: The emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions. Although related, the three concepts can exist independently of each other. According to Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly, stereotyping leads to racial prejudice when people emotionally react to the name of a group, ascribe characteristics to members of that group, and then evaluate those characteristics. Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes are: Stereotype content refers to

11726-438: The financial field, if it is widely believed that a crash is imminent, investors may lose confidence, sell most of their stock, and thus cause a crash. Similarly, people may expect hostility in others and induce this hostility by their own behavior. Psychologists have spent decades studying the power of social influence, and the way in which it manipulates people's opinions and behavior. Specifically, social influence refers to

11869-550: The following situations, the overarching purpose of stereotyping is for people to put their collective self (their in-group membership) in a positive light: As mentioned previously, stereotypes can be used to explain social events. Henri Tajfel described his observations of how some people found that the antisemitic fabricated contents of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion only made sense if Jews have certain characteristics. Therefore, according to Tajfel, Jews were stereotyped as being evil and yearning for world domination to match

12012-506: The foundation of much of 20th century social psychological findings. According to Wolfgang Stroebe , modern social psychology began in 1924 with the publication of a classic textbook by Floyd Allport , which defined the field as the experimental study of social behavior. An early, influential research program in social psychology was established by Kurt Lewin and his students. During World War II , social psychologists were mostly concerned with studies of persuasion and propaganda for

12155-417: The four combinations of high and low levels of warmth and competence elicit distinct emotions. The model explains the phenomenon that some out-groups are admired but disliked, whereas others are liked but disrespected. This model was empirically tested on a variety of national and international samples and was found to reliably predict stereotype content. An even more recent model of stereotype content called

12298-481: The group. Individual variations among group members play a key role in the dynamic of how willing people will be to conform. Conformity is usually viewed as a negative tendency in American culture, but a certain amount of conformity is adaptive in some situations, as is nonconformity in other situations. The second major area of social influence research is compliance , which refers to any change in behavior that

12441-475: The hierarchy and are not as apparent as central traits (less influential). Secondary traits are characteristics seen only in certain circumstances (such as particular likes or dislikes that a very close friend may know). They must be included to provide a complete picture of human complexity. Overall, Allport's three-level hierarchy of traits provides a framework for understanding the different levels of traits that collectively shape an individual's personality. It

12584-445: The high-status Pacific Islanders as competent. The correspondence bias was a significant predictor of stereotyping even after controlling for other measures that have been linked to beliefs about low status groups, the just-world fallacy and social dominance orientation . Based on the anti-public sector bias, Döring and Willems (2021) found that employees in the public sector are considered as less professional compared to employees in

12727-427: The hypothesis that humans develop widely used, generic terms for individual differences in their daily interactions over time. Allport's three-level hierarchy of traits are: 1. Cardinal trait - These traits are rare but is the trait that dominates and shapes a person's behavior. They exert a powerful influence on behavior which becomes aspects of a person's identity. These are the ruling passions/obsessions, such as

12870-484: The impression formation process. Early researchers believed that stereotypes were inaccurate representations of reality. A series of pioneering studies in the 1930s found no empirical support for widely held racial stereotypes. By the mid-1950s, Gordon Allport wrote that, "It is possible for a stereotype to grow in defiance of all evidence." Social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts , feelings , and behaviors are influenced by

13013-413: The individual began conforming or withdrew from the experiment. Also, participant conformity increased substantially as the number of "incorrect" individuals increased from one to three, and remained high as the incorrect majority grew. Participants with three other, incorrect participants made mistakes 31.8% of the time, while those with one or two incorrect participants made mistakes only 3.6% and 13.6% of

13156-414: The influence of confounding or extraneous variables, and so are more likely to accurately indicate a causal relationship. However, the small samples used in controlled experiments are typically low in external validity , or the degree to which the results can be generalized to the larger population. There is usually a trade-off between experimental control (internal validity) and being able to generalize to

13299-688: The ingroup and/or outgroups, ingroup members take collective action to prevent other ingroup members from diverging from each other. John C. Turner proposed in 1987 that if ingroup members disagree on an outgroup stereotype, then one of three possible collective actions follow: First, ingroup members may negotiate with each other and conclude that they have different outgroup stereotypes because they are stereotyping different subgroups of an outgroup (e.g., Russian gymnasts versus Russian boxers). Second, ingroup members may negotiate with each other, but conclude that they are disagreeing because of categorical differences amongst themselves. Accordingly, in this context, it

