Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 Answers to Evaluate Questions 
1. social supporter; 
2.
b; 3.
b; 
4.
door
-in-the-face; 5.
obedience
 
Module 53 
Social Infl uence and Groups 
597
social infl uence p. 590
group p. 590
conformity p. 590
status p. 591
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598
Key Concepts 
How do stereotypes, prejudice, 
and discrimination diff er? 
How can we reduce prejudice 
and discrimination?
M O D U L E 5 4 
Prejudice and Discrimination 
What do you think when someone says, “He’s African American,” “She’s Chinese,” 
or “That’s a woman driver”? 
If you’re like most people, you’ll probably automatically form some sort of 
impression of what each person is like. Most likely your impression is based on 
a  stereotype,  a set of generalized beliefs and expectations about a specifi c group 
and its members. Stereotypes, which may be negative or positive, grow out of our 
tendency to categorize and organize the vast amount of information we encounter 
in our everyday lives. All stereotypes share the common feature of oversimplifying 
the world: We view individuals not in terms of their unique, personal character-
istics, but also in terms of characteristics we attribute to all the members of a 
particular group.
Stereotypes can lead to  prejudice,  a negative (or positive) evaluation of a group 
and its members. For instance, racial prejudice occurs when a member of a racial 
group is evaluated in terms of race and not because of his or her own characteristics 
or abilities. Although prejudice can be positive (”I love the Irish”), social psychologists 
have focused on understanding the roots of negative prejudice (”I hate immigrants”).
Common stereotypes and forms of prejudice involve race, religion, ethnicity, and 
gender. Over the years, various groups have been called “lazy” or “shrewd” or 
“cruel” with varying degrees of regularity by those who are not members of that 
group. Even today, despite major progress toward reducing legally sanctioned forms 
of prejudice, such as school segregation, stereotypes remain (Eberhardt et al., 2004; 
Pettigrew, 2004; Hunt, Seifert, & Armenta, 2006). 
Even people who on the surface appear to be unprejudiced may harbor hidden 
prejudice. For example, when white participants in experiments are shown faces on 
a computer screen so rapidly that they cannot consciously perceive the faces, they 
react more negatively to black than to white faces—an example of what has been 
called modern racism (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Pearson, 2005; Liu & Mills, 2006; Pearson, 
Dovidio, & Pratto, 2007). 
Although usually backed by little or no evidence, stereotypes can have harmful 
consequences. Acting on negative stereotypes results in  discrimination  —behavior 
directed toward individuals on the basis of their membership in a particular group. 
Discrimination can lead to exclusion from jobs, neighborhoods, and educational 
opportunities, and it may result in lower salaries and benefi ts for members of specifi c 
groups. Discrimination can also result in more favorable treatment to favored 
groups—for example, when an employer hires a job applicant of his or her own racial 
group because of the applicant’s race (Avery, McKay, & Wilson, 2008; Pager & Shep-
herd, 2008).
Stereotyping not only leads to overt discrimination, but also can cause members 
of stereotyped groups to behave in ways that refl ect the stereotype through a phe-
nomenon known as the self-fulfi lling prophecy . Self-fulfi lling prophecies are expecta-
tions about the occurrence of a future event or behavior that act to increase the 
likelihood the event or behavior will occur. For example, if people think that mem-
bers of a specifi c group lack ambition, they may treat them in a way that actually 
brings about a lack of ambition (Oskamp, 2000; Seibt & Förster, 2005; Madon, Willard, 
& Guyll, 2006).