bradford race gender

Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Gender(Chapter 10-11)

Dr. Bradford

Race and Ethnicity

• Race = a category of people who have been singled out as inferior or superior, often on the basis of real or alleged physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape, or other subjectively selected attributes

• Ethnicity or Ethnic group = collection of people distinguished, by others or by themselves, primarily on the basis of cultural or nationality characteristics

Race and Ethnicity

• Race is NOT biologically Real! (Although it is culturally/socially very real)– How people are classified according to ‘races’ differs from

place to place and changes over time.– *There is as much genetic variations within a racial

category as there is differences between them. – Stated differently, two people of different races are as

(likely to be as) genetically similar as two people within the same race.

Race and Ethnicity

• Race is NOT biologically Real! (Although it is culturally/socially very real)– There is no single physical

characteristic that all members of a single race possess that no one of any other race does not possess.

– Racial markers are not concordant with (i.e. do not correlate with) either simple traits (e.g. height, weight, eye color, etc.), nor any of the complex traits that matter socially (e.g. intelligence, athletic ability, etc.)

Prejudice

• Prejudice: a hostile or negative attitude toward people in a distinguishable group, based solely on their membership in that group.

• Three components: 1. Cognitive2. Emotional (‘affective’); 3. Behavioral (discrimination).

Prejudice

Prejudiced Attitude? Discriminatory Behavior?

1. Unprejudiced nondiscriminator

NO NO

2. Unprejudiced discriminator

NO YES

3. Prejudiced nondiscriminator

YES NO

4. Prejudiced discriminator YES YES

Prejudice (Cognitive)

• Stereotype: a generalization about a group of people, in which certain traits are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members.– Stereotypes can be positive or negative– Why do we stereotype? “The law of least

effort”- because the world is complicated … for most things we rely on simple, sketchy beliefs.

Prejudice (Cognitive)

• Positive Stereotypes– Example: African American athletic ability– In one study, students were asked to listento a 20-

minute audio tape of a college basketball game and to rate the performance of ‘Mark Flick.’ Students who were told that ‘Mark Flick’ was African American consistently rated his performance higher than those who were told he was caucasion.

• Illusory correlation: the tendency to see relationships, or correlations, between events that are actually unrelated.

Prejudice (Behavioral)

• Discrimination: an unjustified negative or harmful action toward the members of a group solely because of their membership in that group.

• ‘micro-aggressions’: the slights, indignities, and put-downs that many minorities and people with disabilities face.

• In 1942, 98% of the white population supported segregation of schools. By 1988, only 3% of whites said they wouldn’t want their child to attend school with black children.

Modern Racism and Other Implicit Prejudices

• Modern racism: outwardly acting unprejudiced while inwardly maintaining prejudiced attitudes.

• Implicit Association Test (IAT):– Claim: if it takes whites longer to associate positive words

with black faces than negative words with black faces, then whites must harbor some implicit prejudice towards blacks.

– However, other researchers showed they got a significant effect when using nonsense words or neutral words, so whatever it is measuring, it might not be a stable prejudice, but how much the word associated with the target stands out, i.e. its salience.


• ‘Shooter-bias’ in a video game

• Findings: Participants were especially likely to pull the trigger when the people in the picture were black, whether or not they were holding a gun.


• However, the book does not mention that this bias also holds for black video game players!

• What does this mean?

Effects of Prejudice on the Victim

• Self-fulfilling prophecy– In one study, White college undergraduates were asked to

interview candidates for a job. They acted disinterested in African American candidates, sat farther away, tended to stammer, and ended the interview sooner than compared to white candidates.

– The ‘employers’ (actually confederates in the study), then interviewed only white applicants, acting towards half of them the way they had acted towards African Americans.

– Independent judges watching these interviews evaluated those applicants who had been treated as the African Americans had!

Effects of Prejudice on the Victim

• Self-fulfilling prophecy– This study shows that how applicants were

evaluated, how competent they appeared to be, was largely influenced by something over which they had little control: the expectations of the interviewer.

Effects of Prejudice on the Victim• Stereotype threat: the stress and apprehension experienced by

members of a group that their behavior might confirm a cultural stereotype.

• Study: African and American and white students were given a difficult test: the GRE. Half of them were told it measured intellectual ability, and the other half were told the test was still being developed, wasn’t reliable, and didn’t measure anything.

• Findings: white students performed equally well (or poorly) regardless of whether they thought they were being evaluated. African American students who thought they were being evaluated performed much worse than those who were led to believe the test was meaningless, who also performed as well as whites.

How can prejudice be reduced?

• Contact hypothesis: contact with people from other groups tends to reduce your prejudice against them. – Study: black students at majority white

universities felt a greater sense of belonging and satisfaction the more white friends they made.


• NOT ALL CONTACT REDUCES PREJUDICE! • After all, slavery is also a kind of ‘contact.’


Six Conditions in which Contact Reduces Prejudice:1. Mutual interdependence2. Having a common goal3. Equal status and power4. Must occur in friendly, informal setting5. Individual must learn that these out-group members

who they come to know are typical of their group6. Social norms that promote and support equality

among groups are operating in the situation

Sex and Gender

• Sex = biological, physical characteristics; “Nature”

• Gender = cultural roles or social expectations about the attributes and behavior of males and females; “Nurture”– ‘Gender is not something you

have, it is something you do’

Gender Gap RankingsCountry(top 10)

Overall Rank

Iceland 1

Norway 2

Finland 3

Sweden 4

New Zealand 5

Ireland 6

Denmark 7

Lesotho 8

Philippines 9

Switzerland 10

*USA *19

• Ranking based on the extent to which women have achieved equality in 4 areas:1. Economic participation

and opportunity2. Education3. Health4. Political empowerment

Gender Gap RankingsCountry

(bottom 10)Overall Rank

Egypt 125

Turkey 126

Morocco 127

Benin 128

Saudi Arabia 129

Cote d’Ivoire 130

Mali 131

Pakistan 132

Chad 133

Yemen 134

Sex and Gender

• What are some ‘cultural scripts’ (stereotypes) we have about men and women?– Dress, emotional states, ways

of talking…Would you ever see a male human proposing to a female dog in a cartoon?

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