13442-500: The initial conclusions of the study. For example, it has been pointed out that participant self-selection may have affected the participants' behavior, and that the participants' personalities influenced their reactions in a variety of ways, including how long they chose to remain in the study. The 2002 BBC prison study , designed to replicate the conditions in the Stanford study, produced conclusions that were drastically different from

13585-416: The initial findings. Albert Bandura 's Bobo doll experiment attempted to demonstrate how aggression is learned by imitation . In the experiment, 72 children, grouped based on similar levels of pre-tested aggressivity, either witnessed an aggressive or a non-aggressive actor interact with a "bobo doll." The children were then placed alone in the room with the doll and observed to see if they would imitate

13728-500: The interacting groups. The tendency to define oneself by membership in a group may lead to intergroup discrimination, which involves favorable perceptions and behaviors directed towards the in-group, but negative perceptions and behaviors directed towards the out-group. Groups often moderate and improve decision making , and are frequently relied upon for these benefits, such as in committees and juries. Groups also affect performance and productivity . Social facilitation, for example,

13871-556: The interactions do not always disconfirm stereotypes. They are also known to form and maintain them. The dual-process model of cognitive processing of stereotypes asserts that automatic activation of stereotypes is followed by a controlled processing stage, during which an individual may choose to disregard or ignore the stereotyped information that has been brought to mind. A number of studies have found that stereotypes are activated automatically. Patricia Devine (1989), for example, suggested that stereotypes are automatically activated in

14014-695: The late 1940s, he helped to develop an introductory course for the new Social Relations Department. At that time, he was also editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology . Allport was also a Director of the Commission for the United Nations Educational Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1933. By 1937, Allport began to act as

14157-701: The latter's death in 1916. Harvard then awarded Allport a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. He spent the first Sheldon year studying with the new Gestalt School in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany; and then the second year at Cambridge University . In 1921 through 1937, Allport helped establish personality as a psychological research type within American psychology. He returned to Harvard as an instructor in psychology from 1924 to 1926 where he began teaching his course "Personality: Its Psychological and Social Aspects" in 1924. During this time, Allport married Ada Lufkin Gould, who

14300-401: The medicine revealed its active ingredient to be nothing more than additional morphine, packed with a bottle of pink whiskey "to mix with the morphin[sp] when it gets low." Adams referred to Allport as a "[quack] who pretend[s] to be a physician," is "no less scoundrelly," and "is even more dangerous" than other fraudulent addiction cure peddlers mentioned earlier in the book. Allport's mother

14443-559: The more likely they will be attracted to each other. Physical attractiveness is an important element of romantic relationships, particularly in the early stages characterized by high levels of passion . Later on, similarity and other compatibility factors become more important, and the type of love people experience shifts from passionate to companionate. In 1986, Robert Sternberg suggested that there are actually three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. When two (or more) people experience all three, they are said to be in

14586-402: The most cognitive component and often occurs without conscious awareness, whereas prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping and discrimination is one of the behavioral components of prejudicial reactions. In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents

14729-436: The neutral category labels were presented, people high and low in prejudice would respond differently. In a design similar to Devine's, Lepore and Brown primed the category of African-Americans using labels such as "blacks" and "West Indians" and then assessed the differential activation of the associated stereotype in the subsequent impression-formation task. They found that high-prejudice participants increased their ratings of

14872-422: The outer environment. Allport was one of the first researchers to draw a distinction between Motive and Drive. He suggested that a drive forms as a reaction to a motive, which may outgrow the motive as the reason for a behavior. The drive then becomes autonomous and distinct from the motive, whether the motive was instinct or something else. The idea that drives can become independent of the original motives for

15015-423: The perception of our own behavior. Leon Festinger 's 1954 social comparison theory posits that people evaluate their own abilities and opinions by comparing themselves to others when they are uncertain of their own ability or opinions. Daryl Bem 's 1972 self-perception theory claims that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior. Social influence

15158-406: The population (external validity). Because it is usually impossible to test everyone, research tends to be conducted on a sample of persons from the wider population . Social psychologists frequently use survey research when they are interested in results that are high in external validity. Surveys use various forms of random sampling to obtain a sample of respondents that is representative of

