Friday, March 26, 2010

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

A stereotype is a set of beliefs about the characteristics of a social group. For example, Asians as a group may be thought to be intelligent and good at mathematics, or African Americans may be viewed as generally athletic compared to other groups. Stereotyping is the act of attributing these characteristics or attributes thought to characterize the group as a whole to individuals simply due to their membership in the group.


Stereotypes lead to inferences about the members of a group and result in certain expectations about them. The attributes of the stereotype are applied to specific individuals. But doing so may lead to inaccurate perceptions and inappropriate behavior in integroup settings. Expecting someone to be unfriendly or hostile, for example, will undermine the development of positive interactions with the person due to elicitation of defensive or guarded behavior on the part of the perceiver. When this pattern of biased behavior occurs as a consequence of an incorrect expectation on the part of the perceiver, a self-fulfilling prophecy is said to occur.


Self-fulfilling prophecies may occur at a societal level or within interactions occurring between individuals. In the latter case, a self-fulfilling prophecy may arise when:


  1. The perceiver has an initial expectation about another person or group of people that is untrue.
  2. This erroneous belief biases behavior in the perceiver
  3. The perceiver's behavior then elicits behavior in the target person that confirms the erroneous expectation.


A self-fulfilling prophecy then only occurs if the original expectation is false and results in a confirmation of the originally false belief. In so doing, it may perpetuate or further strengthen the erroneous misconception regarding the individual or social group.


Merton's Focus


The notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy was introduced by the sociologist Robert Merton (1948). He was concerned with how they occur at an institutional or societal level. For example, he describes how in the early 20th century African Americans were barred from most labor unions and justified by the belief that they were strikebreakers who couldn't be trusted. However, given this exclusion, African Americans were deprived of many jobs. Given few choices they would take advantage of strikes to obtain employment they could not otherwise find, thereby fulfilling the stereotype. In this case, exclusionary institutional practices perpetuated the self-fulfilling prophecy rather than any one individual's behavior.


Rosenthal's Work


Within psychology the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy found application in the work of Rosenthal and his colleagues. They employed the idea as a means of explaining how experimenter expectations could bias the outcomes of experimental research. Rosenthal and Lawson (1964) led one group of students to think that the rats they were training were especially smart whereas another group were told the rats were relatively dull. Although there were no real differences among the rats in the two groups, those thought to be smarter took less time to learn and complete a maze than those being trained by students with lower expectations. The results confirmed the students' expectations even though they were completely false, a self-fulfilling prophecy.


This study was a milestone in psychological research. It highlighted an important alternate interpretation of research findings and the need to keep experimenters blind as to a study's hypotheses and the assignment of participants to experimental conditions. A later study, however, provided the impetus for a wave of research on self-fulfilling prophecies. Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968). In this research teachers' expectations about their students were manipulated. They were led to believe that some students were "late bloomers" who had greater potential to excel in the classroom. And although the labeling of students was randomly determined, those students showed increases in their IQ scores over the course of the year that outpaced the other students. Subsequent research focused not on this positive outcome as much as the implications for how negative expectations about disadvantaged students could potentially undermine their educational attainment or perpetuate erroneous stereotypes about minority groups.


Word, Zanna & Cooper


Utilizing the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy, it can be seen how ethnic, gender or other negative stereotypes could be perpetuated through intergroup interactions that provide false confirmation of these beliefs. In a classic study of how such interactions might unfold, Word, Zanna and Cooper (1974) performed two experiments that examined the role of nonverbal behavior in the process. In an initial study they had participants interviewers engage either White or African American confederates who acted as interviewees for the study. It was found that the participants engaged in less immediate nonverbal behavior when interviewing the African American interviewee. These are behaviors that signify less acceptance or liking of the other person, and may include such behaviors as reduced eye contact, sitting further away, facing less directly towards the other, spending less time in interaction, and committing more speech errors.


