Being on the Receiving End of Prejudice and Discrimination- Lecture 10 Social

· Looked at body image of women
· Shown pictures and asked to say which was their ideal body size and what described their size.
· Women who were primed with the sexist ads saw themselves as bigger.

· A person is self objectified whenever body parts or sexual functions are separated out from their identity
· Women will internalize the message from the culture about women as objects.
· Both psychological consequences and a mental health risk
· You think about your body from a third person perspective
· Both trait and state effects (trait=some women might just be higher in chronic self objectification, state= there can be situations that will trigger a sense of self objectification even if you don’t have that as a trait.)
· This would be associated with body shame, restrained eating, math performance.
· Measured it at a trait level
· Had to rank themselves on physical self concepts
o If weight and sex appeal were more important than health and strength you would be considered high in self objectification.
· Measured body shames by having people say if they agree to statements such as “I hate my body” “I feel like covering it”
· Brought people in for a “consumer product study”
o Had to try on a garment in front of a full length mirror
o Control condition women had to try on a sweater
o Experimental condition they had to try on swimsuits and evaluate the swimsuit infront of the full length mirror.
o Those highest in body shame were those high on trait and wore the swimsuit.
o Even those low on the trait had an increase in sense of body shame in wearing the swimsuit
· Next had them taste two cookies on the plate.
o Three types of responses
§ Some ate a cookie (no restraint)
§ Some ate half a cookie (restraint)
§ Some ate a bit more than half (symbolic restraint)-those high in body shame were more likely to show symbolic restraint. If they had low body shame almost no one had symbolic restraint. They ate it or they didn’t.
· Next tested if there was a carryover to math performance.
o Told people they were looking at habituation and they had to wear the garment for 15 mins. While they were doing this they gave them math problems
§ Also tested men (math performance didn’t change if they were wearing a sweater or not)
o When wearing a swimsuit the womens math performance went down. –stereotype threat

The knowledge of a prevalent cultural stereotype about performance and how it can interfere with performance through fear of confirming the stereotype.

· Interested in the findings on the performance of African American students relative to their entrance exam scores.
· Test scores and SAT scores were good predictors for white americans but not for African Americans.
· Do you identify with the minority group at university. If you identified with the white students and were black sat scores were a better predictor.
Did studies on this
· Gave students exam. Half were told it was diagnostic of intelligence. The other half were told it was just a problem solving task. For African Americans they got lower scores if they thought it was diagnostic.
· White students when they have trouble in first term of university think the school is hard. African Americans thought they weren’t smart enough.

· Women and math.
o Gave male and female the math advanced GRE
o Half get really difficult math problems.
§ Women shut down and had trouble later
§ Men weren’t affected, they just move on to the next problem.
o Later manipulated who else was in the room when they were taking the test. (other females, female and a male, all males)
o It doesn’t matter to the men who else is in the room
o When women are the minority they do worse on the math test. It makes salient their gender which reminds them of the stereotype that they’re bad at math. -> this is unconscious
§ Don’t necessarily accept the stereotype but being aware of it causes a negative effect.

O White males scores go down.
· Measured their skill in putting golf in the office: Told them he was measuring natural athletic ability or that it was an intelligence test. Asians did better when it was intelligence. Whites did better when it was athletic ability
Those most concerned with succeeding in a domain are must vunerable to stereotype threat effect.
Not a matter of decreased motivation. In fact it increases the persons drive to disprove the stereotype.

Three processes at work to explain why it undermines performance:
· Physiological stress response.-> distinct cardiac response in a situation where you aren’t sure you can meet the demands.
· Active monitoring of performance
· Efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions
o Try to ignore the stereotype ->suppressing thought uses up mental resources and makes you think of it more.
· These all take away mental resources from the task and as a result you start to do worse.

· Demographic questions before or after the test.
· Makes salient their gender
· When the demographic came after there wasn’t much different between the men and the womens score. There was a big different when it came before.
· Guys might do a little better if it comes before

Ego justification
· Justified to define yourself as a good person
Group justification
· Maintain a favorable image of the group
· In group favoritism
System justification
· Social and psychological need to justify the system, status quo
· People justify the system regardless of which group they’re in
· May justify a system that works against you
o Eg. whats the matter with Kansas essay.
§ Why are working poor people often supporting political candidates who wouldn’t help them
§ Self-interest is driven by norms.
§ Rationalization and accommodation among disadvantaged groups is common. -> why challenge status quo if you can find a way to get by.
§ Disadvantaged groups often have ambivalent attitudes about their own groups.

· Bilinguals make audio recordings in English and in French.
· Checks to see that people are truly bilingual (others can’t tell which is the speakers first language)
· They then form an impression of the speakers
· English participants had a more positive impression of the person when they heard them speaking in English.
· The French Canadians ALSO gave more positive rating when the speaker spoke English.
· At the time the French were the disadvantaged group.
· its not just about group justification-> system justification

Manipulate the likelihood that the other candidate (not the one you support) will win
Judge the opposing candidate as more desirable the more likely you think they are to win. (“he’s not so bad”)->rationalizing the status quo.

· Find other traits about the women- high in warmth even if they aren’t high in competance

· He’s rich but he’s probably not happy
· Helps us justify a system where some people are on top

· He’s rich but he’s probably not happy
· Helps us justify a system where some people are on top
· People endorse statements such as “ relations between men and women are fair” when they need to justify the system. More gender specific justifications when theres benevolent sexism

· Studied science profs at top universities.
o Sent an application for a lab manager job and then manipulated gender of the applicant
§ more willing to hire if they were male
§ more willing to pay men more