15301-422: The presence of a member (or some symbolic equivalent) of a stereotyped group and that the unintentional activation of the stereotype is equally strong for high- and low-prejudice persons. Words related to the cultural stereotype of blacks were presented subliminally . During an ostensibly unrelated impression-formation task, subjects read a paragraph describing a race-unspecified target person's behaviors and rated

15444-420: The private sector. They build on the assumption that the red-tape and bureaucratic nature of the public sector spills over in the perception that citizens have about the employees working in the sector. With an experimental vignette study, they analyze how citizens process information on employees' sector affiliation, and integrate non-work role-referencing to test the stereotype confirmation assumption underlying

15587-402: The relations among different groups in a social structure. They suggest that stereotypes are the result of conflict, poor parenting, and inadequate mental and emotional development. Once stereotypes have formed, there are two main factors that explain their persistence. First, the cognitive effects of schematic processing (see schema ) make it so that when a member of a group behaves as we expect,

15730-417: The same behavior of the actor they had observed. As hypothesized, the children who had witnessed the aggressive actor, imitated the behavior and proceeded to act aggressively towards the doll. Both male and female children who witnessed the non-aggressive actor behaved less aggressively towards the doll. However, boys were more likely to exhibit aggression, especially after observing the behavior from an actor of

15873-435: The same gender. In addition, boys were found to imitate more physical aggression, while girls displayed more verbal aggression. The goal of social psychology is to understand cognition and behavior as they naturally occur in a social context, but the very act of observing people can influence and alter their behavior. For this reason, many social psychology experiments utilize deception to conceal or distort certain aspects of

16016-429: The same lie. The first group ($ 1) later reported liking the task better than the second group ($ 20). Festinger's explanation was that for people in the first group, being paid only $ 1 was not sufficient incentive. This led them to experience dissonance, or discomfort and internal conflict. They could only overcome that dissonance by justifying their lies. They did this by changing their previously unfavorable attitudes about

16159-457: The same results as deception studies, and this has cast doubt on their validity. In addition to deception, experimenters have at times put people in potentially uncomfortable or embarrassing situations (e.g., the Milgram experiment and Stanford prison experiment ), and this has also been criticized for ethical reasons. Virtually all social psychology research in the modern day must pass an ethical review. At most colleges and universities, this

16302-544: The same stereotypes. Some psychologists believe that although stereotypes can be absorbed at any age, stereotypes are usually acquired in early childhood under the influence of parents, teachers, peers, and the media. If stereotypes are defined by social values, then stereotypes only change as per changes in social values. The suggestion that stereotype content depends on social values reflects Walter Lippman 's argument in his 1922 publication that stereotypes are rigid because they cannot be changed at will. Studies emerging since

16445-466: The same way. The problem with the 'common environment' is that explanation in general is that it does not explain how shared stereotypes can occur without direct stimuli. Research since the 1930s suggested that people are highly similar with each other in how they describe different racial and national groups, although those people have no personal experience with the groups they are describing. Another explanation says that people are socialised to adopt

16588-404: The self is seen as a knower who can be aware of and surpass the seven other propriate functions. When gone through all stages, you appear to use several or even all in daily tasks and experiences Allport hypothesized the idea of internal and external forces that influence an individual's behavior. He called these forces Genotypes and Phenotypes. Genotypes are internal forces that relate to how

16731-626: The social sciences have emerged. Most modern researchers in the 21st century are interested in phenomena such as attribution , social cognition , and self-concept . During the COVID-19 pandemic, social psychologists examined the effects of social isolation, fear, and misinformation on collective behavior. Research also focused on how pandemic-related stress affected mental health and social cohesion. Social psychologists are, in addition, concerned with applied psychology , contributing towards applications of social psychology in health, education, law, and

16874-421: The stereotype of the elder will affect the subjective perception of them through depression. In another experiment, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows also found that because the stereotype about blacks includes the notion of aggression, subliminal exposure to black faces increased the likelihood that randomly selected white college students reacted with more aggression and hostility than participants who subconsciously viewed

17017-420: The stereotype of the elderly among half of their participants by administering a scrambled-sentence test where participants saw words related to age stereotypes. Subjects primed with the stereotype walked significantly more slowly than the control group (although the test did not include any words specifically referring to slowness), thus acting in a way that the stereotype suggests that elderly people will act. And