This first experiment alone does not provide evidence of a self-fulfilling prophecy but a second study further extends support for this explanation. In this study, white confederates acted as interviewers rather than interviewees and white students served as subjects. In one condition, the interviewers acted in a less immediate manner, similar to what was found among those participants of the prior study who had interviewed an African American. In a second condition the nonverbal behavior was more accepting of the participants, and modeled after that displayed previously towards the white interviewees of the first study. Specifically, in the low immediacy group, the interviewer sat further away, spent less time in the interview, and made relatively more speech errors than in the latter group. And what was the effect of this less friendly behavior? First, it was found that the interviewees reciprocated the immediacy level of nonverbal behaviors displayed by the interviewers. But more importantly, those in the low immediacy group were rated as being less qualified for the prospective job by "blind" judges. Thus, racial biases led to less acceptance of African American job candidates and this appeared to undermine their performance in the interview setting.


What remains unclear from these experiments is whether the more negative nonverbal behavior displayed towards African Americans was due to lower expectations regarding their job qualifications, that is, whether it originated in negative racial stereotypes. It is also possible that something else about the interracial interaction caused participants to respond less favorably towards the African American interviewees. Many concepts have been proposed over the years to explain the often strained nature of interracial interactions. Although such interactions could be aversive due to negative stereotypes and expectations, they may also uncomfortable due to internal conflict residing within the perceiver. It has been argued that a conflict exists between negative emotions, and implicit negative stereotypes, on the one hand and a desire to also appear unprejudiced or egalitarian on the other. Such concepts as ambivalence (Katz, Wackenhut & Hass, 1986), aversive racism (Gaertner & Dividio, 1986), modern racism (McConahay, 1986), and intergroup anxiety (Stephan & Stephan, 1985) provide examples and may explain the findings of Word et al. (1974). The discomfort felt in the setting may result in its avoidance as reflected in less immediate nonverbal behavior towards the other person.


Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid


However, other studies outside of interracial contexts provide further evidence that stereotypes may mediate self-fulfilling prophecies. In one of these (Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977) pairs of male and female college students interacted with each other via a telephone. The study was said to be one of "acquaintance processes in social relationships." The man in each pair was given a photograph and some background information on his female partner. Half were assigned to a condition in which an attractive woman's photo was provided to the male participants. The other half were treated identically except that the photos were of relatively unattractive women.


In line with stereotypes about physically attractive people, the men in the high attractiveness condition thought their partners were more sociable, poised, humorous and socially adept than men in the low attractiveness condition. The photographs activated the physical attractiveness stereotype. More importantly, ratings of the female participants, by judges who only had access to their portion of the taped conversations, were more favorable on those specific attributes comprising the male participants' stereotypes. In other words, the women came to act as expected by the physical attractiveness stereotype. Furthermore, ratings of the men's behavior indicated that their own behavior mediated the behavior of their female partners. The men in the high attractiveness condition were seen as more attractive and confident, and as showing more initiative and liking towards their partners than men in the low attractiveness condition.


Conclusion


These studies demonstrate how stereotypes can potentially bias the outcome of dyadic interactions more generally and intergroup interactions more specifically. A stereotype may evoke behavior in the perceiver that elicits behavior in a target confirming the stereotype, even when the perceiver's expectations have no factual basis. When these stereotypes suggest poor academic achievement, ineffective job performance, violent or criminal behavior, or other undesirable traits and behavior, the potential for victimization of the stereotyped or stigmatized person can become very real.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Why Prejudice Matters


Welcome to the
Prejudice Matters blog. The blog's name has two meanings. On the one hand, the blog will discuss "matters" related to prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Prejudice will often be used here as a general term for a predisposition to behave in a favorable or, more often, unfavorable way towards a social group and its members. It is an attitude in the more general sense, and as such also has the three specific components that comprise all attitudes.

The affective component of an attitude refers to the emotional or evaluative reaction towards an object. In the case of prejudice, it is the feeling one has towards a group and its members, that is, whether one views the group in a positive and favorable, or negative and unfavorable, light. The second component, the cognitive component, represents the set of beliefs held about the group. This configuration of beliefs is often referred to as a
stereotype. When one infers certain attributes in someone based solely on his or her group membership, stereotyping is said to occur. Although such beliefs may imply an evaluation (e.g., the attribute of hostility is viewed negatively rather than positively in most contexts), beliefs and their associated affect have historically been viewed as separate constructs. Finally, there is the behavioral component of prejudice. This refers to how one responds overtly towards members of the group. When behavior is biased as a result of someone's group membership discrimination is said to occur.

