Prospects for fighting steroypes and prejudice

M1 – L1 – M2 – L2 – .. – Mi - Li

M stands for Memory (representations of groups in memory), and L stands for Language (things we say about groups or their members). So, Person 1 has a distorted view of a group, and passes this on in language to Person 2, who now shares this view, a

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Language affects cognition in at least 3 ways:

As a vessel for cognition – it contains and conveys thought As a lens for cognition – it focuses thought As a barometer of cognition – it signals thought

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Information theory” (esp. Shannon & Weaver, 1949)

The sender (S) encodes message, sends it through a (potentially noisy) medium or channel, which is decoded by the receiver (R)

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Two approaches to stereotype communication inspired by this metaphor:

LIB and Selective Transmission

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Lyons and Kashima (2003)…

Sent stories like this down 4-person serial communication chains.....The SC information was faithfully communicated and reached the last person in the communication chain; the SI information tended to be deleted by communicators and did not make it t

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Biased transmission

is driven by perceptions that the stereotype is shared by the audience and thus the communicative act is likely to be successful (from the “grounding” perspective)

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Selective transmission: a positive feedback loop

Stereotype is widespread - Speakers assume audience shares stereotype - Speaker selectively communicates stereotype-consistent information -Stereotype is reinforced in mind of listener

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The LIB Maass, Salvi, Arcuri & Semin (1989

Stereotypes, especially prejudice, are transmitted and perpetuated though language Especially through subtle, probably unconscious differences in how we describe ingroup and outgroup behaviours

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Descriptive action verbsSemin & Fiedler (1988) - Person A is running

Most concrete type of description Non-interpretive description of single, observable event “Physical invariance” Little, no, or ambiguous evaluation

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Interpretive action verbsSemin & Fiedler (1988) - Person A is hurting person b

Second most concrete form of description Also refer to a single, observable event But refer to a class of behaviours Physically variant Evaluative

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State verbsSemin & Fiedler (1988) - person a loves spors

Second most abstract level of description Do not refer to single, observable event – but do refer to a specific object (e.g., sports, person B) But enduring state or emotion Generalise across behaviours

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AdjectivesSemin & Fiedler (1988) - Person A is athletic

Most abstract level of description in original LCM Describe abstract dispositions of the subject Without reference to single object Highly interpretive, reveal little of situation

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what happens as language becomes more abstract?

Less is known by receiver about the situation, more is known about the actor; information appears more endurable, less verifiable, and more disputable (Semin & Fiedler, 1988...........Also, the behaviour in question is seen as more likely to be repea

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First evidence for the LIBMaass, Salvi, Arcuri & Semin (1989)

Participants used abstract language to describe the positive behaviours of their own group, and the negative behaviours of rival groups. In contrast, they used concrete language to describe the positive behaviours of the outgroup, and the negative b

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Positive feedback loop

Sterotype exists - Speaker forms a dispositional representation of stereotype-consistent events - Speaker uses abstract language when describing stereotype-consistent behaviours -- Stereotype is reinforced in mind of recipient (and speaker…)

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Masculine generic

Masculine generic focuses attention on men and boys, even though according to establish language use, it refers also to women and girls.

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First names Slepian & Galinsky (2016)

Boys names, more than girls, tend to start with voiced phonemes

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Leader, Mullen & Rice (2009) Minimal groups: ingroup and outgroup Participants given a complex or simple set of labels for outgroup - prejudice higher when

Prejudice higher when simple: perhaps because these people are literally one-dimensional, and thus relatively easy to aggress against

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Hausmann et al. (2008) shared realiy

Hausmann et al. (2008) used a minimal group paradigm, assigning students to Group A or Group B. When led to believe that they were communicating with a person who didn’t like Group B, they created more negative messages, which meant that in turn, th

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Sutton, Elder, & Douglas (2006) language as a baometer

British participants rated speakers based on what they said about Australians. If the speaker criticised (rather than praised) Australians, they themselves were rated as nastier people, but only if they were not themselves Australian. It’s OK to cri

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Assilaméhou & Testé (2013)

French participants rated a French (ingroup)speaker as a better group member if they used the LIB (French people are intelligent, Italian people keep diaries; Italian people are dirty, French people drop litter) rather than the reverse pattern of lan

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Cont

They also saw an Italian speaker as a better group member if they showed the same bias in favour of Italians, but less so (the interaction was marginally significant, p = .07). This means that linguistic bias is actually valued in some way.

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Paradox of liberalism

is the idea that if blatant discrimination in language dies out because people are afraid to express it, then only subtle, largely unconscious biases remain, like the LIB and the selective transmission bias.

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Prospects for fighting steroypes and prejudice

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