17160-519: The stereotype of their ingroups and outgroups to suit context. Once an outgroup treats an ingroup member badly, they are more drawn to the members of their own group. This can be seen as members within a group are able to relate to each other though a stereotype because of identical situations. A person can embrace a stereotype to avoid humiliation such as failing a task and blaming it on a stereotype. Stereotypes are an indicator of ingroup consensus. When there are intragroup disagreements over stereotypes of

17303-424: The student would be oneself, who would process information pertinent to a student (taking notes in class, completing a homework assignment, etc.); the athlete would be the self who processes information about things related to being an athlete. These selves are part of one's identity and the self-referential information is that which relies on the appropriate self to process and react to it. There are many theories on

17446-409: The students' responses to their attitudes although it had been made clear in the video that students had no choice about their position. Participants reported that group membership, i.e., the department that the students belonged to, affected the students' opinions about euthanasia. Law students were perceived to be more in favor of euthanasia than students from different departments despite the fact that

17589-500: The study. Deception may include false cover stories, false participants (known as confederates or stooges), false feedback given to the participants, and other techniques that help remove potential obstacles to participation. The practice of deception has been challenged by psychologists who maintain that deception under any circumstances is unethical and that other research strategies (e.g., role-playing ) should be used instead. Research has shown that role-playing studies do not produce

17732-491: The target person on several trait scales. Results showed that participants who received a high proportion of racial words rated the target person in the story as significantly more hostile than participants who were presented with a lower proportion of words related to the stereotype. This effect held true for both high- and low-prejudice subjects (as measured by the Modern Racism Scale). Thus, the racial stereotype

17875-449: The target person on the negative stereotypic dimensions and decreased them on the positive dimension whereas low-prejudice subjects tended in the opposite direction. The results suggest that the level of prejudice and stereotype endorsement affects people's judgements when the category – and not the stereotype per se – is primed. Research has shown that people can be trained to activate counterstereotypic information and thereby reduce

18018-426: The task. Being paid $ 20 provided a reason for doing the boring task, which resulted in no dissonance. The Milgram experiment was designed to study how far people would go in obeying an authority figure. The experiment showed that normal American citizens would follow orders even when they believed they were causing an innocent person to suffer or even apparently die. Philip Zimbardo 's Stanford prison study ,

18161-492: The time, many psychologists were concerned with developing concrete explanations for the different aspects of human nature . They attempted to discover concrete cause-and-effect relationships that explained social interactions. In order to do so, they applied the scientific method to human behavior. One of the first published studies in the field was Norman Triplett 's 1898 experiment on the phenomenon of social facilitation . These psychological experiments later went on to form

18304-444: The time, respectively. In Leon Festinger 's cognitive dissonance experiment, participants were divided into two groups and were asked to perform a boring task. Both groups were later asked to dishonestly give their opinion of the task, but were rewarded according to two different pay scales. At the end of the study, some participants were paid $ 1 to say that they enjoyed the task, while the group of participants were paid $ 20 to tell

18447-723: The ubiquity of stereotypes and it was suggested to regard stereotypes as collective group beliefs, meaning that people who belong to the same social group share the same set of stereotypes. Modern research asserts that full understanding of stereotypes requires considering them from two complementary perspectives: as shared within a particular culture/subculture and as formed in the mind of an individual person. Stereotyping can serve cognitive functions on an interpersonal level, and social functions on an intergroup level. For stereotyping to function on an intergroup level (see social identity approaches: social identity theory and self-categorization theory ), an individual must see themselves as part of

18590-451: The war. During the years immediately following World War II , there were frequent collaborations between psychologists and sociologists . The two disciplines, however, have become increasingly specialized and isolated from each other in recent years, with sociologists generally focusing on high-level, large-scale examinations of society, and psychologists generally focusing on more small-scale studies of individual human behaviors. During

18733-455: The way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to meet the demands of a social group, received authority, social role, or a minority within a group wielding influence over the majority. Social psychologists study group-related phenomena such as the behavior of crowds . A group can be defined as two or more individuals who are connected to each other by social relationships . Groups tend to interact, influence each other, and share