The second meaning of the blog's name concerns the seriousness of this topic. Prejudice is not just an abstract and theoretical construct. It refers to aspects of human behavior that have real consequences for people. In many cases, the quality of one's life, and even one's continued existence, may be impacted by actions rooted in prejudice. In the educational realm, the academic achievement of minorities may be hindered by negative stereotypes that bias their treatment by teachers or by the effects these stereotypes have directly on members of the targeted group. In the criminal justice system, minority group members are more likely to be stopped, searched, and once in custody, beaten by police. They are also more likely to be found guilty, given harsher prison terms, and less likely to be paroled. And with respect to employment opportunity, both salary surveys and controlled experimental studies, known as employment audits, find clear patterns of discrimination towards minorities, especially minority men (See Sidanius & Veniegas, 2000)
.

Prejudice and discrimination at this level may be viewed as an obstacle to equal opportunity and possible instances of the dominant group in society seeking to retain its power over subordinate groups. However, in the extreme, prejudice may result in civil war and outright genocide aimed at elimination of a racial or ethnic group completely. In just the 20th century, such cases are abundant. The most notorious is that of the Nazi holocaust in which six million Jews or nearly two-thirds of the entire European Jewish population were executed. At least as many members of other targeted groups (Roma, Slavs, Poles, Russians) also faced widespread execution as a result of ethnic hatred by the Nazis.

But it's important to recognize that the genocide of the Nazis is not an isolated instance. The term genocide first was used in reference to the massacre of more than a million Armenians, starting in 1915 and continuing until after the end of World War I. Other populations have also been targeted in Turkey since then. In the 1930s, Stalin adopted a new policy towards the Kulaks who resisted collectivization of their farms. Stalin declared, "From a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks, we have gone over to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak). And it goes on and on. Post-war nations have continued to provide ample evidence of genocide and targeted ethnic killings. The following list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history) summarizes these.

Country, Dates, and Estimated Number of Victims
Sudan, 10/56-3/72, 400,000-600,000
South Vietnam, 1/65-4/75, 400,000-500,000
India, Punjab, 6/84-6/94, 150,000
China, 3/59-12/59, 65,000
Iraq, 6/63-3/75, 30,000-60,000
Algeria, 7/62-12/62, 9,000-30,000
Rwanda, 12/63-6/64, 12,000-20,000
Congo-K, 2/64-1/65, 1,000-10,000
Burundi, 10/65-12/73, 140,000
Indonesia, 11/65-7/66, 500,000-1,000,000
China, 5/66-3/75, 400,000-850,000
Guatemala, 7/78-12/96, 60,000-200,000
Pakistan, 3/71-12/71, 1,000,000-3,000,000
Uganda, 2/72-4/79, 50,000-400,000
Philippines, 9/72-6/76, 60,000
Pakistan, 2/73-7/77, 5,000-10,000
Chile, 9/73-12/76, 5,000-10,000
Mexico, 5/68-1/70, 2,500-10,000
Angola, 11/75-2001, 500,000
Cambodia, 4/75-1/79, 1,900,000-3,500,000
Indonesia, 12/75-7/92, 100,000-200,000
Argentina, 3/76-12/80, 9,000-20,000
Ethiopia, 7/76-12/79, 10,000
Congo-K, 3/77-12/79, 3,000-4,000
Afghanistan, 4/78-4/92, 1,800,000
Burma, 1/78-12/78, 5,000
El Salvador, 1/80-12/89, 40,000-60,000
Uganda, 12/80-1/86, 200,000-500,000
Syria, 4/81-2/82, 5,000-30,000
Iran, 6/81-12/92, 10,000-20,000
Sudan, 9/83-present, 2,000,000
Iraq, 3/88-6/91, 180,000
Somalia, 5/88-1/91, 15,000-50,000
Bosnia, 5/92-11/95, 225,000
Burundi, 10/93-5/94, 50,000
Rwanda, 4/94-7/94, 500,000-1,000,000
Serbia, 12/98-7/99, 10,000

When prejudice turns to racial or ethnic hatred, such targeted destruction of one group of people by another becomes possible. The current blog is dedicated to issues of prejudice in all of its forms. Academic research will be reviewed along with discussions of past and current events. A social psychological viewpoint will be predominant but material will also be drawn from sociology, economics, history or other disciplines as appropriate.