18876-488: The workplace . In social psychology, an attitude is a learned, global evaluation that influences thought and action. Attitudes are basic expressions of approval and disapproval or likes and dislikes. For example, enjoying chocolate ice cream or endorsing the values of a particular political party are examples of attitudes. Because people are influenced by multiple factors in any given situation, general attitudes are not always good predictors of specific behavior. For example,

19019-466: Was a clinical psychologist. Together they had one child, a boy, who later became a pediatrician. After going to teach introductory courses on social psychology and personality at Dartmouth College for four years, Allport returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his career. Allport was a member of the faculty at Harvard University from 1930 to 1967. In 1931, he served on the faculty committee that established Harvard's Sociology Department. In

19162-538: Was a country doctor and had his clinic and hospital in the family home. Allport's father turned their home into a makeshift hospital, with patients as well as nurses residing there. Gordon Allport and his brothers grew up surrounded by their father's patients, nurses, and medical equipment, and he and his brothers often assisted their father in the clinic. Allport reported that "Tending office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important aspects of my early training" (p. 172). During this time, Allport's father

19305-413: Was a former school teacher, who forcefully promoted her values of intellectual development and religion. Biographers describe Allport as a reserved and diligent young boy who lived a fairly isolated childhood. As a teenager, Allport developed and managed his own printing business while serving as an editor of his high school newspaper. In 1915, he graduated second in his class at Glenville High School at

19448-586: Was activated even for low-prejudice individuals who did not personally endorse it. Studies using alternative priming methods have shown that the activation of gender and age stereotypes can also be automatic. Subsequent research suggested that the relation between category activation and stereotype activation was more complex. Lepore and Brown (1997), for instance, noted that the words used in Devine's study were both neutral category labels (e.g., "Blacks") and stereotypic attributes (e.g., "lazy"). They argued that if only

19591-465: Was armed, both black and white participants were faster in deciding to shoot the target when he was black than when he was white. When the target was unarmed, the participants avoided shooting him more quickly when he was white. Time pressure made the shooter bias even more pronounced. Stereotypes can be efficient shortcuts and sense-making tools. They can, however, keep people from processing new or unexpected information about each individual, thus biasing

19734-403: Was described as being higher in status than the other. In a second study, subjects rated actual groups – the poor and wealthy, women and men – in the United States in terms of their competence. Subjects who scored high on the measure of correspondence bias stereotyped the poor, women, and the fictitious lower-status Pacific Islanders as incompetent whereas they stereotyped the wealthy, men, and

19877-515: Was designed to be easy to assess but wrong answers were deliberately given by at least some, oftentimes most, of the other participants. In well over a third of the trials, participants conformed to the majority, even though the majority judgment was clearly wrong. Seventy-five percent of the participants conformed at least once during the experiment. Additional manipulations of the experiment showed that participant conformity decreased when at least one other individual failed to conform but increased when

20020-608: Was encapsulated in a blurb in Samuel Hopkins Adams ' exposé in Collier's Magazine on fraudulent medicinal cures, later reprinted as the book The Great American Fraud : Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery . While much of the book focuses on large scale, heavily advertised patent medicines available at the turn of the century, the author states Allport "would never have embodied this article were it not for

20163-428: Was not distinctive at the time of presentation, but was considered distinctive at the time of judgement. Once a person judges non-distinctive information in memory to be distinctive, that information is re-encoded and re-represented as if it had been distinctive when it was first processed. One explanation for why stereotypes are shared is that they are the result of a common environment that stimulates people to react in

20306-783: Was published in 1954, based on his work with refugees during World War II. His fifth book, published in 1955, was titled Becoming: Basic Considerations for Psychology of Personality . In 1963, Allport was awarded the Gold Medal Award from the American Psychological Foundation. In the following year, he received the APA's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. Gordon Allport died on October 9, 1967, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of lung cancer, just one month shy of his 70th birthday. Allport contributed to

20449-623: Was used to justify European colonialism in Africa, India, and China. An assumption is that people want their ingroup to have a positive image relative to outgroups, and so people want to differentiate their ingroup from relevant outgroups in a desirable way. If an outgroup does not affect the ingroup's image, then from an image preservation point of view, there is no point for the ingroup to be positively distinct from that outgroup. People can actively create certain images for relevant outgroups by stereotyping. People do so when they see that their ingroup

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